Large Customer Bill Generator

Customer Business

The client is a large utility company in the Midwest and eastern region with power generation and distribution in the regulated and open markets.

Business Domain and Problem Description

The client has many large businesses and government agencies as utility customers. These customers have sophisticated accounts setup and billing requirements vastly different from smaller customers. The electronic bills were generated and sent to customer contacts by a legacy product.

The legacy bill generator had several limitations to customization requirements. Several enhancements had not been implemented due to its limitations. The product also failed the compatibility testing for operating system upgrades. The product was supported by a large software products and services company which quoted over a US$1 Million to upgrade the product.

7twenty Solution Overview

The solution includes initial discovery and analysis to document the requirements from the business point of view. The product features were essentially not considered for redesign effort. A detailed set of requirements and business process flow documentation were developed. The solution warranted a high degree of accuracy in calculation and must match with other billing services. A dedicated service team that supported large customers participated in the requirements gathering and facilitation sessions. As part of the solution, 720 Worldwide team performed client capability analysis to support the new custom software with low overhead cost.

Business Results

The project developed a sunset plan for the legacy product. The new system was deployed and became online in parallel to the legacy product. A select member's service team was dedicated to verifying each bill before being sent out. The parallel run was conducted for one month to make sure all large customer's bills were verified for accuracy. Interestingly, several findings identified were discrepancies in the legacy system.

The bottom line, not one customer's bill was found to have an error. The total cost of the custom billing generator was less than half of the quoted price from the vendor. The new system was a huge success that saved a significant amount on upgrade costs and ongoing annual license costs to the client.