Billing
Accurate billing and a smooth payment experience is a requirement for profitability and good customer relationships. With our billing automation your incoming payments will be hassle free.
Billing
Among broadband providers, the OSS/BSS, or at least the BSS portion is often referred to as a billing system. At COS we think that term is too narrow for what we offer, as we provide an automated end-to-end solution from the start to finish in the customer journey. From the initial interest survey, through installation, service activation, and finally billing. But, of course, we do the billing component really well too.
Since the COS software suite has support for any type of business model, from the traditional single provider model to full last mile Open Access and hybrids in between, the billing capabilities are extensive.
Automated billing transactions by trusted platforms
The COS platform does not store any credit card or other data of that kind. This is instead stored in a specialized payment platform, e.g. Stripe. The COS suite is the orchestrator of all transactions based on the service selection of the customer and will set up the payment transactions in the payment platform using integrations built against the generic COS Billing API. With this method we support automated credit card and ACH payments.
Different billing models supported
In our end-to-end platform, the first billing interaction is often when the future subscriber is paying a deposit to validate their pre-signup and/or to pay an initial installation fee. Thereafter, once the recurring billing for services starts there are a big number of billing models we support.
Wholesale/Open Access billing
The traditional wholesale billing model is the most common among our Open Access customers. In this model the Network itself or the Operator of the network will not bill the end customer. Instead the subscriber will buy services themselves from their providers of choice at the network Marketplace or directly with the providers. They will then be billed by the providers they pick. This is a very smooth billing model, where it’s very clear that the subscriber is owned by the provider delivering services on the shared infrastructure. To learn more about this and other Open Access models, please visit our Open Access page where we’ve tried to gather all our learnings in this space. In this scenario the customer will have no billing details stored in COS Business Engine. Instead the system is configured to produce a monthly wholesale billing report per provider, where all the wholesale fees associated with the services they sold on the network are detailed, but also summarized. This billing report is available to the provider directly in the COS Business Engine admin interface. In essence, if the operator of the Open Access Network has 10 different providers on the network, they would only have to send ten bills each month with the total wholesale fee amount owed, pointing the provider to the COS Business Engine for the detailed breakdown.
Single Provider Billing
This is billing as most know it today and requires very little explaining. The customer will register their credit card information or ACH details as they sign up for service in the network Marketplace. The service will be activated immediately through the automated provisioning functionality of COS Business Engine. As soon as the service is activated, billing will be initiated automatically with the subscriber’s preferred billing method.
The subscriber can at any time login to their mypages to review their active and historic services, related contract and their invoices and can themselves update for example credit card details or change payment method.
All the transaction details will be available in the payment platform and most often there are pre-built integrations to the book keeping platform.
Aggregated billing by the Open Access Ready operator
A hybrid of the two scenarios described above is where the operator of the network is also selling services but wish to be open for inviting providers of additional services on the network, as that will increase the attractiveness of the network which boosts take-rates, but also provides additional wholesale revenue streams.
In the Admin of the COS Business Engine the operator will define wholesale services, that invited providers can build their offerings upon and publish on the marketplace. These will have a monthly wholesale fee that the provider will have to pay the network operator and if applicable also a one time start fee. The provider will add their margin and publish the retail offering on the Marketplace.
A customer buying services from multiple providers on the network will be get one comprehensive bill and the money drawn from their credit card or linked bank account. In the COS Business Engine a monthly billing report will be prepared for each provider detailing the services sold, the wholesale fees and the collected retail revenue, effectively providing them with the total net revenue per month. This data is used by the operator to pay out the share of revenue each provider should receive.
Many more models are also supported
The three scenarios above are the most common ones, but we do support others. Contact us to discuss pros and cons with different business and billing models, or ask how we can support your model. We’re pretty sure we can.
We provide FTTH operators and network owners with software for automating and digitizing every aspect of their FTTH venture. From survey and demand aggregation, to sign up, deployment and billing – to help bridge the digital divide.