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A European wholesale telecom leader had navigated over a decade of IT transformations, shifting ways of working, and migrations driven by mergers and acquisitions. This journey left behind a complex web of active services, many of which were not billed accurately. Despite recognizing the need for data cleansing, questions loomed: Was there really an issue? How could they sift through vast volumes of data to uncover potential problems?

ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½â€™s Business Insightful Service (BIS) team rose to the challenge. Armed with deep industry expertise and sharp business acumen, they assembled a dedicated task force comprised of skilled professionals from both ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ and the telecom business.

The team leveraged the BIS framework to assign clear roles and responsibilities. While alignment among stakeholders progressed, the team simultaneously gathered critical information to construct a detailed Level 4 e-TOM-based Business Process Map. This comprehensive blueprint linked every step to IT systems, highlighting systems involved, top failures and fallouts, and SMART AM KPIs that reflected the business impact of these issues.

Bridging the CRM and billing system gap

By the end of the second quarter, after extensive collaboration and team expansion, ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ identified the primary issue was that the billing system was not updated with customer orders from the CRM system due to mismatches. The most common conflict involved discrepancies in the asset version of subscribed services, affecting 1.3% of customer orders.

This misalignment pointed directly to revenue leakages, requiring immediate corrective action to restore billing accuracy and drive sustainable growth. Moreover, the extent of revenue leakage needed to be ascertained and what actionable solutions can we implement to resolve this challenge.

In collaboration with the development team, a three-pronged approach of data corrections, code fixes and Build-Operate-Transfer (BOTs) was designed to proactively identify and resolve order information and asset version mismatches. Recognizing the scale of effort required, the team sought approval from stakeholders during program increment planning meetings to ensure these activities could be incorporated while still meeting the planned product and program milestones.

Transforming billing accuracy and achieving operational efficiency

As planned, the solutions were deployed in phases across two quarters. However, the work didn’t end there. Continuous monitoring was initiated immediately after the first phase to track any potential failures. Over the next five quarters, the BIS team worked relentlessly to address the issues by plugging potential loopholes, preventing future failures, and restoring revenue generation for services that had been out of sync for years.

This strategic approach not only delivered remarkable results in terms of operational efficiency but also resulted in a significant boost to accuracy across the board. The asset information for customer service providers (CSPs) reached 100% accuracy, eliminating the discrepancies that had plagued the billing system. With 95% invoicing accuracy now in place, the team successfully mitigated a potential revenue leakage of 4.6 million SEK.

Furthermore, productivity saw a 5% increase, enabling the team to handle larger volumes of work with greater speed and efficiency. Operational costs were reduced by 10% thanks to the streamlined processes and automation introduced through the BOTs, leading to substantial operating expense savings. Finally, the efforts led to a 2% reduction in customer order failures, directly enhancing client satisfaction and ensuring the business maintained stronger relationships with its customers.

The road ahead

The team’s tireless efforts not only restored the revenue generation process but also drove long-term improvements in productivity, accuracy, and cost efficiency. The successful reconciliation work strengthened the ties between the partners and inspired the telecom business to engage ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ to address a few more complex pricing challenges that can help streamline revenue generation process further.