Telecom operators order capacity to supplement their networks and interconnect with each other or extend network reach to a client site. This wholesale environment creates substantial complexity and expense, both of which can be greatly reduced with the right combination of processes and systems.
OSS and BSS legacy systems were designed specifically to govern Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) based services. OSS solutions operators use to order capacity are siloed from their Billing or BSS counterpart. Exacerbating that separation, the people ordering said services are not the same groups validating the resulting costs. TDM services are regulated, which offers greater predictability, accountability and financial controls. Today’s Ethernet services environment on the other hand, is largely unregulated, governed by individual contracts and labor intensive to support from a financial assurance standpoint. Order placement has been a long standing challenge, be the services TDM or Ethernet based. Each respective carrier offers individual portals for order placement, training is required, and standards lacking or poorly enforced. This all results in the complexity referenced above, operational and financial inefficiencies, poor client and staff experiences and spiraling costs.
Tying the order to the correct contract, and validating the resulting invoice in an efficient and repeatable manner has been a long-standing challenge for telecom operators. With the complexity in play, a lack of contract and order controls, errors mount resulting in revenue delays, accrual issues and billing disputes. The dispute management process is time and resource intensive and often ends in a settlement for just a portion of the dispute value consequently, this becomes a cyclical process.
Operators need to simplify the “order to invoice review and dispute management” process– doing so insures operational efficiencies, improvement in internal and external stakeholders experience and improve financial assurance. It all starts with eliminating the root cause of billing errors associated with an invoice.
Synchronoss and Sage solve this problem through the iNOW suite of services paired with inFuse. This end-to-end system governs all aspects of the order lifecycle, from design, rating, validation and acceptance to invoicing. At the core of this solution stack is blockchain. Blockchain is an electronic system for managing distributed databases or ledgers, which are then shared across participant approved nodes. Blockchain is the backbone of the cryptocurrency movement and this application simply stands as another example of utilizing said technology. Blockchain greatly reduces today’s environmental complexities. It simplifies order exchange, improves order accuracy and timeliness of service delivery. Between iNOW and inFuse, orders are systematically validated and rated against the operator agreement – this ensures services are ordered with the most optimal rate prior to the order completing. Once the order is completed, the rated order content is ingested and systematically validated against the rated order content to confirm the services are billing exactly as ordered. Variances are raised immediately as disputes to minimize the time to resolution. As services are moved, changed, disconnected, added to, etc. this closed loop management of the commerce cycle ensures billing is optimized and supporting inventory updated.
Industry First Solution
The integration between order lifecycle management via iNOW, combined with the smart contract and blockchain powered rating capabilities of inFuse is an industry first. First adopters stand to capture early synergies with suppliers, eliminate complexity, enjoy greater operational efficiencies and improve financial assurance.
To learn more about how Synchronoss iNOW can help you, please contact us for a demo.
