Resellers call for billing system support

Survey reveals channel expect more from their billing platforms

Resellers are feeling more constrained than supported when it comes to their billing software.

This is the claim from billing software vendor Lifecycle, which commissioned an independent telephone survey among a random selection of telephony VARs across the UK, covering issues such as basic functionality, additional functionality and complex functionality.

The results revealed that 43 per cent of respondents found it difficult to get support in learning how to use their billing system and the general feeling among resellers was that as soon as something other than basic billing functions were required, many systems did not support requirements.

In addition, 46 per cent revealed that fraud and service issue identification was not an area supported by all billing platforms, and 60 per cent claimed their current billing system did not give them sufficient information to ensure they were maintaining compliance.

Michele Gibson, a representative from the British Standards Institution, said: “Billing vendors have a huge responsibility and need to be more proactive with their resellers in cleansing and maintaining the quality of data flowing through their organisations to the end user.”

A representative from Lifecycle said: “Competition among resellers is growing with more IT resellers moving into the comms market and this is set to rise in 2008. This will undoubtedly increase the demand for capable and agile billing solutions so it is essential to ensure the current platforms can meet the expanding requirements of billing in telecoms.