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Achieving Accurate Billing and Streamlined Operations with Work 365

Name: Work 365
Price range: $

Industry:
Managed Communications and Cloud Service Provider (CSP)

Challenge:
Fusion Connect faced inefficiencies like inaccurate billing, manual provisioning, no Microsoft integration, missed renewals, and higher costs due to the lack of a self-service portal.

Results:
Work 365 automated key processes, improved billing accuracy, and enabled customer
self-service, enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction. These changes set Fusion Connect up for sustainable, scalable growth.

Key Product:
Work 365 CSP And Billing Management

Challenges and Goals:

Overcoming operational bottlenecks in CSP management

Fusion Connect faced significant obstacles as they expanded their CSP business.
Manual processes and fragmented systems resulted in billing inconsistencies, renewal management challenges, limited customer empowerment, and scalability issues

Key challenges:

Lack of a Microsoft Integrated Product Catalog: Without a Microsoft-linked integrated product catalog, Fusion Connect faced inefficiencies in configuring and pricing CSP Subscriptions. This slowed sales and led to manual adjustments, reducing efficiency across its operations.

Inconsistent License Billing vs. Consumption: Aligning billing with actual usage took manual reconciliation and added administrative burden. As Chris Updegraft put it, Fusion Connect struggled with a “drift between license consumption and billing,” highlighting the need for automated, consolidated billing.

Renewal Management Difficulties: Renewals, managed manually and tied to broader contracts, could lead to missed opportunities and increased risk of customer churn. More proactive renewal management was essential for contract continuity and customer retention.

Azure Management: The absence of an effective solution for managing Azure and other usage-based services limited Fusion Connect’s ability to expand its CSP portfolio, constraining growth in the cloud market.

“I think engineering out the ability to have multiple sources of truth and having Work 365 be the source of truth has eliminated that problem for us. That was one of our biggest pain points.

Chris Updegraft

The Solution:

How Work 365 optimized CSP management for scalable growth

Fusion Connect implemented Work 365 to address the critical operational challenges in managing their CSP business. By centralizing and automating key processes, they achieved more consistent billing, streamlined management, and improved customer experiences.

Unified Product Catalog: Work 365’s CSP Navigator provided a centralized Microsoft product catalog, enabling Fusion Connect to manage CSP licenses efficiently and stay up-to-date with real-time product data and price changes.

Automated Billing Aligned Provisioning with Microsoft Partner Center: Work 365 enabled automated billing aligned with actual consumption and instant provisioning through Microsoft Partner Center, reducing manual effort and ensuring customers receive services immediately and reducing “drift” between billing and consumption.

Improved Renewal Management with Clear Contract Terms: The team clarified billing contracts and term dates by managing each CSP license as an individual term rather than bundling within broader contracts. This visibility over renewal timelines helped maintain contract continuity, reducing the risk of missed renewals and improving customer retention.

Azure Usage Tracking: Work 365 enabled accurate Azure usage tracking, allowing Fusion Connect to offer full CSP and grow this business segment.

Customer Self-Service: Fusion Connect extended its existing Self-Service portal to seamlessly integrate with Work 365, enabling end-customers to access real-time subscription data.

The Results:

A new era of operational efficiency with Work 365

With Work 365, Fusion Connect achieved greater efficiency, improved revenue accuracy, and positioned their CSP business for scalable growth.

Here’s what they achieved:

Operational Efficiency: Self-service, automatic provisioning through the Microsoft Partner Center, and access to the full Microsoft product catalog collectively reduced labor and friction, allowing licenses to be provisioned instantly for immediate customer use.
Contract management allowed Fusion Connect to manage each CSP subscription as an individual term, improving renewal accuracy and reducing churn risk by ensuring timely, proactive renewals.

Improved Billing Accuracy and Revenue Integrity: Accurate, usage-based billing minimized previous revenue leakage, consolidating data into a single system to align billing with consumption. This improved financial accuracy and reduced customer friction.

Scalability and Growth Readiness: Work 365’s automation provided a sustainable foundation for growth, allowing Fusion Connect to expand its CSP offerings without adding support resources, thus enabling scalable and efficient growth.

The following metrics are projected outcomes, calculated based on Fusion Connect’s operational data and industry trends for Microsoft CSPs

*The results are based on these operational assumptions: 30% of customers use self-service, averaging 2 monthly license adjustments, saving 12.5 minutes per adjustment. Provisioning changes also involve 30% of customers, with an average of 2 changes monthly, each taking 12.5 minutes. Reconciliation and invoicing improvements save 30 minutes per customer monthly. Revenue recovery assumes a 2% leakage on an annual CSP revenue base. Churn reduction preserves 2% of revenue, with a 20% profit margin on retained revenue. The support staff rate is USD 40 per hour, and scalability benefits are estimated at USD 50,000 in avoided staffing costs.

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“Work 365 has allowed us to automate critical aspects of our business, from license provisioning to billing. This has drastically reduced our operational overhead and increased the accuracy of our invoicing.
Most importantly, we can now focus on scaling our CSP business without worrying about revenue leakage.

Chris Updegraft

Key players who drove the change

Behind every transformation are the people who lead it. For Fusion Connect, the vision came from:

Chris Updegraft
(CIO, Fusion Connect)

As the Chief Information Officer at Fusion Connect, Chris is responsible for software development, IT operations, networking, and infrastructure. With over 30 years of experience in software development, Chris led the transition of Fusion Connect from legacy telecom systems to a modern cloud solution provider.

Peter Farnham
(SVP, Infrastructure & Operations, Fusion Connect)

Peter oversees infrastructure and operations at Fusion Connect, including networking, NOC, Windows/Linux infrastructure, and service desk. With over 20 years at Fusion Connect, he has been instrumental in managing the company’s technology landscape.

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