Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) Unies Billing Across Diverse Business Lines

Overview

Industry: Media, Technology, and Communications
Profile: Comcast Technology Solutions provides a proven and scalable technology portfolio to third-party media, broadcast, content, communications, and advertising companies.

Challenges

• Anticipated rapid growth in ad delivery business
• Operational Ineciencies due to:
  • Different processes across businesses made organizational movement challenging
  • Product offerings limited by:
    • Improved operational efficiencies in communications and collections
    • Boosted revenue and customer satisfaction
    • Single scalable monetization platform across entire product portfolio
    • Configurable & manageable by finance team
    • Flexibility to handle complex rate portfolios

Comcast Technology Solutions leverages Comcast Cable’s broadcast and media portfolio to bring innovation and technology solutions to Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (MVPDS) & Cable Operators, OTT Content & Streaming Providers, Advertisers, and Communication Providers.

The relationship between content, consumers, and services is constantly changing. CTS needed to ensure their billing solution could accommodate the widest array of monetization models at scale to enable bringing innovative products to market now and in the future.

Catalyst for Change

Comcast Technology Solutions saw the opportunity in the booming digital video and advertising markets yet faced the challenge of legacy systems and manual processes limiting their ability to scale. CTS required a new flexible platform to support rapid introduction of new products, swift automated invoicing, and efficient payment processing. CTS needed a single platform to replace multiple legacy billing systems for eighteen lines of business across two divisions that were relying on custom code and manual processes.

CREATIVE SUITE

IP DATA SUITE

“Aria’s platform gives finance the flexibility, scalability and efficiency to bring innovative new products to market and improve the customer experience now and into the future”
— Brian Smith, CFO, Comcast Technology Solutions

The Solution

Comcast Technology Solutions chose Aria Systems’ billing and monetization platform to unify the billing of 18 lines of business across two divisions. CTS began with the most challenging and high-volume line of business first: Ad Delivery. To enable sales to satisfy clients’ needs, they needed the ability to quickly introduce offers, using complex multi-dimensional rate cards (25 and growing) applied based on configurable business rules. Aria’s solution replaced the custom coded solution for the first line of business, then the other lines of business rapidly followed. CTS eliminated three different legacy billing systems and now operates on a single billing and monetization platform that integrates with their other business systems and automates the order-to-cash process.

Solution highlights:

• Configured – Not custom coded:
  Ease implementation effort, minimize maintenance support costs, and enable personnel mobility.

• Increased Flexibility:
  Enabled a wider array of product offerings via flexible, often complex, recurring revenue models.

• Future-Proof:
  Highly flexible and adaptable to support the launch of new products, new subscription and monetization models.

The Results

Comcast Technology Solutions was able to simplify processing of complex rate cards and increase the velocity of billing, which enabled the organization to make business commitments to clients in a fast-growing market segment, from order delivery to invoice in under an hour. Aria’s platform has provided CTS with a robust and scalable solution that meets the current and future needs of its media technology portfolio.

CTS now manages subscriptions in a single platform, giving the finance team more autonomy to support the changing needs of the business without IT support. The solution offers superior customer experience through automated order-to-cash and improved efficiency of processing payments. By replacing its three legacy systems and manual spreadsheets with a flexible, streamlined billing solution, CTS is well-positioned to respond to market changes and competitive challenges.

Benefit highlights:

• Boosted Revenue:
  Increased revenue and improved customer satisfaction with new product offerings with a more timely SLA.