MARKET REPORT Billing
Smart billing
Comms Business caught up with billing providers from across the industry to find out what is important for
resellers and service providers in 2020 and beyond
Digital transformation
projects have forced
billing and monetisation
software to evolve.
Vincent Disneur, managing
director at Union Street
Technologies, explained, “e
scope of products and services
that a billing platform will
need to manage has widened
considerably. Coherent,
consolidated billing is a major
selling point for customers and
can be as important to them as
cost savings, so it’s important
for a billing platform to process
rateable comms services in
addition to a wide range of
other services.”
ose additional services
might include service charges,
subscriptions, and other types
of contractual arrangements. To
meet these needs, Disneur said,
the billing platform needs to be
versatile and adaptable.
Meeting today’s requirements
is vital but, for billing providers,
the ability to plan for future
needs is equally important. Wail
Sabbagh, managing director
at Strategic Imperatives, said,
“With the majority of billing
providers now oering various
interpretations of cloud service
delivery, integration frameworks
and web-based frontends,
forward looking service
providers must ask themselves
more dicult questions. Can I
launch multiple brands? Can I
bill using dierent currencies?
Is my system integrated with
payment providers? Can I
schedule promotions and
product launches in advance?
Can my product catalogue
satisfy my market ambitions?
Are my propositions protable?
In short, can my billing system
take me to the next level or will
I be stuck with a mishmash of
workarounds and a barrier to
growth and expansion?
“Ultimately a modern-day
billing provider must cater
for the future and this can
only happen with industry
engagement, commitment to
R&D and a future-proof service
delivery framework backed
by a well-dened vision and a
dynamic roadmap.”
For Harry McKeever, head
of operations at Tekton Billing,
digital transformation has
accelerated the pace of change
for channel oerings which
has, in turn, made exibility a
necessity. He said, “Flexibility
in a billing platform is crucial
to ensure that providers aren’t
restricted by their systems.
Providers need to be able to
instantly add or remove all
the relevant bolt-ons, tari
customisations and one-o
discounts, for example. ese
amendments need to be
accessible 24/7 and veriable by
the end-user at any time of the
day, even out-of-hours, to reect
the provider’s credibility and
ensure customer loyalty.”
Intelligent Billing developed
its software to deliver cloud
consumption billing for
Vincent Disneur, managing director at
Union Street Technologies
Westcoast Cloud, a UK IT
distributor, and the software
helped it grow from an
£18million to a £75million
business within a two-year
period. e Intelligent Billing
platform can be congured
to meet the requirements of
customers on their digital
transformation journeys. e
company’s managing director,
Simon Adams, said, “Revenue
scenarios are continually
increasing in complexity.
Usage based charges, bundled
services, hybrid packaging of
physical and cloud oerings,
multi-vendor, billing
hierarchies and more mean the
need for a scalable billing and
monetisation platform to adapt
to the immense complexity.
“Billing and monetisation
need to work hand in hand,
not disconnect. Companies
want and demand a tangible
ROI. ey want software
they can self-manage, so
they can add products and
services, change price points,
run promotions and create
real-time reporting to measure
eectiveness.”
30 | Comms Business Magazine | October 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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