The Key Challenges of Billing & Pricing Systems
Historically, the primary challenges for commercial financial services institutions have involved dealing with the complexity of multiple services, products and accounts. Although strides have been made during the last decade to address issues with inefficient billing systems, the complexities of the various pricing scenarios have been difficult to resolve. The industry is making progress on that front, but it still faces multiple challenges when upgrading custom pricing and billing software.
- Systems must be agile enough to provide real-time data on demand, regardless of the scenario.
- They must be flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety of products and services.
- Systems must handle regulatory compliance issues.
- Data must be well-structured and secure.
- Analytics are crucial to decision-making, future planning and reporting.
- Systems must provide an outstanding experience for clients.
- Keeping pace with modern banking themes can be challenging. Technology keeps advancing, enabling vendors providing enterprise pricing and billing solutions to add functionality and features as modules, making an “end solution” virtually impossible.
Over the past few years, the commercial banking industry has learned a few facts about their systems.
- An inflexible billing system can be a major problem. Billing systems are extremely complex, with various price points that can be defined by customer, account or product.
- Having one individual who can take ownership for an implementation can make the process go more smoothly. When organizations are fragmented, critical milestones can be missed due to confusion over who has responsibility for what.
- Internal quality control is a must. The people handling the implementation must have a thorough understanding of how things work to ensure that the solutions do not “break” the process. Quality control helps ensure that critical aspects are not overlooked or assigned incorrect values.
- Sometimes, it is necessary to upgrade more than just the pricing or billing systems. For example, companies now participate in a global economy that can carry a variety of implications for regulatory compliance. At the same time, there needs to be some measure of consistency throughout the organization. If the core software cannot provide both compliance and consistency, it is sometimes necessary to upgrade it before attempting to implement a new pricing and billing system.
Improving your custom software for billing and pricing can be challenging. If you would like additional guidance, contact PhaseAlpha. We have the experience to help you plan and implement your project, regardless of your specific needs or industry. You can send an email to info@phasealpha.com, or if you prefer, call us at 913-648-9200.
