Telecom Billing and Revenue Management Software: Everything You Need to Know
Telecom service providers deal with a multitude of services: prepaid and postpaid plans, data bundles, reseller settlements and data roaming. When subscriptions enter this mix, they complicate the revenue model even further. This leads to chaotic billing that makes telecom businesses lose hard-earned revenue.
Even tiny billing errors become costly if they take place across thousands of customers. To solve this revenue problem, telecom billing and revenue management software plays a key role. It reduces telecom companies’ workload by taking care of complex billing, running subscriptions, managing clients, and monitoring revenue analytics at scale.
Telecom billing is clearly not only about invoicing, and so isn’t the software built to handle it. This software also protects profit margins, and acts as a shield against revenue leakage.
Common Telecom Billing Problems
Here’s a range of billing problems that telecom service providers deal with on a daily basis:
Service Complexity
Telecom services are difficult to manage because they differ in nature, and are often sold together. It’s common for companies to sell multiple service plans, and plans specific to certain devices, such as mobile phones. Managing access to these services is challenging because it requires rating that takes place in real time, and involves fluctuating consumption.
Revenue Leakage
Without a robust system, rating can take place incorrectly. Telecom providers can miss usage events, wrongly apply discounts and make errors in partner settlement. In this scenario, revenue leakage becomes unavoidable.
Fragmented Systems
B2B telecom providers have to manage reseller settlements and recurring payments in spreadsheets. This means that clients can’t be billed at exact times because manual billing isn’t instantaneous. Merchants also have to reconcile their clients’ payments with their actual invoices themselves. It becomes impossible to scale when even these basic tasks are not automated.
What Does Telecom Billing and Revenue Management Actually Include
Modern telecom billing involves all these aspects, and each of these requires much more than legacy billing techniques to be managed:
- Usage rating
Usage such as call minutes has to be converted to a billable event. Diverse telecom services bring in diverse sets of raw data (from calls, internet minutes, hybrid bundles etc.). Unless this raw data is assigned a correct monetary price, customers can’t be charged.
- Ultra flexible pricing models
There are a number of plans being offered to users at the same time. Many providers offer both prepaid and postpaid plans and let customers choose. Most service charges usually come under the usage-based billing model, and many providers charge in a hybrid manner (e.g. base fees plus usage fees). Service bundles and add-ons are also important offerings that make pricing even more flexible and variable.
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- Real-time charging
VoIP, 5G, and other data-heavy services require real-time charging. And real-time charging can only take place with modern billing infrastructure. This system keeps real-time accounts of usage, and turns a usage-event into a bill instantly.
- Revenue assurance
This involves all the processes critical for avoiding revenue leakage. Telecom providers not only need to bill, but they also need to make sure that each and every bill is accurate. That’s important to protect profit margins. Then, each charge must be collected and accounted for the right way, and this reconciliation should be automatic, not manual.
- Partner settlements
Telecom companies have partners that they rely on for providing their end-clients with their services. So, the money doesn’t simply move from the client to the company, it flows between multiple telecom companies. The same is the case when resellers or revenue-sharing partners are involved. Reconciliation remains complex until automation is introduced.
What Modern Revenue Management Software Enables
Modern revenue management software is the answer to the challenges of telecom billing. Unlike legacy billing tools, it allows companies to operate just as flexibly as their services demand.
With this software as their billing engine, telecom providers are enabled to:
Launch new plans in hours
With legacy software, launching a new telecom service plan can take months. That’s because it adds more complication to their already complicated billing, and the billing logic needs to be established from scratch. Modern software offers more versatile billing and supports complex charging rules. It cuts down launch time dramatically.
Run geo-based campaigns
Telecom services are usually offered across different regions. For each region, companies need to support a different pricing structure and subscription offers. Advanced revenue management software bills each of your clients by their regional billing rules, without confusion and costly mistakes. This lets merchants run successful geo-based campaigns offering discounts and updating pricing across geographies with ease.
Track profit margin per customer segment and area
Clear revenue monitoring also involves tracking profit margins. Telecom billing software helps monitor profit margins by customer segment, country and plan so you get better revenue visibility.
Automate revenue reconciliation
Companies can automatically match their payments, invoices and usage data to make sure that all the numbers align. They can also auto-recognize revenue for their subscriptions.
Support multiple models: prepaid, postpaid, hybrid
This platform lets telecom providers set up as many billing models they like. They can run multiple at the same time. It also helps them manage credits and wallets for prepaid billing, and accurately structures invoices in case of hybrid billing.
Handle partner billing and revenue splits
Telecom companies often work in partnership with other companies to make service provision possible. They also have reseller networks and revenue sharers. This billing software supports their partner network through automatic settlements, white labelling logic, and revenue-splitting capabilities. They can also see how their revenue is shared across the reseller chain, and what are their profit margins per partner.
How SubscriptionFlow Makes Its Mark in Telecom Billing
SubscriptionFlow differentiates itself as an AI-native revenue management platform. Beyond simplifying billing and enabling revenue assurance, it also:
- Helps you manage customer subscription lifecycle
Clients subscribed to your telecom service plans deserve a seamless experience. SubscriptionFlow helps you deliver that. It lets you automate customer lifecycle processes such as charging, renewing and monitoring. You can also predict when a customer is about to churn based on their usage patterns.
- Flags unusual consumption patterns
Some users tend to overuse services, and that can erode profitability and increase payment risk. To avoid this, merchants can set up triggers in SubscriptionFlow. Usage can either be capped altogether, if not, users can be sent alerts when their usage spikes unusually. The software also accurately applies overage fees in such cases.
- Identifies plans with low profitability
Telecom providers can track their plan performance 24/7. They can view their profitability margin and total revenue for each plan and check which ones bring in the most and least profits.
- Supports billing in multiple currencies
To operate around the globe, billing should be equipped with global capabilities as well. SubscriptionFlow can easily support multiple currencies, automatically producing bills in the currencies needed. Moreover, it also simplifies tax application on invoices, and generates invoices according to the tax rules of each region.
- Suggests pricing optimizations
Updating prices is a complicated matter for telecom services. That’s because it involves different geographies and service partners as well. SubscriptionFlow’s AI agents make this process simpler by suggesting auto-optimized prices. This saves merchants from evaluating pricing structures from scratch, and gives them a better direction for their billing strategy.
Billing is a growth lever. Get your telecom billing and revenue management right with SubscriptionFlow, and easily scale across the globe.
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