Opal Telecom Chooses Ryder Systems For End-to-End Customer Invoice Analysis And Presentment Solutions

With over 100,000 business customers, Opal Telecom is one of the UK’s largest Communication Service Providers (CSPs) and a wholly owned subsidiary of The Carphone Warehouse Group plc. Offering voice and mobile services primarily to the UK corporate and SME market, Opal Telecom prides itself on fulfilling its customers’ needs and offering them choice through the frequent innovation of its services.

The initial brief was to provide a customer bill analysis and reporting solution to replace Opal’s electronic bill presentment facility, in order to win new customers and retain the existing customer base.

With customer satisfaction paramount, market research carried out by Opal Telecom showed that its clients favoured a bill management tool with strong functionality and the ability to analyse their bills and allocate costs quickly and effectively over large volumes of data.

In a bid to streamline the billing process, Opal sought to consolidate its existing billing solution into a more flexible and individualised package which would offer reduced management costs and increased ownership of the billing process. The project also aimed to deliver a consistent look and feel for the electronic and paper billing and provide an adaptable and effective solution that would stand the test of time.

Recognising the many benefits arising from the initial stages of Ryder’s bill analysis implementation for selected corporate customers, Opal further extended the brief to include all the elements of a complete end-to-end solution including the design, production, delivery, storage, reporting and analysis of its billing.

Impressed by Ryder Systems’ strong reputation in the telecoms industry, Opal Telecom opted for its Bureau solution. Bureau is an end-to-end bill management solution that incorporates all elements of the billing process, including Bill Design and production and distribution via print and email, plus a bill analysis and reporting solution for customers. The implementation included three levels of bill analysis service: comprehensive online for its corporate clients, an SME focused online reporting and analysis solution and email management reports for the Soho segment of its business.

Following a successful three-month pilot phase of the online corporate analysis solution, the system was fully deployed and seamlessly integrated with Opal’s web portal, allowing corporate customers to manage their billing information online. The service is now available to all of Opal’s corporate and SME customers.

Creating a single supplier solution to invoice analysis and presentation has enabled Opal to eliminate the inevitable communication difficulties encountered by Telco’s bringing together services provided by different external suppliers and internal departments. More tailored communication has transformed billing from a simple request for payment into a targeted communication with greater potential for marketing and brand building success, whilst delivering much clearer and structured invoice information to drive greater customer understanding. Significant time and money has also been saved by coordinating the process behind bill design, distribution and analysis and through working with one supplier to realise cost savings and greater efficiencies.

In the competitive Telecoms market, Opal needed to provide a service completely in line with its customers’ requirements. This was achieved by offering different customers different levels of functionality. Large business and corporate customers receive interactive analysis solutions that provide a range of standard reports and a report wizard that allows them to tailor reports to their specific requirements. SME and Soho customers receive management reports, summarising trends and usage along with electronic copies of the bill emailed to them.

From a customer perspective the benefits are numerous. Both online and email solutions offer reports, graphs and data that concisely sum up expense and usage trends. The online version provides standard reports that are instantly available with “drill-down” functionality from high level summaries to individual line items and a report wizard that helps create customised reports that can be run within seconds – so Opal’s customers get just what they need when they need it.

Password protected admission to the site means that a Department Head can be given access to information on lines used by his or her team, whereas a Financial Director or Telecommunications Manager would be given access to every department’s data. Further options available on the web site allow users to produce customised reports tailored to their own requirements, to forecast costs and facilitate month-on-month comparisons, so making bill evaluation a simple task.

Commenting on the system, Phil Haslam, Customer Operations Director at Opal Telecom said, “Ryder Systems was instrumental in helping Opal deliver a key requirement to corporate sector clients by implementing a solution that met and in some cases exceeded their bill analysis needs. We wanted a best of breed system that would be up and running quickly but with the inherent flexibility for changes in functionality down the line. It was a great combination that fulfilled both our customers’ needs and our own wishes. From our own perspective, we can engage in new customer bids confident that we can differentiate ourselves from the competition and provide the requisite high calibre bill analysis and presentation offering.”

Press contact:
Rob Boella, Livewire Public Relations, 32 Ewell Road, Surbiton, Surrey, KT6 6HX.
T: 020 8339 7440 F: 020 8339 7441 Email: rob.boella@livewirepr.com
Website: http://www.livewirepr.com/files/news.asp

Company contacts:
Melanie Embery, Marketing Manager, Ryder Systems Ltd, Daisyfield Business Centre, Appleby Street, Blackburn, Lancashire.
T: 01254 291 500 F: 01254 291 504
Website: http://www.rydersystems.com/

About Ryder Systems:
Ryder Systems is one of Europe’s leading providers of bill management solutions for telcos keen to provide their corporate and SME customers with the tools to analyse their bills and for consumers to better understand their spend. It also adds significant value to the telco’s core offering helping them to win and retain customers. www.rydersystems.com