Case Study: Billing Software Managed Services

With over twenty years of success across Europe, Firstcom provide advanced cloud solutions to help businesses communicate, share thoughts and information. They have hundreds of professionals working in offices all over the continent looking after more than 14,000 customers.  As a valued partner of Giacom Billing for more than ten years, a strong and mutually beneficial relationship has been maintained by working on several successful projects together.

 

The Challenge

Firstcom have completed more than ten acquisitions in the last few years and since 2013, they have increased revenues by an impressive 1100%.  After successfully bringing those businesses together under the Firstcom Europe group, they turned their attention to business processes and profitability.

Due to the acquisitions, Firstcom found themselves operating out of multiple billing systems and supporting disparate processes across a large number of suppliers. This caused duplication of effort within the Billing team, conducting multiple bill runs and running separate P&L reports to get the data into a finance package. Customers were receiving invoices from different billing systems resulting in them having to make several payments. With data spread out over multiple systems, Firstcom support teams struggled to access one view of a customer and the customer experience was disjointed.

Firstcom asked the Giacom experts for help. They needed a reset, to look at their business operations, systems and suppliers from the ground up, and to evaluate their changing requirements.  Firstcom also needed ongoing specialist billing support to free up the time of their valuable teams so they could focus their attention on further business growth and enhancing customer experience.

As all acquisitive businesses will find, harmonising culture, systems and processes both internally and for customers is challenging and critical part of delivering maximum value. Whilst we have skilled people in the business with vast amounts of knowledge, partnering with experts is the key ingredient to addressing the challenges and achieving the ultimate goal of integrating the many businesses we have acquired.

Mark Boden, Sales & Commercial Director

 

The Solution

Giacom’s Managed Service, Premium Assist solved all of Firstcoms’ challenges. This service includes four billing migrations and two RPI increases per year, as well as day-to day management of time-consuming billing operations.

The project began with a collaborative process, standardising the data into one billing system to give them a clean slate from which to make decisions.  Giacom provided a fully managed service to consolidate thirteen systems down to one.  This process included parallel bill runs and detailed analysis to ensure all billing came across accurately.  It also highlighted missed revenue and legacy billing errors which were corrected as part of the migration.

As well as ensuring everything was migrated correctly, Giacom conducted a thorough data cleanse which included ensuring all cost prices were up to date.  This enabled further analysis into  Firstcom’s profitability and smarter buying recommendations were made.

Giacom also implemented an RPI increase across all of Firstcom’s customers. This brought all pricing in line and ensured consistent profitability.

Firstcom now enjoy the benefits of Giacom’s expert guidance, with dedicated day-to-day support that ensures Firstcom’s billing remains optimised.  Together, Firstcom’s processes are constantly reviewed to ensure they continue to follow best practice standards.

As a long standing partner with Giacom, as well as holding relationships with a number of other billing platforms, the solution and hands on support provided by the team at Giacom made the decision to consolidate using them an easy one for us. The solution has allowed for far greater efficiency across many functions in the business, as well as providing better control and visibility, which in turn supports us in making informed decisions when considering how we continue to progress and grow the business.

Mark Boden, Sales & Commercial Director

 

The Outcome

Giacom’s software solutions give Firstcom a flexible and scalable platform that has also reduced operational time and costs.  Premium Assist provides Firstcom with a cost-effective way to outsource time-consuming operations to Giacom’s in-house experts.  Firstcom maintain control over their billing whilst freeing up valuable time.

The billing team alone have recovered one week every month in duplicated effort.  The Support team have also benefited from one holistic view of a customer, empowering them to provide a seamless customer experience and opportunities to upsell.

Firstcom no longer pay for access and support of antiquated systems.  Their extremely valuable and sensitive customer data is now stored safely in a system with unbeatable security, performance and scalability.

It’s important to note that it’s not just Firstcom themselves who have benefited.  Their customers now receive just one simple invoice for all the services they receive from Firstcom, which they now pay for with one payment.  They also now enjoy online access to their invoices and reporting in one single place.

The impact of the amazing work to consolidate billing platforms, carried out by the team at Giacom with input from our dedicated team at Firstcom Europe has resulted in immeasurable efficiencies and better ways of working, whilst also providing a blueprint for future acquisitions and accelerating the integration strategy post-acquisition.

Mark Boden – Sales & Commercial Director

 

 

 

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