Case study · Technology
A billing engine that reconciles multiple telcos
Multi-channel file import, service-charge reconciliation and automated client invoice generation across several carriers.
The challenge
Evolve had a billing platform that had an expensive subscription cost, and was very clunky to use. It was specifically built for the telecoms industry, but was very much a legacy system with no way to improve it. As Evolve was a fast growing company, they needed something more robust and easier to expand upon, that wouldn't cost them a huge amount to run each month. It also needed to support automated imports of supplier data to minimise the effort required for this mundane task.
Our approach
We investigated the legacy platform to find out the key functionality that needed to be replicated, but also critically, what improvements should be made. The first improvement was to allow FTP downloads to import, but also allow data file uploads from user,, or even manually enter data where the carrier only supplied a PDF. With this specification we built the database, working with the relevant Directors to ensure they understood the system from the start. We then built the application using the same framework as their other, existing systems, so it could easily integrate with their growing custom platform, and hosted in a resillient Google Cloud environment.
“Vigeo Systems replaced our clunky, expensive legacy billing platform with a solution that's scaled from 2 carriers to around 40 across seven-plus countries, all while cutting our licensing costs. They worked closely with us throughout, so the end result genuinely fit how our business operates. A great technical partner.”
The outcome
Starting with supporting just 2 telcos, with automated file downloads over FTPS, the system could recognise new or existing service charges and handle them accordingly. The data would be transformed into a customer friendly format, then invoices generated and sent. Since the first release, the system now supports around 40 different carriers, from 7+ countries, normalising and billing the charges to clients globally. This has required handling different file formats and currencies, with many carriers bringing data format quirks that are resolved prior to importing the data. The system then has clean data in a consistent format to work with. The business has also benefited from the cost savings by moving the application to their current hosting platform, without any additional licencing costs.
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