RateIntegration, a provider of pricing and rating solutions to software and service companies in the telecommunications, retail, and financial services markets, today announced that it has completed phase two of the replacement of the core pricing and rating engines in Sergel’s legacy and next generation billing and customer care systems. Sergel, a wholly owned subsidiary of TeliaSonera Group [TLSN.ST], is an application service provider (ASP) serving the telecom, news media, energy, real-estate and government sectors.
Sergel delivers credit scoring, rating & billing, accounts receivable, CRM and collection services to companies throughout northern Europe. Sergel’s next generation platform, which went live in August 2005 with version 6.0 of RateIntegration’s PriceMaker Enterprise Pricing Server, supports all communication, video, data, content and media services as well as online auction pricing and media advertising. This is the second phase of a long term business relationship between the two companies where RateIntegration continues to support Sergel’s aggressive new customer acquisition strategy. Sergel’s critical business requirements which were met by RateIntegration included:
*Â Rapid integration of PriceMaker with the rest of the ASP software infrastructure
*Â Improve the “time-to-implement” custom plans for any new customer
*Â Improve accuracy and visibility of pricing functions
* Enable pricing of any business transaction, regardless of nature, providing the customer with maximum flexibility in creating competitive end customer offers “Sergel has a comprehensive ASP solution for telecommunications, content and media. A key corporate objective of this effort was to achieve faster time-to-market for our customers and lower our overall operational costs,” said Magnus Lindgren, VP of Business Development for Sergel. “RateIntegration is helping us make our overall ASP service offering more competitive and enables our customers to create new offers, helping them winning new business.”
Today, Sergel utilizes the PriceMaker Enterprise Pricing Server as its core standardized pricing platform for all products and services. One interestingaspect of that is the fact that PriceMaker is also used to generate recurring charges and subscription fees, giving this type of pricing the same flexibility as the transaction rating. Some of the direct results of this implementation were:
*Â The integration effort was completed for a total of 12 man-weeks with less than 2 man-days of changes to Sergel’s ASP software infra-structure
*Â Signed over six new customers in the first six months with the new pricing architecture in place
*Â Implemented Scandinavian MVNO with highly advanced service offerings and price plans in less than 4 months, with no custom programming changes to the Pricing Server
*Â The ASP operations group is able to offer a distinct set of service
offerings and pricing plans for each customer from a single instance of theserver. “Sergel has built the definitive ‘end to end’ ASP offering in Scandinavia,” said Thomas Thekkethala, CEO of RateIntegration. “We’re pleased to be a part of Sergel’s next generation solution and thrilled that PriceMaker has provided tangible business benefits in both new sales and improved business operations.”
About Sergel AB
Sergel is one of Scandinavia’s leading companies in the billing service bureau/out sourcing market. With attention to our customers needs and the focus on keeping investment costs down, we aim to provide our customers high quality services at a low cost. We offer the possibility of outsourcing a part of, or the entire payment process. Our Customer Care and Billing service; Billionaire, offers a flexible solution, supporting future communication services and business models. It is designed to give our customers a competitive edge in their market by enabling them to capture the business benefits of increased revenues, reduced costs and satisfied customers. Totaling some 220 employees, Sergel has a head office in Stockholm and local offices in Karlstad, Gothenburg, Visby and Skellefte”. More information can be found on the Company’s Web Site at www.sergel.com.
About RateIntegration
RateIntegration, Inc. provides enterprise wide pricing and rating software solutions to software and service companies servicing the telecommunications, media, retail, and financial services industries. The Company’s flagship PriceMaker ™ Enterprise Pricing Server product was designed to leverage a service provider’s existing infrastructure software investment by operating as a stand alone product or easily integrating with existing mediation, billing, order management and customer care systems. PriceMaker is offered on a license and outsourced basis and allows customers to rapidly bring new products and services to market. RateIntegration’s customer base includes software and service companies throughout the world. RateIntegration has offices in the United States and Europe and is headquartered in Durham, North Carolina. More information can be found on the Company’s Web Site at www.rateintegration.com.