Industries that use Enterprise Billing Software to cater to their growing billing and revenue management demands:
Telecom Companies or Telcos
The telecom companies have the complex use cases as well as the high load requirements to service their customers well and then bill them accurately. They depend very heavily on the enterprise-grade software systems. More about how telecom companies manage their software ecosystem is explained here in the Telecom Billing Ecosystem page.
The Telecom Companies can be categorised as:
Mobile Network Operators
MNOs or Mobile Network Operators are Infrastructure providers in the mobile services space.
Mobile Virtual Network Operators
MVNOs or Mobile Virtual Network Operators are Service Providers to end consumers. The MVNOs do not lay their own infrastructure, instead they rely on MNOs for the infrastructure but run a B2C business which is service oriented targeting the end consumers.
Mobile Virtual Network Enablers
MVNEs are Mobile Virtual Network Enablers. They provide infrastructure and related services to the MVNOs such as provisioning, OSS/BSS systems etc. MVNEs do not interact with end consumers.
Mobile Virtual Network Aggregators
MVNAs or Mobile Virtual Network Aggregators are companies that block buy from MNOs and then sell those services to MVNOs. Typically MVNOs could be smaller reseller companies so MNOs do not directly deal with multiple small companies, but instead deal with an MVNA which deals with smaller MVNOs.
The BSS system used by telecom companies is a combination of a CRM system plus an enterprise billing software platform.
Internet Service Providers or ISPs
The Internet Service Providers (or ISPs) have the need for the enterprise-grade billing systems due to high scale, recurring billing use cases with monthly or quarterly anniversary billing and tracking of billing for assets such as routers and other such equipment. They also need to automatically activate or deactivate services based on payments or non payments. This ISP Billing blog provides more insights.
Telecom based Value Added Services
There is a whole new auxiliary services industry which depends on underlying telecom services such as calling, internet data or messaging. For example, there are toll free number providers, virtual number providers, e-sim providers, prepaid travel card providers and more. All these are value added services to the underlying telecom services.
Business Communication Companies
There are many companies that provide services for helping the business communications like the answering services or live reception (which are essentially call centres with specific purposes), internet based tools or software that allow easier communication while working from home like chat rooms, calling tools etc. These companies offer plans that are based on a subscription fee and cover a certain consumption of the service under this fee. Any additional usage is termed as overage, is measured and charged separately. This is an interesting case study of a business communications service provider in the US.
IoT based Service Providers
The IoT based service providers need complex inventory management (or asset management) that can track statuses of their devices, activate or deactivate the devices based on whether the invoices are paid or not, and integrate with telecom service providers to ensure smooth functioning of the devices. This is in addition to the subscription billing and the consumption billing use cases.
Cloud or Infrastructure Service Providers
The Infrastructure As A Service (IAAS) or Cloud Infrastructure providers follow the PAYG (or Pay As You Go) charging system. This system entails that the customers pay for the time they use the infrastructure resources such as the VMs, VPCs, storage devices and so on. A Cloud Billing system tracks all the resources used by a customer account and the time they are in use so that the customers can be charged accurately.
Energy Providers or Power Companies
The power companies charge their consumers with rental amounts as as well consumption charges by tracking the meter readings for the power consumption. The system now a days also has prepaid options so that customers can recharge their accounts and only when they have balance can they use the electricity.
Utility Services Providers
The other household utilities such as water and cooking gas are also billed in similar way as the electricity. The metered reads provide the consumption of the specific utility and this consumption can be charged in postpaid manner or based on prepaid account balance.
There are other industries that use enterprise billing software. The above ones are the most prominent domains that rely quite heavily on an enterprise billing software platform. You may please visit Case Studies page to understand about how the enterprise billing software system has been implemented for various business use cases.