Hybrid Billing|Hybrid Billing Solutions

Supporting Hybrid Billing with EarnBill BRM System

EarnBill is a flexible billing system catering to hybrid billing requirements from companies that come up with innovative pricing plans to attract more customers and retain the existing ones. EarnBill’s flexible Product Catalogue allows for setting up of pricing plans that can combine subscription fees, free usage quotas, overage charges and pay as you go rates for usage consumption fees.

This combined hybrid model of billing is essential for businesses to offer flexible pricing plans which can compete well in the market by providing a ‘Value for Money’ proposition to the end customers.

What is Hybrid Billing?

Hybrid Billing means charging the customers with a  mix of different pricing strategies and pricing models. A service provider would opt for Hybrid billing when they want to offer innovative pricing which ensures that the customers are charged on a fair basis, yet the business does not lose out on the revenue.

Hybrid billing strives hard to foster a win-win situation for the service provider and the service consumer.

In Hybrid Billing, a service provider may offer a 2-in-1 plan in which the prepaid and postpaid services could be combined together to the advantage of the customers. For example, while the subscription plan can be a post paid plan, the add-on packages could be allowed to be pre-purchased and used in a prepaid manner.

 Hybrid Billing Plan – Example

A business communications company could offer a hybrid billing package to its B2B customers:

Plan name: $99 monthly gold plan

This Includes:

      • $99 monthly subscription fees (charged prepaid)
      • 1 toll free number
      • The usage consumption charges are accumulated for every month and applied as postpaid charges.
      • Live Reception Service with an active agent for 200 mins (Inbound Calls)
      • SMS quota for 200 SMS text messages
      • Any additional inbound call minutes are charged at $0.50/minute (overage rate).
      • Any additional SMS text message will be charged at $0.25 per SMS (overage rate).
      • The customer may pay $25 for a prepaid add-on package. This includes 200 SMS text messages.

The Hybrid Billing Plan Explained!

The above plan example shows how Hybrid Billing combines different pricing strategies together to make a flexible offering. As can be seen in this plan, the original offering or the service is provided under a fixed monthly price of $99. While this fee is charged prepaid (that is in advance), the usage is charged for the previous month. There is quota for calls (live reception) and SMS usage, which when exhausted additional charges will apply for a per minute call or for each SMS. A pre-purchased add on package makes it convenient for the service user to top up a particular service quota.

EarnBill’s Hybrid Billing Features

Let us look at how a EarnBill features support a Hybrid Billing Plan:
hybrid billing Hybrid Billing

Package Bundling

packages Hybrid Billing
EarnBill’s Product Catalogue allows you to set up a plan with Subscription Fees or Plan Fees for a recurring period. The recurring plan fee can be charged on a monthly or quarterly or yearly basis depending on the business case. The subscription could be charged in advance (prepaid) or in arrears (postpaid).

Usage Quota with Included Minutes

usage 1 Hybrid Billing
EarnBill comes with a feature called Free Usage Pools that allows businesses to define free usage quotas for different service offerings and attach them to a bundled offering (or a plan).

Rate Cards

sale tag Hybrid Billing
A complex route based rate card could be set up which could be useful when there is call routing involved and the pricing for the calls depends on the route of the call. A more simpler rate card could be to set up country based pricing while supporting international calls or sms usage.

Add-on Packages

add Hybrid Billing
EarnBill allows to define an add-on package easily and conveniently. The add-on package can be defined for a specific single service or as a bundle of multiple different services as part of a single package.
convergence Hybrid Billing
EarnBill allows multiple services under the same account, thus supporting complex billing use cases where you could combine even the prepaid and postpaid offerings under the same user account. In case of telecom for example, the same customer can have prepaid as well as postpaid mobile connections with different sims and numbers.

Billing Mediation

billing 2 Hybrid Billing
EarnBill provides a comprehensive billing mediation feature which allows for usage billing or consumption billing required in various industries such as Telecom, Utilities, ITT, IoT and more. It provides a scalable and high availability solution that can be applied for large scale enterprise deployments.

Real-time Rating and Charging in Telecom

real time 1 Hybrid Billing
EarnBill comes with the OCS (Online Charging System) server that allows for real-time rating and charging in telecom for prepaid usage. Such prepaid usage scenarios are also observed with ISPs, eSIMs and utilities billing apart from telecom.

Package Bundling

packages Hybrid Billing

EarnBill’s Product Catalogue allows you to set up a plan with Subscription Fees or Plan Fees for a recurring period. The recurring plan fee can be charged on a monthly or quarterly or yearly basis depending on the business case. The subscription could be charged in advance (prepaid) or in arrears (postpaid).

Usage Quota with Included Minutes

usage 1 Hybrid Billing

EarnBill comes with a feature called Free Usage Pools that allows businesses to define free usage quotas for different service offerings and attach them to a bundled offering (or a plan).

Rate Cards

sale tag Hybrid Billing

A complex route based rate card could be set up which could be useful when there is call routing involved and the pricing for the calls depends on the route of the call. A more simpler rate card could be to set up country based pricing while supporting international calls or sms usage.

Add-on Packages

add Hybrid Billing

EarnBill allows to define an add-on package easily and conveniently. The add-on package can be defined for a specific single service or as a bundle of multiple different services as part of a single package.

Convergent Billing

convergence Hybrid Billing

EarnBill allows multiple services under the same account, thus supporting complex billing use cases where you could combine even the prepaid and postpaid offerings under the same user account. In case of telecom for example, the same customer can have prepaid as well as postpaid mobile connections with different sims and numbers.

Billing Mediation

billing 2 Hybrid Billing

EarnBill provides a comprehensive billing mediation feature which allows for usage billing or consumption billing required in various industries such as Telecom, Utilities, ITT, IoT and more. It provides a scalable and high availability solution that can be applied for large scale enterprise deployments.

Real-time Rating and Charging in Telecom

real time 1 Hybrid Billing

EarnBill comes with the OCS (Online Charging System) server that allows for real-time rating and charging in telecom for prepaid usage. Such prepaid usage scenarios are also observed with ISPs, eSIMs and utilities billing apart from telecom.

Use Cases

The following links take you to case studies where Hybrid Billing solutions have been implemented: