Summary Bullets:
- After acquiring Brite:Bill, Pontis, and Vindicia in September 2016, Amdocs elected to operate the three digital specialists as independent concerns. After six months, the decision has paid dividends in Brite:Bill’s case with Comcast selecting Brite:Bill for consumer billing presentment applications and Brite:Bill internally developing automatic monitoring and proactive billing resolution innovations.
- Amdocs faces portfolio development challenges operating Brite:Bill as an independent entity, including leveraging Brite:Bill innovation into its CES platform and driving Brite:Bill solutions to capitalize upon expanding corporate billing and prepaid billing presentment market opportunities.
After completing the acquisition of Brite:Bill, Pontis, and Vindicia in September 2016, Amdocs elected to keep the three companies as standalone entities. The standalone approach offers competitive benefits such as reducing integration overhead costs and lessening the potential for portfolio disruption. Brite:Bill is showing six months later why Amdocs’ decision to keep its operational independence is warranted. Fresh off winning Comcast’s consumer billing presentment business, Brite:Bill quickly capitalized on Amdocs’ business relations with a top-tier cable operator. Prior to the Amdocs acquisition, Brite:Bill consistently won top-tier operator billing presentment and communication deals, including Vodafone, Sprint, Rogers, and Virgin Media, competing frequently against service billing heavyweights such as Ericsson, IBM, and Amdocs itself. Little doubt this hard-won traction spurred Amdocs’ decision to acquire the company. New Brite:Bill 5.0 portfolio capabilities, such as automatic monitoring of charges liable for dispute and proactive resolution of problematic billing charges that reduce customer loyalty, validate Brite:Bill’s innovation acumen and reputation. However, Amdocs’ progress in leveraging Brite:Bill software innovations into its own portfolio remains unclear and brings to light the concerns attached to the standalone approach.
So, what steps does Amdocs need to take to ensure long-term success of the Brite:Bill acquisition and its standalone strategy? A few things quickly come to mind:
- Amdocs needs to directly integrate Brite:Bill service billing capabilities and innovations into its own SI&O and CES 10.1 portfolio. Direct integration tightens its go-to-market proposition and packaging, enabling Amdocs to rapidly push Brite:Bill solutions into new markets.
- By bringing Brite:Bill assets into the CES 10.1 platform, Amdocs strengthens the portfolio cohesion needed to diversify Brite:Bill’s customer footprint. Over 95% of Brite:Bill’s business relies on consumer billing transactions, warranting expansion into the enterprise segment to guard against downturns in consumer business and counter accelerated rival targeting of enterprise billing.
- With direct integration of Brite:Bill capabilities into its platform, Amdocs rapidly leverages its prepaid billing business relations and expertise into phasing Brite:Bill away from dependence on postpaid billing applications. Overreliance on the standalone approach risks delaying Brite:Bill’s potential to win more converged postpaid/prepaid billing business.
- Tighter integration into its SI&O services portfolio stands to hasten the geographic diversification of Brite:Bill’s footprint, particularly in emerging regions and among second/third-tier operators.
Overall, Amdocs made the prudent choice in opting to operate Brite:Bill and its acquired brethren, Pontis and Vindicia, as independent entities. However, in the case of Brite:Bill, Amdocs must navigate the pros and cons of the standalone approach in taking advantage of Brite:Bill innovations to enhance cross-portfolio capabilities and avoiding delays in capitalizing on emerging service billing market opportunities.