Billing System Migration

Client

One of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions and services operating in 170 countries. Its principal activities include networked IT services, local, national and international telecommunications services, and higher-value broadband and internet products and services.

Project Overview & Objectives

The client had a global directive to standardize billing systems among all the country offices, with an objective toward cutting the operations, licensing and maintenance costs associated with the various disparate billing systems.  The Program Management Office (PMO) and some developers were based in the UK, with other development in India via an offshore outsourcer.  The project to harmonize the American billing system was delivered in phases, with the simplest accounts which did not require feed development going first.  In order to include all accounts, several customized interfaces had to be developed, tested and deployed.

Our Involvement

Synaptitude was hired to manage business requirements, testing and implementation for the American billing operations team.  This required close coordination among staff in two different cities in the US as well as the PMO, developers and management in multiple countries in Europe as well as India.  Synaptitude acted as an advocate for the client staff during the requirements and development discussions so they could continue their daily operations while Synaptitude ensured their requirements were being met.  Synaptitude also developed and managed the extensive user acceptance testing efforts closely so as to make most efficient use of the operational staff’s time.  Synaptitude maintained status reports and other executive communications, raised issues to management as needed, and assisted with process redefinition.  Synaptitude led client staff and contractors in data cleansing efforts and in performing the billing operations for a subset of accounts in the new system.

Results and Benefits

The active participation of Synaptitude gave the business executives and end users the confidence that their requirements were met and delivered by the offshore team, enabling them to focus on day to day business. Issues raised by Synaptitude helped the client avoid costly design issues, and the user acceptance testing uncovered significant system flaws that would have compromised the ability to collect revenue. Synaptitude’s involvement has helped the client coordinate this effort with other large systems and outsourcing projects.