For Communications Service Providers offering data networking, voice and managed services, comprehensive and accurate billing is mission critical. While wireline still represents the backbone of many telecom companies, the ability to deploy new and innovative services to attract and retain customers has never been more vital to continued business success. So when a company is doing something right, scaling to integrate these new services is the natural next step. But what happens when billing gets in the way?
Telecom billing systems that once were state-of-the-art can quickly be rendered obsolete or insufficient as companies scale rapidly. Making matters worse, mergers and acquisitions can lead to a consolidated business with billing software redundancies and interoperability challenges that need to be addressed before new services can be deployed. That’s where a telecommunications billing company like IDI Billing Solutions can be transformative – altering clunky, outmoded legacy billing systems and freeing up resources to scale with ease.
Patching the holes left by legacy billing systems
When in-house technologies have been around for years, R&D can easily stagnate as IT resources are diverted away from ongoing development. Even the most reliable legacy systems require constant tweaks to integrate new functionalities and bill for the latest and greatest services. Rather than committing an in-house IT team to the ongoing task of updating and re-coding every time the company wants to deploy a new service, telecom organizations can partner with a solution provider and devote resources to growing business capacities and maintaining customer satisfaction – all while saving time and improving accuracy in both ordering and billing.
The challenge of mergers and acquisitions
A merger or acquisition can be an exciting step for a company. However, it can present an issue when business leaders are faced with the integration of multiple legacy billing systems – as was recently the case with a major Midwest telecom that approached IDI to help migrate existing and newly acquired customers onto one reliable, comprehensive platform.
Telecom organizations have so many moving parts to handle, especially during acquisitions and mergers. Managing this balancing act while also integrating multiple systems can be overwhelming. It’s important to seek out a billing system that allows for effortless migration. Modern billing solutions can replace any former systems with ease, creating a seamless transition that even the most detail-oriented customers won’t be aware of.
The advantages of outsourcing billing systems
When telecommunications businesses decide to phase out their outdated billing solutions in favor of a modern system, they have the potential to add significant value to the business, all while improving its financial bottom line. Here are some advantages of switching from legacy billing systems to a modern, cloud-based solution:
Increased efficiency
An external billing platform fosters streamlined operations without the in-house responsibility. This means business leaders can spend time providing an exceptional customer experience and less time working through the kinks of a legacy billing solution. In addition to improved quality of service, modern platforms allow for increased billing accuracy. For instance, having a person or team in charge of certain functions — such as data records, payroll and traffic measurement — leaves them susceptible to human error, potentially resulting in issues in data governance and customer service. In addition, having streamlined processes through integrated software solutions leads to cost and time savings long-term.
Custom and streamlined implementations
Even though in-house billing professionals offer internal expertise, calling on an outsourced team of professionals can provide even more value. Because external experts work with a variety of telecom billing organizations, they can provide consulting about business operations, offering industry insight that can be used to leverage products and services.
Replacing legacy billing systems with CostGuard
As previously mentioned, a major wireline service provider recently looked to IDI to help replace their outmoded billing system in the wake of a merger using IDI’s CostGuard® solution. Faced with the need to scale and integrate disparate client bases into a singular solution, this complex implementation was rendered simple and relatively painless by the billing experts at IDI. Ultimately, it provided the company with greater visibility into their customers, and a much easier product catalog to administer.
To learn more about choosing the right billing, automation and workflow solution for phasing out your legacy billing system, download IDI’s case study today.
