Overview
HCLTech helped a telecom provider launch a modern billing system, reducing operational costs and positively impacting $4 million in billing
An enterprise's billing system is essential for evaluating its financial soundness at the end of the fiscal year. Outdated billing systems can cause accounting inconsistencies and misalignment with objectives and ROI.
Our client, a massive global telecom firm, found itself unable to adapt to changes with an old legacy billing system that was not cost-effective. The company contacted HCLTech to migrate to a commercial billing product that was adapted to its industry. We partnered with them to move their existing charging system to a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) platform, a brand-new telecom billing product making use of accelerators such as bill comparison and TM Forum process maps. To prevent any disturbance to existing operations, the procedure used a focused deployment approach.
The Challenge
Overcoming high operational costs and switching to a new billing system with no disruption
The telecom company faced challenges with its AS/400-based billing system due to their inflexibility, lengthy lead time and high operational costs. The system lacked proper documentation and made it difficult to identify redundancies or understand system configuration and modifications.
Additionally, the presence of dormant programs further complicated the ability to determine what functionalities needed to be incorporated into a new billing system. To overcome these obstacles, it became crucial for our client to transition to a unified billing system. This change was necessary to achieve tangible, sustainable and accelerated outcomes for the company.
The Objective
Increasing billing system flexibility and efficiency
Our client desired a partner who possessed extensive knowledge of legacy functionalities and a successful track record in implementing and migrating enterprise billing systems. They required a billing system that could be easily and promptly modified without disrupting ongoing operations.
Furthermore, the chosen partner needed to offer expertise in processes, technology and innovations for the COTS telecom platform. End-to-end managed services were also expected, with a focus on maximizing return on investment (ROI) through improved service delivery and customer satisfaction.
Ultimately, the desired outcomes were increased profitability, reduced costs and improved efficiency.
The Solution
Seamless implementation and migration to the COTS telecom billing product
HCLTech assessed the challenges and impact of shifting to the COTS telecom billing product, discovering outdated data and discrepancies in the AS/400 application. We collaboratively devised an action plan with the client's IT and business teams and came up with the following solutions:
- Gathered information about the challenges presented by the existing system and assessed the impact of shifting to the COTS telecom billing product
- Analyzed discrepancies in the AS/400 application, which contained data as old as 30+ years
- Devised an action plan in collaboration with the client's IT and business teams
- Leveraged X-Analysis Suite for automated reverse engineering to extract data models and cross-referenced data and business logic
- Deployed AS/400 experts to provide 100% coverage of the legacy application's functionality
- Leveraged the COTS telecom billing product's reference data framework to store reference data in key-value formats
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- Automated tools to extract, transform and load reference data in production and non-production environments when needed
- Built coarse-grained APIs using multiple fine-grained APIs to ensure minimum changes in order management
- Configured and customized the application using the COTS telecom billing product's software development kit
- Comprehensively tested rating and invoicing functionalities to ensure 100% product coverage
- Built an API-driven migration framework using the accounts to be migrated as input and generating success reports for those accounts
- Read the staging data, executed transformation and used coarse-grained APIs to load the data onto the new billing system
The Impact
Accelerated client progress via a new billing system, reduced operational cost and improved product launches
- HCLTech made a significant impact by migrating the AS/400-based legacy billing system to the COTS telecom billing product, using its IP, accelerators, and frameworks to accelerate the process without disrupting client transactions.
- This migration positively impacted $4 billion in billing. The consolidation of the billing system also resulted in a 40% reduction in operational costs and a 20% acceleration in new feature and product launches.
- The new billing system created by HCLTech provides a reliable source of data for assessing the telco's financial viability at fiscal year-end, resulting in an aligned company objective with ROI and giving leaders a clear view of performance.
- With this successful migration, HCLTech helped our client to progress faster with a new billing system while achieving cost savings and improvements in product launches.
