Being able to rely on your billing provider to continue its innovation and meet your development requirements, is essential for the success of your business.

Background

Marston’s Telecoms (MTL) were formed as an in-house service to cost-effectively deliver improved telecoms and associated services to Marston’s PLC – the brewery, restaurant and pub operator. It was subsequently floated as a private telecoms operation, continuing to deliver upgraded telecoms and internet services to Marston’s PLC, whilst broadening into a range of new and developing technologies, all delivered over their own carrier-grade MPLS network.

As MTL expanded, with new, non-Marston’s customers, they became increasingly frustrated with the lack of flexibility from their billing platform. Responsiveness and service levels were slipping and, alongside numerous promises of improvements, they were having to fund the development costs of the solution they were using, to meet their own demands. With the backing of the parent PLC, they undertook a major reassessment of their current and potential needs, to determine who could best serve their requirements. There was one provider who stood out in the market – Inform Billing and their Eclipse NG platform.

Challenges

As well as being able to absorb the enormous volumes of billing data anticipated, Eclipse would have to identify, report on and rectify anomalous costs and payments, that MTL believed their previous platform had been ignoring. MTL’s client billing processes were often complex, using multi-site account structures and Eclipse was going to need to be able to handle this complexity and more, when dealing with expected client product and branding developments.

Solution

It quickly became clear that Eclipse NG not only looked great, but that it was evidentially simple to use, despite having more sophisticated functionality and broader customisation options. Also, being fully web-based, it was designed to be volume-hungry, whilst being accurate and flexible.

In addition, MTL decided to partner with Inform Billing as their cloud-based solution allowed for future developments and integrations, with the addition of ongoing support and training. With very little internal maintenance, the intuitive platform provided predictable fees and low development costs.

Benefits

With confidence that their billing processes were future-proofed, Marston’s were able to proceed with plans for expansion of their operation. Having evolved to incorporate new technologies in Broadband, Ethernet, Hosted VoiP, Private WANs, Carrier Services and Managed WiFi, MTL are confident that their billing services platform has the flexibility to adapt, and report across verticals, as they embrace newer technologies and expand their client base.

MTL have achieved the following benefits:

• Identifying issues such as absorbing costs that previous platform was ignoring
• Reduction of 50% in monthly bill runtime
• Increased visibility and trust in data
• High levels of real-time data reporting options
• Greater levels of control