Businesses and their actions are made up of hundreds if not thousands of processes. These processes affect every aspect of the business and how they interact with employees, other businesses and most importantly customers. These processes are critical for business success — so much so that excellence in these processes can lead to competitive advantage. One of the more definitive processes for consumers is the “Order to Cash Process”. Previous interactions between a customer and a company, in the run-up to purchasing, can be defined as either a sales or marketing process and although these processes don’t stop just because an order has been placed, it is important for Order to Cash to focus solely on the journey from the point of ordering.

The Impact of O2C process in Telecoms:

Having a streamlined and methodical O2C process will have a lot of impact on not only the business operations of the company, but also on the end-to-end customer journey. Failure to optimize a telecom order management process flow can have knock-on negative effects throughout your company. Telecoms could find their supply chain, inventory and cash flow all hampered by failing to optimize the process correctly. With physical and financial stock negatively impacted, telecoms could soon find themselves on a slippery slope.

The Telecom O2C journey can be broken down in the following modules. Now, let us see how the Telecom Order Management process can be optimized using technology-

Moment of Purchase

The first step for telecoms to improve their order management flow should kick in instantaneously at the moment of purchase. The purchase includes scenarios such as purchasing a SIM, enrolling in a new subscription service, buying an add-on or others. Any chargeable event is an order and it should trigger several automatic responses and actions within your organization. Failure to automate these processes can create unfulfilled orders, incorrect stock management, revenue leakage and extremely unsatisfied customers. The moment of purchasing should be as effortless and frictionless as possible. To efficiently manage orders telecoms need a flexible system that streamlines orders and allows using a product catalogue, promotions and vouchers.

Upon joining the network it’s important to offer a self-care app to provide customers with instant access to information about the available services, remaining allowance and more. The app saves valuable time and organizational resources, improving customer satisfaction and optimizing operational costs.

It’s also important to keep in mind the KCI concept (Keep Customer Informed). Customers appreciate being updated from day one. In the case of a new SIM, it’s valuable to send notifications for the online orders when the SIM has been dispatched and when it will arrive.

Customer Credit

Many of the purchases telecoms receive from customers are for long-term contracts, either for use of the mobile phone service or for long term payment of the device itself. Wanting to protect themselves many telecoms will require would-be buyers to fulfil a credit check before the contract or device order can be fulfilled. These credit checks can be lengthy and mistakes in data entry can lead to eligible customers getting rejected. Automating the process can speed it up not only for customers but for members of your sales or financial teams as well, with them only needing to jump in to help customers if the system flags them.

By deploying a quick automated but secure credit checking system, telecoms can ensure the customer journey isn’t affected by lengthy form fills or delays while also keeping themselves secure.

Order Fulfilment

The ability to manage, provision and assign SIM inventory is essential for an operator. The order to cash process looks through activation, porting and in-life changes to support the customer lifecycle in a seamless way. Once again, automation is key for efficiency. Communication Service Providers must rely on a flexible system, ready to tackle connectivity challenges and adapt to the evolution of the telecom landscape. That will facilitate the billing and order fulfilment of complex and disparate products and costing options across a range of usage and subscription-based services. The ability to configure workflow triggers can be key to controlling services, raising alarms and delivering notifications. In terms of fulfilment, the CRM used by telecoms has a central role. This platform can be used by customer care representatives to assist all aspects of a customer’s onboarding and in-life journey.

Invoicing & Billing

Billing or invoicing processes play an important part within any telecom. Sending invoices and collecting bill payments on time is vital to cash flow and means that finance teams can plan accordingly. Automating these processes has proven to be extremely effective for businesses. By deploying automation, they can save finance teams vital time, allowing them to focus on more long term business goals. It can also remove human error or delays which occur from manual data entry. Many telecoms also like to deploy bill related triggers for customers. These are often used to alert customers when they are close to/or at their agreed bill limit for the month. These alerts are effective as they protect not only the telecom but the customer as well.

Reporting

One of the advantages of having so many interconnected systems working together and communicating with one another is the amount of data and reporting that can be pulled. These reports are critical for analyzing telecom’s order to cash processes. Likewise, you can use data from other systems to see if they have any impact on your order to cash process and how you can minimize them if possible. Business Intelligence enables customers to build and configure their own analytical reports, meeting the needs and requirements of any department, from operations to sales and finance.

Technology has transformed many business processes over the years. Telco O2C process is currently in the pipeline of this evolution. This is of utmost importance to the Telcos as the O2C process touch many critical business indicators — from Customer Satisfaction to Operational Excellence. Many Telcos have already started paying attention to this need of the hour and have started automating the O2C process. Others need to follow soon or they risk being left behind.