One of the primary concerns of carriers is to offset the decline in wholesale margins and overcome business restrictions that prevent the adoption of new services.
Multiple siloed and non-integrated services lead to significant operational inefficiencies, including high OPEX. Parallel processes, systems, and practices govern current operations, creating chaos and fueling already costly settlement processes. Disparate interpretations of contracts and prices by different stakeholders are one of the main causes of disputes. Two-thirds of disputes arise from network configuration differences.
Due to an increase in traffic volumes and complexity in contracts – such as cross-service deals, grace period management, and more – automation is often difficult in legacy systems. These OSS/BSS legacy systems offer different levels of data management and accuracy, and therefore, applying specific contract terms can be challenging.
In addition, in the interconnect world, carriers define their own selling dial code plans and then normalize vendor number plans to their own, a practice that enables continuing differences and discrepancies when defining destinations. Industry forums publish number plan standards, best practices, and even templates, but these guidelines are neither enforceable nor followed by most. Similarly, settlement and dispute management practices in interconnect aren’t governed by any standard and can last months, even years; for example, re-rating practices are not standardized, therefore cumbersome, and may take time to resolve.
Carriers seek to manage a complete end-to-end offering, from order management through rating and pricing, network routing, billing, settlement, and finally, reporting. Beyond these processes, the interconnect business transformation requires new revenue streams. Systems need to offer flexibility, such as advanced pricing models for voice, origin-based rates, cloud numbers, and A2P messaging. The main goal is to balance investments to focus on new revenue streams, while preserving legacy businesses.
TOMIA’s strategy involves helping carriers to simplify increasing business complexity and pressure through flexible and automated services. TOMIA’s iXLink facilitates the buying and selling process, supporting advanced pricing models for voice, origin-based, and A2P messaging. This type of flexibility usually accounts for a 20% increase in revenue for carriers.
TOMIA’s iXLink also promotes faster reconciliation and more efficient dispute resolution, resulting in quicker order-to-cash. The service provides automated invoice error handling that pinpoints data validation anomalies sending immediate and comprehensive confirmations to all involved parties. Distinct from legacy systems, the service also executes business decisions across networks through intelligent routing with higher levels of efficiency and without increasing manual efforts.
TOMIA’s iXLink is the de facto industry standard for B2B digital communication among carriers, a marketplace community with 4,000 trading members. To receive more information about the iXLink service, get in touch via: marketing@tomiaglobal.com
