Business challenge
With a combination of both retail and wholesale cloud offerings, NTT Data's billing processes were highly complex. The company found its business growing rapidly – too rapidly for existing systems to maintain operational viability with the high number of manual processes and an inability to scale operations. In order to provide cloud services in a consistent manner across all countries and regions a BSS was required, one that would be able to manage products, customers, billing and order management for cloud servicing to Dimension Data's extensive customer base, covering multi-tenancy and multi-currency capabilities.
Scope of implementation
The implementation with Beyond Now BSS Plus allowed NTT Data to manage all its entities on a common platform, enabling straightforward cost recovery and the accurate, efficient and transparent billing of clients. This meant that the various cloud products and services (including public, private, cloud for Microsoft, cloud architecture & automation, cloud infrastructure readiness, enterprise mobility as a service, OneCloud partner program and more), could be centrally controlled and more easily deliverable to customers. Beyond Now BSS Plus offers a single platform for business monetization and automated revenue allocation of products and services for multi-layered global business organizations.
The first phases of the project implemented at the end of 2014 encompassed 150 customers in the APAC region as well as around 50 in the Australia/New Zealand market, enabling consumption-based service charging and, in some cases, automatic service activation. This capability capitalized on the full multi-tenant functionalities of BSS Plus, enabling each party in the ecosystem to interact with one another and on-sell to end customers. The tenants, the majority of whom are medium and large enterprises, are supported with additional interfaces for invoicing, mediation and various other required external reports.
Achieved benefits
Following implementation of Beyond Now BSS Plus, NTT Data now hosts its entities on a single, multi-tenant platform, achieving vastly improved unification and automation of billing processes. The standardization of these billing processes and tools ensures easier management of a complex billing architecture, and through leveraging the workflow capabilities of the platform and reducing manual processes, NTT Data benefits from a time reduction for the activation of services and billing of clients, lower operating costs and an increase in satisfied customers. The deployment also gives NTT Data the ability to scale its business as required, and enables increased transparency and auditability in regard to costs.
Beyond Now BSS Plus enables and manages complex relationships between NTT Data's 60 billing entities, with each able to deliver and receive services from one another and on-sell to end customers, with straightforward monetization and accuracy. This outcome embodies a true multi-tenant, multi-country, multi-currency implementation that has given NTT Data recognizable benefits for their business now, while also being agile enough to evolve with their rapidly expanding cloud business in the future.
Learn more about NTT Data
NTT Data is a global leader in the provision and management of specialist IT infrastructure solutions and services, using technology expertise to accelerate the business ambitions of its clients. As a member of the NTT Group, one of the world’s largest ICT providers, NTT Data is based in South Africa, serving more than 6000 clients in 58 countries worldwide over all major industry verticals. Its extensive portfolio covers network integration, converged communications, Microsoft solutions, data center solutions and customer interactive solutions. NTT Data also offers cloud services through its ‘Managed Cloud Platforms’ across multiple countries, additionally offering a range of back-end support services as well as Software-as-a-Service applications, providing complete IT-as-a-Service.
