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Why do we keep billing things not people?
Alex Leslie - Mar 8, 10:32 AM
I just recorded a podcast with one of our sponsors about horizontal billing – a familiar subject you might think. The CTO had written an article on the subject for a financial magazine based in Asia Pacific and I was curious to find out why. The reason is that the financial services industry is trying to get away from billing or charging being embedded in the product lines. As in telecoms several years ago the dangers are obvious – more so with the advantage of hindsight. They will not be able to bundle services, they cannot have a single view of the customer – at least not seamlessly – and they are unprepared for serious innovation in this area.
I have always been fascinated by the lessons that one industry can learn from another. I have also been incredibly frustrated by the same thing. Many is the time that I have offered an example or anecdote about telecoms doing something well that could be translated into the Water world for instance and being told ‘we do things differently here’.
But that was then and things are changing. It is very encouraging to me that there is a melting happening at the edges of industries – telecoms people are being hired by financial services groups to manage transformations, cable executives are being hired by broadcast companies to bring a different perspective to the business strategy and companies that we might still refer to as ‘telcos’ now have advertising managers (watch this space for a fascinating interview with one). Conversations are taking place between industries that are actually conversations not two monologues happening at the same time.
Horizontal billing helps achieve this melting, this exchange of ideas. Concentrating on the customer allows billing to take place at a different level to the legacy infrastructure that gives rise to the ‘we do things differently’ mentality.
This begs the question: how much do you know about what really goes on in other industries.
Does the broadcast industry care about billing or the one to one relationships offerede by the telecoms channel? Is the media industry actually about to go around – or over the top – of the telecoms industry and grab the customers? Does the gaming world need billing systems? Can the war between device manufacturers, which is causing many of the barriers to real convergence, be ended by implementing horizontal, customer billing?
There are many questions, some interesting answers and a lot of work to do. But I know that competitive advantage will be marginal if you watch what your own industry does and is potentially huge if you watch what other industries do.
Watch this space!
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