Challenge

TMNG Global was engaged by a large wireless service provider to help them better understand the needs of their large account customers, with the objective of providing improved invoicing and payment services. The project had two primary objectives:

• Identify key invoicing and payment capabilities required to meet the current expectation of large corporate and public sector customers
• Uncover invoicing and billing capabilities that, if offered, would exceed customers’ expectations over the life of the customer/service provider relationship and actually help customers manage their wireless services better.

TMNG Global Solution

Our plan was to identify the current and future needs of large customers in the invoicing and payments arena from three main sources: internal subject matter SME experts; primary research with 31 current large accounts; and secondary market research.

Over thirty internal SME interviews were conducted to understand strengths and weaknesses of current capabilities. The following internal organizations were included:

Strategic Customer Care	Customer Care Support
Public Sector Sales and Marketing	Customer Care Billing Support
Public Sector Sales Support	Customer Operations
Corporate Sales and Marketing	Sales Operations
Corporate Sales Support	Marketing Information
Product Management	Information Technology
Customer Finance Services	Government Sales Contract Management
Collections	Government Accounts
Pricing - Marketing	Strategic Business Operations
Call Center Care	Partners

With an understanding of the current state according to internal sources, we then interviewed thirty-one large account customers. The majority of the interviews were conducted in person. Our interviews were structured to explore the following key areas:

• Information needs – information currently provided by the invoice – summaries, reporting capabilities
• Presentation needs – current invoice presentation – organization, format layout
• Media Type preferences – paper, CD, email/fax, EDI Data Direct, Wireless Manager, online
• Delivery and Payment Options issues, barriers.

To ensure clear and consistent results, TMNG identified and documented ‘significant seven’ recommendations as next steps relating to Corporate and Government customer segments.

Experienced TMNG Global market research professionals, who were also chosen for their knowledge and experience with billing and payments processes and systems conducted the customer interviews. All findings were presented to the client.

Lessons Learned:

Benefits to the Client

Recommendations arising from the research included:

• Establishing an invoicing and payment portfolio plan for large complex customers – Corporate, Government
• Establish framework for addressing complex customer requirements
• Identify a set of standard invoicing and payment options
• Develop sales tools and training
• Develop corporate-wide management and operations reports and associated key metrics for monitoring results
• Integrate requirements of Federal, State, Local and corporate and other on-going regulatory initiatives
• Maintain customer focus
• Verify solution options preferences through iterative customer exposure processes