Customer Use Cases
Managed Service Provider Consumption Leakage
Discover how BluLogix empowered a Managed Service Provider (MSP) to recover $1.3M in previously unquantifiable leakage and identify billing errors through the deployment of BluIQ.
The Challenge:
As Managed Service Providers (MSPs) transition to managing and delivering Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and Cloud offerings, the intricacies of usage charges introduce billing complexities that prove challenging to handle. Typically, these charges are either neglected and absorbed into the overall cost of services or managed manually through spreadsheets. Given that usage charges often amount to fractions of a penny, in the initial stages, accepting some degree of leakage or inefficiency might seem tolerable. The revenue recovery from these charges might not appear to justify the substantial effort required for calculation and collection. However, as organizations grow, the processes established in the early stages tend to persist. Such was the situation with one of BluLogix's MSP customers.
The Solution:
After experiencing consistent growth and shifts in revenue streams, this company eventually made the decision to invest in BluLogix's BluIQ solution. BluIQ was employed to aggregate and mediate usage data from multiple sources, accurately rate the usage data, and charge customers in alignment with their actual usage costs. BluIQ was able to identify a class of charges that were not being billed for, as historically, they had not been considered significant enough to manually account for. As it turned out, they had grown quite a bit over the years. The BluIQ Advanced Data Staging & Mediation engine identified them, quantified what the charges would be if billed, and worked with the firm to start invoicing for them.
Industry – Managed Services Provider
The Result:
The outcome of this strategic move was the recovery of over $1.3 million in previously unquantifiable leakage. Furthermore, the process of reconciling charges against invoices from service providers uncovered additional billing errors. These errors included incorrect charges as well as additional fees for services that should have been terminated or allocated to customers' invoices.
The Benefit:
Typically, after deploying a solution capable of automating the data staging & mediation and rating of consumption data, MSPs gain a significantly improved understanding of cost and usage. This enhanced visibility allows them to offer their customers greater billing transparency and alignment of services with the perceived value, thereby strengthening their client relationships.
