Navigating Billing Ecosystem Changes: A Program Management Playbook
As a leader in business or technology, you are poised to spearhead a transformation of your billing ecosystem. Whether this change is perceived as significant or minor, billing is the heartbeat of your organization and can be likened to open-heart surgery. Just as a surgical team relies on a pre-operative checklist to ensure a successful procedure, leveraging one for a billing transformation will lay the foundation needed for success from the start.
The goal of this article is to provide a starting point of foundational program management strategies for your pre-op checklist that are essential to program success, which include:
1. Stakeholder Analysis
2. Established Business Case
3. Aligned Upon Future State
4. Comprehensive Roadmap and Transition Plan
5. Defined Tools for Managing the Work
6. Clear Program Communication Plan
1. Stakeholder Analysis
With billing being the heartbeat of a business, it impacts many roles across your organization and customer base. Understanding your stakeholders and the roles they play from the onset will help establish clarity, enhance collaboration, and inform program reporting and decision-making. This can also inform future efforts to perform a more in-depth analysis of resourcing needs to support this program.
When embarking on a billing transformation, it’s easy to overlook stakeholders who aren’t interacting with the billing system on a regular basis but are impacted by its changes. For example, one might not think to include perspectives from the Marketing team at the onset of a billing transformation. However, Marketing is responsible for functions that can be impacted by a billing system, such as setting future pricing strategies. Accounting for these strategies from the beginning is key to the future state architectural design of your billing system. Given this, we highly recommend taking a holistic look at your organization when performing a stakeholder analysis and clearly defining:
Who may be impacted by this billing transformation? Map out not only the obvious stakeholders but also the teams that are often overlooked, (Marketing, Sales, Product, etc).
Determine their level of involvement, are they:
A champion or sponsor of the project advocating the change within the organization and providing resources for the project,
A decision maker,
A contributor (providing requirements from a business or technical perspective),
A reviewer who needs to provide feedback on critical project deliverables (example: quality assurance testing system configuration),
Needing to be informed of project progress but not directly involved or,
An end user who will need to perform their daily work in the new or updated system or need to maintain the system?
Below are user groups we involve from an early stage in a billing system project, along with examples of how they may be impacted:
2. Established Business Case
As you embark on changing your billing ecosystem and onboard stakeholders from your stakeholder analysis, a common question will be “why are we doing this project?”. A clearly defined business case will provide a clear rationale for the program, outlining the need for change and the expected benefits. This helps stakeholders understand why the program is necessary and why they should support it. In case you’ve missed it, we have a perspective on how to develop a good business case (check out Your Billing Transformation Doesn’t Have to Be a Bear for a refresher). The top reasons we see customers embark on a billing transformation are:
Current billing process lacks automation and scalability for business growth and evolving pricing strategies.
Need for system consolidation due to mergers and acquisitions.
Existing billing solution has functional limitations such as:
Issues connecting with other enterprise applications (CRM, payment processing, taxation, accounting, data warehouses, etc.)
Limitations in the amount of usage the system can rate, invoices that can be produced in each period, or the number of line items a system can charge on a single invoice.
Homegrown or commercial tool is being discontinued or unsupported.
Aim to improve compliance and back office standardization before IPO or acquisition.
3. Aligned upon future state
Another common question you’ll encounter during any transformation is, “what exactly is changing?” and “how will this impact my team?”. While you won’t know all the details of the change upfront, having a high-level vision for the future state provides clarity, creates alignment, and can help with starting to answer this question. We recommend using high level visuals to articulate current state versus the vision for the future. Doing this exercise upfront is a key opportunity to look at how things are done today, identify improvement areas, and align upon a desired future state.
While you won’t know all the details of the future state and what is possible up front, this is a crucial exercise to inspire buy-in and enable your team drive requirements from a desired future state. An aligned future state will help avoid the common issue of “lifting and shifting” current state processes and issues into a new or updated system.
4. Comprehensive Roadmap and Transition Plan
Some may view changes to their billing ecosystem as a singular project. However, as noted, multiple roles, functions, and processes are affected by these changes. Therefore, it's essential to approach this as a program consisting of various projects or workstreams from the beginning. Clearly defining these workstreams, identifying who is accountable for each, and understanding their roles is crucial for a successful transition from the current to the future state. This approach will help reduce silos, unify the team around comprehensive program objectives, and identify dependencies.
At Ravus, we have a foundational list to help identify the work streams typically involved in a billing transformation program. Here is our starting point for consideration:
Billing system configuration and development
Integrations
Data migration
Reporting and analytics
Product
Communication planning (Internal and Customer)
Change management plan
User training and documentation
Accounting and finance cutover planning
Compliance - SOX Risk & Control impact assessment
By identifying workstreams from the beginning, organizations can ensure a more effective and seamless billing transformation. Additionally, to support the development of a realistic roadmap and transition plan, the program should incorporate two key elements early:
Parallel bill runs
System cutover strategy
Parallel bill runs should be incorporated into a pe-launch phase of every project. Doing so allows the old (in production) and new (in a test environment) systems to operate simultaneously for a defined time. This allows comparison of outputs to ensure the new billing system is configured/developed correctly, and the migration of customer and billing data is accurate prior to transitioning to the new system. When preparing the program plan, one should plan for multiple iterations of parallel bill runs.
A system cutover strategy is crucial for transitioning from an old system to a new one, and several approaches can be employed:
1. Big Bang: This approach involves a simultaneous switch to the new system at a specific point in time.
Pros: Quick implementation, minimal overlap between systems, and reduced operational costs.
Cons: High risk, significant disruption during the transition, and potential data loss if not executed properly.
2. Phased (or Incremental): This strategy involves gradually implementing the new system in stages (by region, business line, contracting new customers only, etc.) or modules.
Pros: Reduces risk, allows for testing of each phase, and less disruption to operations.
Cons: Longer transition period, potential for inconsistencies between systems, and higher ongoing costs.
3. Net-New: This approach involves building a completely new system from scratch, often without any legacy integration.
Pros: Flexibility in design, no legacy system constraints, and the ability to implement the latest technologies.
Cons: Time-consuming, higher initial investment, and challenges in user adoption.
Choosing the right strategy depends on the organization's goals, risk tolerance, enterprise architecture, and resource availability.
5. Defined Tools for Managing the Work
Successful transformations rely on many tools. It is critical that teams align up front on where they will work, how they can hold accountability, how they will “manage up” (to executives), and how they proactively manage risks.
A few foundational program management tools to consider are:
RAID Log: Used to track Risks, Actions, Issues, and Decisions throughout a program, a RAID log provides a structured way to identify and manage potential obstacles, ensuring that team members remain aware of critical elements that could impact project success. Utilizing a RAID log enhances communication, promotes proactive problem-solving, and fosters accountability among team members, ultimately leading to more effective program management and improved project outcomes.
GANTT Chart: Once the program workstreams are identified, each workstream, along with its key milestones, start dates, and durations, should be entered into a Gantt chart. Gantt charts are effective visual tools that enhance clarity in the overall project timeline by illustrating critical path activities, overlapping tasks, dependencies, and the impacts of any changes (which are inevitable!).
Status Reporting: The value of a weekly snapshot of each workstream's progress in a clear, digestible format is often overlooked. These reports create an evolving, referenceable archive that captures the program's progress week by week. Transparency is essential; even uncomfortable truths should be addressed early to avoid surprises and encourage proactive management.
Work Management Tool (e.g., ServiceNow, Jira, etc.): Work management tools are essential for enhancing team collaboration, improving productivity, and streamlining project workflows. They centralize task management, enabling teams to assign responsibilities, estimate work effort, prioritize tasks, set deadlines, and track progress in real time. These tools foster transparency and accountability by providing visibility into project status and individual contributions. Additionally, they help teams gain clarity on what can realistically be accomplished — and when.
6. Clear Program Communication Plan
Defining a communication plan at the beginning of a program is crucial as it establishes clear protocols for information sharing among stakeholders. A well-structured communication plan outlines who will communicate what information, to whom, at what frequency, and through what channel (Zoom, Teams, Slack, email, etc.), ensuring that everyone is aligned and informed throughout the program lifecycle. This proactive approach minimizes misunderstandings, reduces the risk of miscommunication, and fosters transparency, which is vital for building trust among team members and stakeholders. Examples of activities that should be defined by a communication plan are:
Executive Steering Committee Updates
Status Reporting
Scope confirmation
Scrums and Scrum of Scrums (for large programs)
Backlog Refinement
Sprint Planning
Sprint Reviews and Demos
Retrospectives
Real time comms for asynchronous work
Having these activities clearly defined provides clarity on how to address issues promptly and encourages a culture of open dialogue, ultimately contributing to the program’s success.
Conclusion
The six key elements outlined in this playbook provide a robust framework for navigating the complexities of billing ecosystem changes. By investing time to implement this blueprint from the start, your team can stay focused on essential tasks without getting bogged down by the larger program challenges, ultimately leading to a smoother transformation process. Successful billing transformations rely on careful planning, collaboration, adaptability, and strategic foresight.
Navigating your billing transformation with a partner?
Are you looking for a partner to navigate your billing transformation? At Ravus, we strongly believe in prioritizing collaboration and partnership in this journey.
So, what does collaboration mean to us? Two key components stand out:
Consistent Engagement: Your partner should maintain active involvement from the outset, rather than retreating into "heads down" mode after the initial weeks. It should feel like onboarding new team members, where you collectively experience the phases of forming, storming, norming, and performing.
Stakeholder Analysis Collaboration: Your partner must collaborate with you on stakeholder analysis for several reasons. Beyond identifying key players, this process should also help pinpoint resource needs, ensuring stakeholders can effectively manage their time—because we understand that supporting a transformation isn't typically your primary responsibility.
At Ravus, partnership is a core value. We view our clients as teammates. Trust, transparency, and mutual commitment are what drive a program to success. Transformations can be challenging, but open communication and a positive, collaborative mindset make all the difference. Ultimately, our success is measured by yours.
If you're ready to take the next step and would like to explore how Ravus can support you in achieving your billing transformation goals, please reach out to us at info@ravusinc.com.
