100 Days to Telecom Billing: Open Range Deploys Large-Scale Subscription Billing Solution

Transcription

1 100 Days to Telecom Billing: Open Range Deploys Large-Scale Subscription Billing Solution A Neovise Case Study, Prepared for Zuora 2010 Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

2 We were looking for a frictionless, 21 st century billing system that was cloud-based. Q Saeed, Executive Vice President, Business Operations, Technology & Corporate Development, Open Range Communications Inc. Overview Industry: Wireless Broadband Business Type: Service Provider The Challenge The Solution The Benefit Implementing a new, automated, low touch billing solution in less than 100 days. Z-Commerce billing solution from Zuora with tight integration to existing IT systems. Scalability for rapid growth, agility for quick response to change, and ground breaking time to market. Introduction In December 2009, between Christmas and New Years Day, Q Saeed found himself sitting in his Colorado office staring at the 2010 Open Range launch plan. The Open Range team had spent the last three years building the company from scratch. Backed with $267 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture s Rural Development Utilities Program and $100 million from One Equity Partners, the private equity arm of JPMorgan Chase, the venture represented one of the largest public-private investments for broadband service by the federal government. This had been a high stakes undertaking, one that was on the very cusp of producing spectacular growth. Yet a single daunting challenge still added risk to the company s future plans. Q felt he was still without a scalable billing solution one that could scale to meet rapidly growing demands; one that was flexible enough to adjust to changing requirements at a moment s notice. But that wasn t the bad news. Ultimately he would need a telecom billing solution that could be implemented in just 100 days, simply unprecedented in the industry. Considering the typical multi-million dollar, inflexible systems that take years for an army of systems integrators to deploy, it looked like this would be a long, cold winter Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Page 1

3 Open Range Open Range Communications one of the nation s hottest wireless broadband providers uses 4G technology to deliver affordable wireless broadband to un-served and underserved rural American communities. The company s primary focus is delivering wireless high-speed Internet and voice services to customers within its robust footprint. Customers simply connect an Open Range device to any desktop or laptop computer to receive instant, portable, dependable and low-cost access to the Internet. Within the next three years, Open Range intends to serve 555 communities, making its services initially available to approximately six million people. Open Range s wireless broadband network solution connects customers through licensed spectrum, enabling communities to improve safety, economic growth, education, and quality of life and to remain competitive in the age of constant communications. Telecom Billing System Challenges Telecommunications providers have some of the most complex and expensive billing systems in existence. They can take years and millions of dollars to implement, and are costly to maintain and operate. Yet even with huge investments they often remain inflexible, require too much manual processing and are subject to errors. Billing errors not only introduce revenue leakage, they can generate excess charges. The result of overcharging is customer dissatisfaction and further revenue loss due to customer cancellations. Of course the challenges don t necessarily begin with the billing system. Telecom services themselves have some inherent complexities that materialize in the billing process: Subscription services are billed on an ongoing basis. Taxes and fees must be collected and may apply at the local, county, state and national levels. Telecom providers periodically create new services and modify existing service packages. Similarly, customers add new services and make changes to existing services. In the end, telecoms need a billing system that tracks all changes, pro-rates charges, and provides accurate billing for each customer during every billing cycle. Open Range had to address all these challenges and more. To begin, the company required fully automated processes from ordering to cash to system activation to billing. This meant the billing system not only had to be automated, but seamlessly integrated with over fifteen other separate systems and appliances. In addition to billing across a diverse and ever-changing set of rate plans, Open Range needed to perform complex tax calculations reflecting different tariffs for VoIP, international calls, and Internet access. The billing system not only had to be automated but seamlessly integrated with over fifteen other separate systems Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Page 2

4 To best serve its customers, Open Range needed to tailor a number of pricing packages and promotions to fit the unique requirements of different communities across 17 states. The company also needed to maintain the flexibility to fine tune pricing over time. It then needed the ability to sign customers in real-time via call center, online self-service, and door-to-door sales. While providers throughout the telecom industry face a critical need to increase the flexibility and agility of their billing systems, this requirement was mission critical for Open Range. To top off the challenges, Open Range found itself in need of a production billing system that could be implemented in 100 days or less. Finding and Implementing a Solution As a business, Open Range was planned and built from scratch. It had no existing customers or legacy IT systems. According to Q Saeed, Executive Vice President, Business Operations, Technology & Corporate Development at Open Range, this was an opportunity to do things right, rather than make compromises that would cost us more down the road. The company spent most of 2009 finalizing the architecture, This was an opportunity to do things right, rather than make compromises that would cost us more down the road. building the infrastructure for its network, and also building and integrating back office systems. However, as sometimes happens in large IT projects, a significant problem emerged. In the last quarter of 2009, Open Range realized its order to cash management and billing system was not going to scale sufficiently to support the planned growth without friction. We could not afford to have a ton of people feeding the monster on an ongoing basis, said Saeed, referring to the manpower and large manual effort that would be required with their present system. It was suddenly time to find a new solution. The executive team knew it didn t want to get in to the billing business and a guiding philosophy for a new billing system began to form. Saeed explained, We were looking for a lighter, more agile system something that wouldn t, for example, require any development effort to roll out separate promotions in different communities. We ended up calling it a frictionless 21 st century system that was cloud based. After a fast-paced but exhaustive process, Z-Commerce from Zuora was selected. Zuora committed to and then completed the implementation of Open Range s new billing platform in under 100 days even though the project had a high degree of complexity with multiple integration points throughout the existing IT ecosystem, including: 2010 Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Page 3

5 ERP and general ledger from SAP Salesforce.com customer and partner portal Vertex tax solution Paymentech credit card processing Allianza Telecom digital voice solution Open Range customer portal Reporting system from Qlickview and Scorecard GIS system from Korem National device fulfillment system from CTDI ISP and customer solution The billing system went live in June, 2010, and has been successfully handling Open Range billing processes since then. Results Telecom billing is a multi-billion dollar market traditionally dominated by expensive systems that take years and years to deploy. In addition, those systems have had high costs for ongoing development and maintenance. By delivering an integrated billing system for Open Range in less than 100 days, Zuora has shown it can revolutionize the billing market for next generation telecoms. These fast moving businesses can now bring new products to market in less time, with more flexibility and less hassle. Zuora has shown it can revolutionize the billing market for next generation telecoms. Mr. Saeed further discussed the value of agility for Open Range. As a next-generation provider, we need to be able to make changes at the speed of today s fast-moving telecom marketplace while supporting subscription needs as diverse as the needs of our customers. Zuora made it possible for us to bring modified pricing plans to market quickly, bill against them in real-time, and scale easily to keep pace with our rapid growth in the months and years ahead. The ability to scale the Open Range billing system was a fundamental need from the start of the project. As the company brings new markets on line, additional orders can climb from hundreds to thousands or even tens of thousands per day. With this volume of orders, along with additional complexities like regional pricing and promotions, it is crucial for orders to get billed without being touched by human hands. Over time Open Range will have an addressable 2010 Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Page 4

6 market of 6 million or more customers. We wanted something in up front that would scale over the next twenty to thirty years, explained Saeed. The deployment of Z-Commerce for Open Range also demonstrates how the billing system can serve as a strategic asset rather than just another cost of doing business. Having the ability to change course quickly gets you an advantage in the market, Saeed explained. With new services like 4G broadband and digital voice, we test different marketing, promotional and strategic initiatives. Then we listen to our customers and get their reactions. We don t want to live with things that are not working. The key is to have the capability to respond quickly to the opportunities that emerge. We found a flexible billing system that would support that way of doing business. Saeed summed up the success quite well, Zuora not only gave us the capabilities we need to fully enable our business model, but did it in a fraction of the time of a traditional enterprise platform Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Page 5

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