Billing is the bread and butter of a reseller’s operation: it helps them keep an eye on supplier costs, as well as manage the onward billing of customers.
The process of billing in comms has remained relatively unchanged for many years until the pandemic forced organisations to adopt new comms platforms and technologies to ensure they remained operational with a distributed workforce. This shift instigated a new approach to billing communications and many organisations are looking to overhaul their billing to align with their digital transformation journeys.
We spoke with experts from Union Street, Tekton, and Plan.com to discuss how billing has changed since March 2020. Where the opportunities in billing lie for partners, and what they think the future holds for billing in communications.
How has billing changed over the course of the past 18 months?
Harry McKeever, Director at Tekton:
Harry-McKeever
“We’re seeing partners leverage tools from their billing arsenals such as time-limited discounts, payment holidays, and bulk service management to ensure no business is stifled by due payments.
“This has, of course, also highlighted the importance of resellers protecting their own cash flow. We’ve seen partners implementing 2-month in-advance billing, automated ETC calculations, and contract renewal tracking.
“What’s more, the move to hybrid working has meant we’ve needed more remote-friendly processes within the billing cycle. Our new month-end process, for example, ensures that bills don’t go out without the right approvals and ‘digital sign-off from a specified admin account.”
Sam Dennahy, Product Owner at Union Street:
“More and more we’re seeing our partners wanting to tidy their billing data up, simplify the way they bill and have a standard way of billing. While the last 18 months have been difficult for a lot of businesses, many of our partners are growing quickly through acquisition. They look to us to support them in bringing those bases into their way of billing, aligning everything, and making it easier to manage larger data sets.
“With pricing becoming increasingly regulated in our industry, and moving more towards unlimited packages, resellers are looking for new ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors.”
Keith Curran Sales Director & Co-Founder, Plan.com:
“The evolving needs of channel partners and customers require the phasing out of legacy billing systems and processes, which are no longer fit for purpose. Traditional methods lead to inaccuracies, unexpected or unclear charges, and offer little or no audit trail, which can frustrate customers, leading to an increase in customer queries or complaints.
“Customers instead require tools and controls which help them to interrogate and understand their bills, manage multiple devices and access useful insights, all at the click of a button.
“Chanel partners, therefore, want to offer added value and provide their customers with useful functionality and qualitative as standard.”
What is the opportunity around billing from a channel perspective?
Sam Dennahy, Product Owner at Union Street:
“Many resellers have a disparate supply chain which brings all sorts of complexity to collating and
Sam Dennahy
managing billing data. Having a strong reconciliation process within a billing system will take a lot of the stress out of managing multiple supplier files every month. The billing system is often the only place a reseller can access a single view of an end customer and the various products and services they use.
“A good system will be able to calculate and demonstrate if the end customer is getting value out of what they are paying for. It will also support a reseller to produce targeted sales and cross-sell marketing campaigns to win more business and drive more revenue. Better managed customers lead to less churn and give the reseller an excellent base to grow their business from.”
Keith Curran Sales Director & Co-Founder, Plan.com:
“It’s well known that billing is the least transformed part of the digital experience and needs to evolve to meet the needs of customers.
“The opportunity, therefore, lies in the analytical tools which help channel partners to gain competitive advantage and support customer acquisition and retention strategies, whilst driving customer satisfaction, efficiencies and informed decision making.
“Channel partners want a competitive proposition which adds value, including real-time insights and powerful controls. This is where the opportunities lie for channel partners – a chance to exceed a customer’s expectations and address historic pain points, to help build lasting relationships.”
Harry McKeever, Director at Tekton:
Awareness around the PSTN switch-off is starting to accelerate, representing a great cross-selling opportunity for resellers and billing should support this transition seamlessly. Platforms should manage the change of tariff on the service, while protecting unchanging asset information such as DDIs and usernames, to ensure minimal disruption.
“Billing providers are experts in their field and this time of great upheaval is the perfect opportunity to uncover legacy process issues that may lead to lost revenue. We found over £30K in lost annual revenue from one new client alone, as we migrated their customer base, and we’re sure this is more widespread than expected.”
What does billing the future of communications look like?
Keith Curran Sales Director & Co-Founder, Plan.com:
“As more devices connect and communicate, businesses will want to know what their devices are doing and find ways to analyse this data in search of commercial gains.
Keith Curran
“Data analytics has the potential to transform business models by helping identify new revenue streams, but on day-to-day (yet still very important) level, data-driven insights can help businesses deliver vital operational improvements, by optimising either productivity or reducing costs.
“The future is a customer-centric unified communications solution with in-depth insights, added control, resulting in fewer billing enquiries, reduced bill shock, highly satisfied customers and all-important commercial gain for each stage of the supply chain.”
Harry McKeever, Director at Tekton:
End customers often see no separation between communications and IT, seeking a single supplier for both.
“With this, convergent billing is fundamental to a reseller, and one would be forgiven for thinking that this simplifies billing mechanisms. In fact, end customers now expect more control than ever when it comes to the self-provisioning of services. And quantities and tariffs of services may routinely fluctuate mid-month., with customers expecting prorated billing to follow suit – fixed charges aren’t quite so “fixed” anymore!
Sam Dennahy, Product Owner at Union Street:
“Over the next four years, we will see the closedown of the PSTN network, an increase of services such as FTTC and FTTP and VoIP / UC solutions to replace other forms of communications.
“A good billing system will be able to keep up with all these changes, whilst being flexible and offering a wealth of options which will help resellers to enter new markets and create competitive product offerings that stand out from those of their competitors.
“Billing and provisioning go hand in hand. When a billing system expands into automated provisioning, it’s extremely powerful, saving the reseller time and effort and drastically reducing the risk of incorrect or missed billing. “
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