Why the polycrisis is accelerating digitalization of the bill

Service providers have to adjust their approach to billing and dunning in response to the current polycrisis. Philipp Reischauer looks at why this is, in turn, driving increased digitalization of the bill.

Polycrisis is the term being used to describe the interconnected crises that the world faces in 2023, such as post-Covid recovery, supply chain disruption, high levels of inflation, the war in Ukraine, and the Turkish earthquake. The result of current market conditions is a softening of demand in both the B2B and B2C markets, with customers reacting to soaring costs by tightening their belts and refocusing on value. Inevitably, this means customers are scrutinizing their bills like never before.

Digitalization, which was accelerated by the Covid-19 crisis, offers many benefits to help service providers cope with the polycrisis. So the big question is: how can service providers digitalize faster?

Key advantages of digitalization

Six ways to speed digitalization in revenue management

1. Don’t transform your billing systems. Transform your bills and their presentment – Use open APIs to take data out of multiple legacy systems and create a single source of ‘billing truth’ at the presentment layer. This helps you get to the benefits faster. Meanwhile, you can do the hard work of consolidating and modernizing your billing systems at your own pace.
2. Be clear about what digitalization means – Digitalization of billing is not presenting a PDF in a portal. It shows the key aspects of the bill on a digital platform in a way the customer understands, with drill-downs to more detail if they need it. The aim is to communicate charges better and encourage customers to pay faster.
3. Get the data foundation right – Unless you get the data right, digitalization just results in a pretty portal. Accurate, reliable, holistic data is the foundation of all digitalization projects. Find out more here.
4. Digitalization should mean personalization and customer centricity - Display data in multiple ways according to your customers’ needs. We have applications to support this and if your market is not quite ready for full digitalization, our approach means that the foundation is there for when you are. It’s also super easy to change or add channels.
5. Don’t reinvent the wheel – If you try a homespun approach, you’ll get there eventually, but why reinvent the wheel? Benefit from best practice and hard-won experience to help you digitalize faster. Injecting specialist expertise at the right time will speed and optimize your project.
6. Future-proof your approach – Digitalization is a moving target. Today's features, best practices and channels will be old hat tomorrow. Legislation and regulations are also continually evolving, making it hard to remain compliant. Utilizing ‘evergreen’ software means you’ll always be compliant, while specialist expertise will help keep you up-to-date with the latest thinking to help you evolve your solution as your business changes.

Digitalization offers significant advantages to service providers and will be accelerated by the polycrisis. But service providers cannot wait years for a major digital transformation project to renew their approach. Instead, they need to find ways to deliver the operational, commercial and customer benefits of digital billing today. They can do that by utilizing a combination of expert advice and tried and tested technology.