Zen Internet, the pioneering ISP company that provides data, voice and hosting services to hundreds of UK businesses, has elevated its billing to the cloud thanks to a partnership with Strategic Imperatives.
Multi award-winning ISP Zen, which boasts more than 90,000 customers, always partners with like-minded organisations which understand the value of technical innovation and excellent customer service, making Strategic Imperatives’ Elevate IQ the natural choice for its future-facing billing requirements.
Elevate IQ is SI’s transformational approach to the channel’s demand for a new solution to billing. Casting off obsolete technologies, outdated practices and inefficient processes, Elevate IQ leverages Amazon’s AWS to keep the infrastructure highly scalable and cloud-based. This affords Elevate IQ remarkable elastic capability, allowing it to work in real time; responding instantly to changes in customer and pricing data – immediately recalculating – and giving Zen constant oversight of their business performance with all the data they need at their fingertips.
Zen identified Elevate IQ as the billing system in the market that was uniquely capable of meeting their short term tactical needs as well as their long term strategic plans. They were particularly impressed with the approach and core principles SI had adopted during the development of Elevate IQ, and they shared SI’s enthusiasm for cloud-based SaaS, and the advantages it offers their business.
Commenting on the decision, Chris Platt, Head of Systems, Zen Internet, said: “From a technology perspective Elevate IQ stands head and shoulders above its competitors, but it’s the business benefits the implementation provides that really make a difference in our day to day activity.”
SI are confident that no other billing solution can provide the advantages offered by Elevate IQ which they believe are critical for Communication Provider (CP) businesses to thrive and expand. Platt agrees: “Elevate IQ’s impact on Zen was immediate. Its SaaS nature meant that a pre-configured version of the service was up and running very quickly and we were able to process the first live bill run within days. We performed penetration and vulnerability testing on Elevate IQ and it passed with flying colours. Additionally, the system is so intuitive and user-friendly we were able to roll it out to staff with minimal training.”
Head of Business Development at Strategic Imperatives, Tim Sayer, said: “We designed Elevate IQ around our clients’ need for a completely fresh approach to billing. We used our experience of turning complex requirements into intuitive solutions and designed a system from the ground up. Now, the moment it’s needed, whenever they need it, the power and capability enjoyed by the world’s largest enterprises is theirs.
“Working with Zen has revealed Elevate IQ ’s true capacity and scalability. Billing systems are usually slow and cumbersome especially when it comes to bill runs or tariff changes but Elevate IQ responds instantaneously to Zen’s demands. Plus, our two-factor authentication and finance industry level encryption ensures total security for them and their customers. Zen can now plot their commercial roadmap using Elevate IQ’s time-based capability enabling them to plan, deploy and test future propositions in real time. We think it’s an exceptional solution fit for a constantly changing market.”
Delighted with the new SaaS system, Platt added: “Billing is a strategic service which our business depends upon. In the past twenty years Zen has grown from a small-scale start-up to a highly responsive CP with more than 400 staff and we have no plans to stop there. Strategic Imperatives’ approach and industry experience makes them the ideal billing partner for us. Their attention to detail is obvious and Elevate IQ’s rich features combined with exceptional usability and scalability gives us the confidence the system will grow and adapt to the demands of the market as we do. Zen prides itself on empowering customers to reach their full business potential, and that’s exactly what SI and Elevate IQ do for us.”
