What we doAbillity^®Rating

Rating

While charging the appropriate price for products and services may sound like a straightforward matter, this is certainly not always the case in practice.

Imagine dealing with a large variety of clients or client groups, each with their own price agreements, and the matter can become quite complex and confusing quite easily. Moreover, those price agreements may change over time (e.g. as a result of indexation) and may depend on volume (staggered discounts), other services (combined discounts), cumulative consumption (bundles), time of delivery (peak rate) and so on.

Abillity^® allows you to implement these types of price agreements (and more) in a way that’s transparent to users and manageable for yourself.

Why opt for rating with FIQAS?

It's configurable

Pricing models can be controlled by administrators.

It's manageable

Using standard agreements whenever possible, plus it allows exceptions to be defined.

It's transparant

It can always be retraced how a price was established.

These clients have trusted us with their rating process

Port of Rotterdam

FIQAS provides the software that translates ship visits to the Rotterdam port area fully automatically and in real-time into a report of port dues. Upon entering the cargo volume by the user, the report is immediately converted into an invoice.

PostNL

Now that PostNL Transport has also started using Abillity^®, they are one step closer to their ambition of becoming the biggest provider of logistics solutions and postal services in, to and from the Benelux.

Sound of Data

Sound of Data specializes in inbound telephony services, IVR solutions, SMS, mass voting, and WhatsApp integration. The consumption data generated from these services is processed by FIQAS into debit, credit, control, and remittance invoices.

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An essential extension of the sales process

Keep agreements with clients

In terms of execution, rating is mostly a financial process; from a broader perspective, however, rating is putting into practice that which you have agreed with your clients. And agreements must be kept, so determining the correct rates is actually an essential extension of the sales process.

If rates are misapplied and too high, your client will be dissatisfied, a complaint will follow (a costly burden on your customer service) as well as work to implement a correction or credit. If rates are misapplied and are too low, chances are you’ll never hear about it, and you’ll suffer (potentially hidden) lost sales. From a business perspective, therefore, the importance of correct rating cannot be underestimated. Abillity^{^®} helps you apply rates correctly and perform checks.

Flexible rating

Set yourself apart

If we take things one step further, we can say that the ability to rate flexibly sets your organisation apart in terms of marketing. Consider, for instance, car rental company A, which rents out cars at a fixed rate per day that must be high enough to remain profitable, even for wholesale clients. In this case, rating is quite straightforward. Compare this with competitor B, who uses Abillity^{^®} and is able to charge a low(er) base fee, with additional consumption based on actual mileage driven. As a bonus, loyal customers also get volume discounts and free mileage on Mother’s and Father’s Day. Which one would be more appealing to you?

Unlimited possibilities

Fixed and variable charges

Rating almost always involves a combination of fixed charges (including recurring ones, e.g. subscriptions) and variable charges (orders/consumption). If a client is on a subscription, they pay a fixed sum periodically. These sums can be calculated using Abillity^{^®}. For example, subscriptions may have prepaid, postpaid, proportional and/or varying subscription periods (e.g. monthly or annual).
Client consumption generates raw data (‘transactions’), coming from a network, metering system or other application. This raw data includes information that can serve as a base for determining rates, such as date and time, a client identifier (e.g. a phone number, card number or device ID) and the consumption itself.

Price incentives

Special agreements

Fixed and variable charges are often combined. For example, a certain type of consumption may be included in the fixed charge, with the client only having to pay more if additional consumption occurs. There are also many other ‘special’ arrangements that can be made with clients. These include special surcharges (e.g. penalties), security deposits, occasional discounts (‘summer campaign’), commission schemes, volume discounts and whatever else is desirable from a commercial point of view to use as a price incentive.

The Abillity^{^®} rating module can be used to correctly apply this broad spectrum of price variations, including on a large scale (even when tens of millions of transactions are involved).

Rate-labelled order lines

The rating process results in rate-labelled (and mostly logically grouped) order lines, which can be used as input for the next step in the process: invoicing.

More information?

Keen to find out if our platform is right for your organisation? Contact us or schedule a free online demo. We look forward to talking with you!

Henk Stobbe

Commercial Director

+31 297 382323 Schedule an online demo