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Modernizing a Business-Critical Billing Platform with Oracle APEX
An international telecommunications provider modernized its application landscape for processing and reconciling invoices. The result: significantly shorter processing times, release times of less than 30 minutes, and approximately 33 modernized applications for international teams.
Summary
Industry: Telecommunications
Technologies: Oracle APEX, Oracle Database 11g
Services: Migration, application development, process digitization, release and change management
Customer benefits
- Release times reduced from several hours to less than 30 minutes
- Processing time for invoice entry has been reduced significantly
- Approximately 33 applications successfully modernized and rebuilt
The Challenge
As the demands on the processing of wholesale roaming invoices increased, the existing application landscape had to be further developed. The existing database had reached its capacity limit, making a migration necessary. At the same time, it was important to ensure that existing applications would continue to be supported and that new requirements could be implemented efficiently. The goal was to make invoice processing more efficient, create transparency regarding incidents, service requests, and changes, and improve collaboration across different teams and locations. In addition, the aim was to establish a foundation for implementing future requirements more quickly.
Our solution
Oracle Database 11g was selected as the target platform. The company chose Oracle APEX for the migration of the applications. The implementation took place in stages: First, an administration application with user management and a ticketing system for incidents and service requests were developed. Subsequently, the production applications were gradually migrated and further developed.
Among the most important components of the new application landscape were:
- Administration Application with User Management
- Ticket System for Incidents and Service Requests
- Applications for Processing and Reconciliation of Invoices
- Semi-automated matching of invoices and payments
- Implementation of Release and Change Management Based on ITIL Principles
- Setting up a test environment for quality assurance of new releases
- Implementation of the Financial Clearing Application (FinCA) with functions for invoice processing, invoice approval, reconciliation, reporting, payment processing, and transfer of settlement documents for posting in SAP
The result
The modernization led to noticeable improvements in users’ day-to-day work. The time required to enter invoices was significantly reduced, since only the data that is actually needed is now transferred to the client. The introduction of the ticket system created transparency regarding incidents and service requests. Recurring problems could be specifically identified and addressed, which led to a noticeable reduction in the workload for administrators. The implementation of release and change management enabled changes to be planned and implemented in a structured manner. Whereas releases previously required several hours of effort and caused production downtime, they now typically take less than 30 minutes. The additional test environment helped identify errors early on, improved the quality of new releases, and accelerated development. In total, around two dozen new applications were developed, replacing large parts of the previous system landscape. Processes were simplified, manual effort was reduced, and new requirements were implemented more quickly. The new application landscape is now used by various departments and international subsidiaries and supports the processing and reconciliation of invoices as well as other core business processes.
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