Amidst ever increasing competition, growing customer expectations, and aggressive market demands, telcos today are frequently expanding their portfolios to try and stand out from the crowd. However, the introduction of new products and services, which while helping operators stay ahead of the curve, also introduces added complexities to overall business operations from network operations and service provisioning to revenue management.
This brings a lot of attention to billing efficiency and revenue leakage across the industry, making billing one of the most critical aspects in telecom operations. With tighter regulatory obligations in place, regularly evaluating billing systems and identifying internal weak spots that are causing revenue leakage has now become a top necessity.
When telcos take a step back and start to evaluate their billing systems, existing gaps in their infrastructure become readily apparent and impossible to ignore. Most commonly, these gaps are caused by a long-standing, legacy, structural problem facing telcos - the absence of modern billing systems.
Many are still operating within a network of siloed, disparate, disconnected systems and relying on manual, outdated processes. This infrastructure is no longer fit for purpose to support the speed, flexibility, agility and scale of digital-first services demanded by customers today - and regularly results in configuration errors and integration gaps.
The growth of MVNOs is also impacting things. Many lease bandwidth from network operators and when settlement is required between the two not everything is necessarily captured in real time, which often results in revenue leakage. Trying to trace that back to who was responsible without modern billing and assurance frameworks is extremely challenging, and ultimately negatively impacts the bottom line.
The knock on impact of legacy architecture is that it magnifies the risk of human error. Outdated systems were often implemented several decades ago and inherited without the transfer of knowledge or appropriate documentation, resulting in inconsistencies and misalignment.
Automation and AI has emerged as a solution to help operators address these challenges. By making accurate predictions around discrepancies in billing, identifying irregularities, these tools equip telcos with near real-time insights on an ongoing basis and allow them to stay on top of billing processes.
Customer expectations around AI is another part of the story. More and more consumers today are using AI instead of Google or other search engines. They rely on Alexa and Siri to search and retrieve information for them, and this directly impacts their expectations around customer service.
They don't want to have to log onto a customer portal and find information or make a change through their package to find the best tariff. They expect AI to recommend that to them, which is in turn pushing expectation onto telcos to embed AI into their apps and customer portals.
While automation can play an important role in reducing billing irregularities, better collaboration across departments and teams is just as important. Errors in billing stem from beyond just the finance team; often occurring across IT, product and operations as well. More regular visibility and communication across teams can help telcos speed up reconciliation and deal with billing issues more quickly.
However, adopting modern monetisation models does not just address and prevent revenue leakage for telcos. This approach also opens the door for the successful delivery of more personalised packages to support expansion into IoT and other digital services.
The key is to strike the right balance and have a clear strategy. It is not about over-personalisation for customers and creating added complexities. Modern billing platforms can cater for usage-based billing models and dynamic pricing structures, as well as providing far better visibility into patterns and behaviours among the customer base.
This enables telcos to diversify their offerings and provide tailored offers and packages that ultimately help prevent churn and lead to enhanced levels of customer service, trust and satisfaction. This takes the conversation far beyond enabling efficiencies, with billing becoming a vital customer touchpoint and competitive differentiator for telcos to deliver increased brand loyalty.
As operators increasingly turn their attention to compliance and meeting regulatory requirements in their overall approach to revenue assurance, billing can no longer be viewed as back-office function. It must be recognised as a priority at board-level, which means more regular evaluation of billing infrastructure.
Legacy, outdated billing systems are no longer fit for purpose to deliver what telcos need today to remain compliant, while also remaining agile, flexible and armed with real-time visibility. It is only with the adoption of modern systems combined with a stronger approach to data governance, that telcos can truly operate with confidence and improve overall profitability.
Originally published on TelcoForge, this piece was written by Alison Young, CEO of Kansys.