Here, PRD Technologies Managing Director Simon Adams shares insights into where his strategic vision and focus lies in the months and years ahead.
Adams predicts big changes in the comms channel billing world over the coming years, due to the rapid diversification within the channel and the need to respond with smarter billing and business intelligence. “Complex product innovations that help comms resellers stay ahead must be supported by their billing platform,” he stated. “Automations and integrations will rapidly become a necessity to handle these growing complexities and challenges. Our main focus over the next year will be to automate all data and billing processes where possible, alongside further API integration developments.”
PRD’s API capabilities already enable integrations to many third party systems including NetSuite, ConnectWise, GoCardless, MS Dynamics and leading accounting and banking systems. “This enables us to gather data from multiple systems to our single converged automated platform,” stated Adams. “We will also be developing more business intelligence in the form of insightful data analysis and reporting. We see this as crucial for customers to quickly identify what is and isn’t working and modify their business strategy accordingly.”
Based on current enquiries, fibre broadband is also one of PRD’s biggest opportunities. “These projects tend to have high volume invoice requirements along with API integrations to reduce or eliminate manual data exchange between systems and the risks of human error,” said Adams. “We are currently working on several new fibre broadband billing projects.”
The UC and cloud comms markets are also growing at a rapid rate, noted Adams, and at the request of one of its existing customers, Westcoast Cloud, PRD developed a bespoke solution for its 700 strong VAR network to address the complexities of VAR data processing and billing within one converged system. “Working in conjunction with Westcoast Cloud this will be one of our other key target markets over the coming year, to roll this technology out to its VAR network and the wider distributor/VAR sector. Other markets on our radar include Fintech, subscription services, gaming, SaaS and DaaS. One of our corporate technology customers already uses Intelligent Billing to process and onwards bill DaaS data to IT distributors.”
Automations and integrations will rapidly become a necessity to handle growing complexities and challenges
Adams noted that more telecoms providers and resellers are diversifying into new markets, especially cloud services such as Azure consumables and licenses. “As a result, we have developed a cloud services version of Intelligent Billing which can be implemented as either a converged telecoms platform or a separate platform,” he added. “One of our key target markets over the next 12 months will be businesses expanding into the CSP space reselling cloud consumption MS licenses and subscriptions. We’re also seeing increased requirements for multi-currency and multi-lingual billing from globalising UK-based telecoms providers. Intelligent Billing supports multiple group or multi-company and departmental billing across multiple regions, with local taxations and compliance rules, all of which can be managed from a single portal.”
PRD is expanding quickly in the UK and the number of global overseas customers are also rising. “Our onboarding and migration process will be more streamlined,” added Adams. “We have this down to a few days for many installations, but we want to make sure it is quick and pain-free for all new customers, irrelevant of the complexity or customisation of their requirements.”
PRD currently processes nearly five billion transactions per month and Adams fully expects this to carry on growing – and growth will of course reflect where customer value is moving to, creating opportunities for billing providers to help resellers capture that value. “Billing providers need to provide accurate, real-time, automated data processing, billing, invoicing, data analysis and reporting from a single user friendly converged platform to help resellers capture and assess end customer value and market performance,” said Adams. “Simplification through evolving functionality is key.”