Is rating that complex?

In a similar context to the plan configuration, the underlying rating of usage varies greatly in complexity depending on the platform you have chosen.

Some platforms are limited in their configuration options, which makes them easier to set up, but they are limited in just how creative you can be.

Look at the following two examples (we have just used a ‘call’ as a use-case here, it could be any type of time-based or session-based event)

A real-world example

• Flag fall of $0.20, Call charged at $1.00 per minute charged in 30-second blocks. There is no functionality to support cost tracking.
• Flag fall of $0.20
  • The first 300 seconds of the call are free
  • You are then charged at a rate of $1.00 per minute charged in 30-second blocks up to a total cost of $5.00,
  • The rate then reduces to $0.50 per minute in 15-second blocks up until a maximum charge of $10.00 where the record is capped.

Two wildly different examples – Having assistance in ensuring this setup is correct in the first place and ongoing and reporting to back it up speaks for itself.

Know you’re correct. Be on the front foot.

Making noise

As a client, the most frustrating factor to deal with is the unknown. As a provider, your most expensive asset is your people.

Most billing systems and support systems have notifications that are designed to allow you to communicate to your staff and clients about changes in the customer profile

What is important?

• Service provisioning changes.
• Order Creation.
• Credit Limit Management.
• Depletion of allocation due to usage.
• Invoice creation, unpaid pending overdue invoices.
• Payment attempts and payment method management.
• .. and generally a whole lot more.

The more effort placed in this area of a platform, the more transparent you are to your customer and the more informed they are. What are they less likely to do? Pick up the phone and call and tie up support resources.

Have Asmorphic work with your bureau service and billing partner to identify what is available and provide you with options to complement your offering to your clients.

Importance of Branding

A lot of time and effort goes into creating your brand. Logos, product offerings, key messaging, the company’s personality and reputation when established require consistency.

If you consider the initial engagement of a new client, they are exposed to your carefully curated website, to your account creation and ordering processes, through to the notifications you send them as you deliver a service.

When the client is onboarded, they may see your self-service portal, which should be branded with a similar strategy.

But what next?

From this point on, when everything is business as usual, your client will likely be paying attention to one thing, their invoice from you. It is the window into a client’s spend, trends and usage. Many companies do not leverage this last-mile document to its full potential, instead opting to use what is by default supplied by their platform of choice.

Ensuring you have a professional invoice is critical to creating a consistent brand. The invoice should not be just looked at as something to pay, but rather as a sales and marketing tool that can also advertise additional products and services.

Asmorphic works with your vendor of choice to learn what is possible and work with you to customise your invoice to fulfil these concepts (and to fit within regulatory/legal requirements).

But how?

Using Emersion as an example again, it is possible to have a front page customised to look exactly how you would like it (technology dependant of course). There are dozens of pre-built grids that can be included as well to assist your client in understanding in detail what they are spending where.

Engage Asmorphic who has had long-running experience with document creation, to work with your partner to see what is possible, work with you to design your best-case outcome and either show you how to manage or take over the customisation process on your behalf.

Is there such a thing as ‘turn-key’?

Rarely is any platform built in a way that you can ‘set and forget’.

Clients and services can be created outside of your billing platform and that then requires human involvement to ensure systems stay in sync.

Housekeeping tasks are the important steps to make sure you’re collecting all possible revenue.

What gets missed?

• Changes in cost pricing so that you’re all of a sudden undercharging.
• The management of service and usage quarantine, where usage is not being attributed to services and results in lost revenue.
• New types of usage (tariffs) that is not been managed within your platform and are either not being processed or are processed at cost.
• Provisioning outcomes that have failed and not followed up.
• Stalled customers who are stuck in the delivery pipeline
• Integration errors with third-party platforms.

Talk about quarantine and about finding new tariffs and covering rate changes as they happen. Talk about commercial renegotiation and keeping the system in line with these changes.

Asmorphic can take on this responsibility and work with you to make sure all back-office functions are managed correctly allowing your business to focus.

Go that one step further

These days, BSS/OSS/Subscription systems have learned that they don’t have to do everything. There is now more than ever a focus on leveraging technology partners that are better at elements outside the scope of their core business.

Ensuring you take advantage of as many of these as possible means you lend yourself to automation possibilities and the ability to more easily scale.

Using Systems Integration you can add

• Payments collection – Many systems provide pre-existing implementation into multiple gateways, such as Stripe, SecurePay, Merchant Warrior and Wirecard
• Service Provision Automation – Vendors supplying product are more likely to expose API layers as part of their offering, allowing you to tie directly into service delivery without requiring staff to have logins and training in multiple platforms.
• Invoice Printing and Mailing – Some folk still want to see an invoice in their postal email for them to pay. Platforms may have the ability to extract mail-based invoices and treat them differently to facilitate physical delivery.
• Credit Check and Credit Check Scoring facilities – For larger product sales or high-risk products, being able to understand the profile of your client before you establish long-term commitments to vendors on their behalf can save a lot of time and effort in the long run.
• Specialist integration – Your billing system likely has a framework in place so that they are able to develop specific infrastructure calls to your vendor to leverage more than your basic activate a service functionality, such as ‘Line Checks’ for NBN.

We speak API and we speak integration and can help improve your product or service implementation.

Let’s explore what is possible together and add to your roadmap! You’ll find more information on our integration experience within Tentacle.

The last piece of the puzzle is the reporting that is provided by your platform of choice. Many have prebuilt reports that can aid you in understanding system health and even identify clients who have changes in spending

Using effective reports, you can create clients for life as they will see you have your finger on the pulse and their best interests in mind. A successful bureau service engagement is transparent with its results!

We are able to work with your vendor of choice to review their suite of reports and understand what they are, and more importantly, how they can help you.