Seven business benefits of modernizing legacy telco billing systems – and how Wavelo delivers on all of them
Jason Bloomberg, Managing Director, Intellyx BV
Legacy telecommunications billing systems have been around since Alexander Graham Bell first called for Watson back in 1876.
Well, not quite that long. But as ‘legacy’ goes, telco billing is about as legacy as you can get, despite the fact that as technology-centric industries go, telecommunications has seen more than its share of revolutions.
From automated switching to computerization, from the rise of IP networks to the mobile telephony revolution, and now AI taking over the world – it’s a wonder telco billing has been able to keep up at all.
The business side of telecommunications has gone through its own upheavals as well. From deregulation to globalization to the astounding ubiquity of smartphones, meeting the needs of an ever-changing customer base has raised the stakes on legacy billing modernization.
Achieving the business benefits of such modernization efforts, therefore, is critical for the survival of any modern telco operator that struggles under the burden of legacy billing infrastructure.
Leveraging a technology platform that can lower the risks and costs of such modernization while facilitating a phased modernization initiative is also a critical survival enabler.
Here, then, are seven core business benefits of modernizing telco billing systems – and how Wavelo delivers on each one.
- Pricing flexibility leading to new revenue streams – simple subscription plans are oh so 2020. Today, customers expect bundles that include mobile data, broadband, streaming services, and even IoT connectivity – as well as usage-based or hybrid pricing models.
Wavelo supports such customer choice and the resulting complexity by allowing operators to design and modify custom pricing structures, enabling experimentation that quickly and automatically identifies what combination of services and pricing drives the highest customer value. - Improved customer service leading to reduced churn – ask any telco subscriber what they hate about their carrier, and chances are they’ll mention some billing-related issue. From unclear charges to bill shock to inconsistent information across services, billing-related issues are the primary root cause of customer churn.
With Wavelo, in contrast, subscribers receive clear, understandable invoices, up-to-date usage information, and self-service tools that empower them to configure their services to meet their specific needs.
This improved customer experience leads to fewer support calls and complaints – which in turn improves customer loyalty and reduces churn. - Reduced legacy maintenance leading to lower operational costs – maintaining legacy billing systems is expensive, because of both the outdated infrastructure itself as well as the specialized expertise necessary to keep old systems running.
Wavelo reduces the need for the manual processes and complex integrations that run up maintenance costs by consolidating multiple functions onto a single, modern platform that automates essential workflows.
As a result, operator personnel spend less time on manual intervention and maintenance tasks, increasing their productivity and reducing overhead across OSS/BSS operations. - Better data and analytics leading to smarter decisions and higher revenue per user – legacy billing systems aren’t monoliths: they consist of product catalogs, rating and charging engines, account management systems, and invoicing and payment modules.
As a result, the data that operators have on subscribers is fragmented across these various components, limiting its usefulness.
Wavelo addresses this data fragmentation by providing a unified, real-time data environment, establishing a single source of truth across billing, customer behavior, and service usage.
Operators can leverage this single source of truth to provide advanced analytics and AI-driven insights, for example, to identify next best offers or calculate churn risk for individual subscribers.
Overall, Wavelo enables operators to make better decisions across their business, including pricing, marketing, and network investments. - Improved scalability leading to better support for telco complexity – the vendors of legacy billing systems built them to scale for the tasks of the time. As operators add new services and technologies, however, older technologies struggle to keep up.
From IoT microtransactions to dynamic network slicing to personalized service plans, operators require increased scalability to meet the dynamic needs of their business.
To address this requirement, Wavelo designed its platform along cloud native lines to scale horizontally, handling high transaction volumes and real-time processing requirements at scale with no adverse impact on performance.
Wavelo’s platform doesn’t just scale to meet today’s needs. The company built the platform to scale to meet future growth as well, supporting increasing operator complexity well into the future. - Ecosystem integration leading to lowered modernization risk – legacy billing systems struggle with today’s broader ecosystems of content providers, fintechs, and various enterprise partners.
Wavelo’s API-centric, event-driven architecture simplifies integration with such third parties, enabling operators to expand their offerings and add new capabilities over time – without breaking the bank. - Faster monetization leading to accelerated time-to-market – legacy billing systems rely upon batch processing, and complex interdependencies among various modules slows down invoicing and puts the brakes on product launches.
Wavelo’s platform, in contrast, operates in real-time. Operators can monetize on the spot, whenever a subscriber takes advantage of a paid service.
Even more importantly, Wavelo dramatically accelerates new product rollouts. Operators can configure and launch new services in a matter of days – including personalized services that empower subscribers to build whatever offering they desire.
The Intellyx take
By leveraging Wavelo’s modern, real-time platform, telco operators can achieve a broad combination of business benefits.
From faster revenue realization to greater pricing flexibility and improved customer experience, Wavelo can free operators from their legacy billing ball and chain and enable them to delight customers and drive revenue alongside the most modern of competitors.
Don’t let your legacy billing slow you down. With Wavelo, operators don’t just keep up. They can actually move ahead of the competition by offering better value while reducing operational costs and customer churn.
Copyright © Intellyx BV. Wavelo is an Intellyx customer. Intellyx retains final editorial control of this article. No AI was used to write this article.
