Today, Enablis enjoys an integrated and efficient end-to-end billing environment that grows with their product portfolio
Australian telco managed service provider, Enablis partnered with Outworks five years ago to streamline their billing needs in support of their rapid business growth. Today, Enablis enjoys an integrated and efficient end-to-end billing environment that grows with their product portfolio, simplifies complex billing scenarios and ensures accuracy.
The successful partnership sees the two organisations well aligned on their unique selling propositions: helping customers to manage complexity and freeing up internal resources so they can focus on the more strategically valuable tasks.
The challenge: doing more with less through intelligent automation
Enablis’ target market is mid-sized ‘highly distributed organisations’ who have at least 20 sites up to a few hundred sites, consuming around 300 to 1500 seats per organisation. Typically, these organisations operate with a lean IT team who are often caught up in ‘firefighting’ with little or no capacity to execute on complex cloud-based transformation strategies.
Enablis’ customer base selectively outsources their corporate network, unified communications and mobility needs to Enablis whose engineers are experts in the whole communication layer – LAN, WAN, telephony and collaboration. Services are tailor made to suit the customer, integrating traditional and new
communication technologies and accommodating both public and private cloud applications in a multiproduct offering.
With the inherent complexities associated with this go-to-market model, Enablis required the support of a billing partner to automate billing processes and provide the flexibility to support future growth ondemand. Moreover, they needed a partner to work with them and free up their internal resources to focus on their business.
“Outworks’ BillOut platform was capable of scaling to the level we needed and beyond, and that’s what prompted us to move from what was our incumbent solution – a platform that just didn’t have the features and functionality that our customers were going to need,” says Jon Evans, Enablis CEO.
The outcome: end-to-end integrated billing across three systems
The Outworks team reviewed Enablis’ requirements and implemented an integrated billing solution incorporating data feeds from ServiceNow into BillOut and Xero for a whole-of-enterprise solution.
“Outworks have helped take what has been traditional billing and worked with us to integrate our billing with Xero and our ServiceNow platform. ServiceNow feeds into BillOut automatically and then that information feeds into Xero, so the process of taking services from our core system into billing has become much simpler,” says Evans.
Integrating their billing solution with Xero also allows Enablis’ financial team to splice and dice information separately for reporting.
The benefits: One Service, One Number, One Bill
According to Evans, Enablis’ customer procurement personnel definitely see the value in a reduction in supplier’s bills. He points out that central to Enablis’ sales value proposition – ‘One Service, One Number, One Bill’ is that there is a single point of contact and added value from a single provider – reducing complexity and increasing responsiveness.
“Our customers see the value of dealing with one partner rather than many. When you have one provider taking responsibility over the end-to-end SLAs, it’s a big advantage,” he says. “Billing feeds into this advantage,” he adds, “as customers want their invoices to be simpler and ideally not spread across five different bills.”
“The complexity of billing has been removed from our business in a very streamlined and effective way, and that allows us to get on and focus on our growth,” says Evans. In this market, if you download a service and there’s complexity behind it, resources are continuously caught up in checking to make sure the billing is accurate and while they’re spending time on that task, you’re not investing time in growing the business, he explains.
Looking ahead: enhanced security portfolio with billing to support go-to-market
Enablis has recently enhanced their security portfolio, offering a managed security solution on a cost per use per month. With Outworks as their billing partner, they’re well placed to forge ahead in this market with a billing system that can seamlessly incorporate the new offering into a single, consolidated invoice without any major IT issues or impact on the end customer.
“The complexity of billing has been removed from our business in a very streamlined and effective way”
About Enablis
Enablis provides mid-sized Australian companies with a competitive advantage by delivering leading edge communication and cloud technology as a managed service. Visit enablis.com.au for more information.
About Outworks
Outworks delivers a broad range of services specific to the transactional billing services industry including cutting edge billing systems and components, billing outsourcing, billing consultancy and integration of billing services with other applications. Outworks specialises in customised solutions for telecommunications companies, internet service providers, utilities and managed service providers. Visit outworks.com.au