Implementation / FAQ's

CommADVISORT

Frequently Asked Questions

Overview of CommADVISOR Functionality

• What does CommADVISOR do?
• Do I need the services of consultants and auditors to make CommADVISOR work?
• Does CommADVISOR really automate 100% of telecom expense and resource management?
• How can CommADVISOR achieve 100% automation, when every other company has failed to do so?
• How detailed and complete is the analysis done by CommADVISOR?
• As a 'nerve center', how does CommADVISOR work?
• How does CommADVISOR help me optimize my telecom spend and resources?
• How can I check to see that CommADVISOR has reached the right conclusions?
• How hard is it for my people to use CommADVISOR?

Getting Started

• What do I need to do to get started?
• How long will it take to implement?
• How do I adapt CommADVISOR to my processes and my organization?
• How do I integrate CommADVISOR with my organization's systems (General Ledger etc.)?
• Can I start with just one carrier?
• Can I add other carriers?
• Do I really need any special IT support whatsoever from my organization?

CommADVISOR Savings

• What kind of savings can I expect?
• Can I have an evaluation or trial period?
• Why not just use CommADVISOR for a while and then turn it off once everything is cleaned up?

Using CommADVISOR

• How does CommADVISOR work in a distributed organization with multiple regions and cost centers?
• What additional information do I need to provide to start-up CommADVISOR?
• Will there be extra work for my staff?
• Will CommADVISOR integrate with my cost accounting systems?
• What about security of my data?

Installing CommADVISOR

• Is CommADVISOR purely software, or does it include hardware?
• What hardware is required to run CommADVISOR?
• Do I need to purchase additional hardware to run CommADVISOR?
• Will you provide CommADVISOR as a managed solution?
• Can my organization host CommADVISOR?

Overview of CommADVISOR Functionality

What does CommADVISOR do?
CommADVISOR is an intelligent ERP-level system that fully automates the management of enterprise telecom resources. In each process, CommADVISOR actually does the work. This means it cleans data, performs analysis, generates recommendations, manages process and transaction workflow, interacts with other systems, monitors case status, generates reports, manages messaging between role players, generates alerts, and drives to closure all transactions and cases. CommADVISOR performs these types of work across each of the following processes:

• Inventory Management: builds and maintains an up-to-the minute inventory of all lines, services and contracts, by carrier, location and organizational unit.
• Provisioning Management: takes requests for moves, adds, changes and deletes, matches to the optimal contract and terms, and passes correct order detail to carrier for provisioning. Monitors provisioning status and generates analysis for first bill review. Automatically updates active service inventories.
• Bill Resolution: uses inventory, contracts, tariffs, and billing data to automate in-cycle analysis of every charge for every service in every line for every carrier, each month, before the bill is submitted for payment. Generates dynamic pricing from a contract calculus that determines binding terms and conditions from interdependent contracts and tariffs. Generates a detailed explanation of each analysis and makes action recommendations for each. Takes input from authorized role players to trigger transactions for each charge.
• Dispute Management: identifies billing errors and recommended disputes. Drives the process workflow across authorized role players to generate dispute documentation, notify carriers, generate accruals for the general ledger, monitor bills for dispute credits, and resolve disputes for every dispute in every bill.
• Invoice Processing and Charge Accounting: Performs accounting for every bill including amount to be paid, dispute accruals, and monthly reconciliation of accruals given dispute credits in bill. Passes information to general ledger, and allocates all updates by organizational business unit as specified by the customer.
• Contract Management: monitors usage and contractual terms to determine utilization. Generates alerts for over and under-utilization and graphic reports of utilization trends. Insures that new bills represent application of latest contractual terms. Provides highly detailed spend analysis current to the most recent billing period. On-demand analysis and forecasting of termination liabilities and usage penalties.

Does CommADVISOR require additional services of consultants and auditors?
No. CommADVISOR's 100% automation means that you do not need any consultants or auditors to fill gaps that cannot be handled by the software. You can now handle all aspects of telecom expense and resource management and do a more thorough job than before, even with consultants and auditors. And, you can handle the job in a fraction of the time they used to spend, because 100% automation means the tedious work is done by CommADVISOR, freeing you to focus on optimization and growth.

Does CommADVISOR really automate 100% of telecom expense and resource management?
Yes, CommADVISOR automates every aspect of multiple processes (Inventory Management, Bill Resolution, Dispute Management, Invoice Processing and Accounting, Provisioning, and Contract Management. (See previous question)). But in addition, the optimization achieved within each process is carried forward to the next process. Each process is optimized in part by the previous one, and impacts the optimization of the subsequent process.

How can CommADVISOR achieve 100% automation, when every other company has failed to do so?
It is easy to spot when automation falls short of 100%, because services (consulting and auditing) are needed to fill the gaps in automation.
CommADVISOR can achieve 100% automation because of unique technology breakthroughs that put it in a class by itself, one that allows the customer to rethink TEM.

How detailed and complete is the analysis done by CommADVISOR?
CommADVISOR builds up its account records by analyzing every charge in every bill, and applying to each charge the applicable binding term in the applicable contract. Thus the analysis is at the most granular level of information (every charge), and the scope is comprehensive (every line and service).

As a 'nerve center', how does CommADVISOR work?
Unlike any other system, CommADVISOR is continuously doing the work for you, attempting to optimize each of your telecom related processes for you. The core goal is optimization across the life cycle of telecom expense and resource management. CommADVISOR is a fully transactional system that enables integration with other enterprise systems and real-time collaborative problem-solving with the carrier.

How does CommADVISOR help me optimize by telecom spend and resources?
CommADVISOR generates optimization in each core process, and orchestrates across processes to achieve optimization across the entire life cycle of telecom-related processes. Here are examples of types of optimization achieved in various processes:

• Inventory Management: optimizes inventory by keeping it complete and up-to-date for all lines and services, across every provisioning change.
• Bill Resolution: optimizes payments so that they reflect only valid charges, based on the actual service inventories and correct contractual terms and conditions. Automatically finds all questionable charges and clear errors, explains in detail what is wrong in each. Removes disputes from payments, while managing accruals until resolution. Minimizes staff time and cost to manage analysis, disputes.
• Dispute Management: optimizes the finding and resolving of disputes, insuring that all errors are detected and corrected before the bill is paid. Optimizes the staff time and expense of finding and resolving disputes.
• Invoice Processing and Accounting: optimizes the staff time and expense of processing invoices and achieving accounting for all charges and disputes, allocated to all relevant business units, and reported in all relevant business reports.
• Provisioning Management: optimizes the ordering process to insure that new orders reflect most recent and most advantageous business terms, even if they are unknown to the parties placing the order. Optimizes staff time and expense in order tracking and first bill review.
• Contract Management: optimizes contract utilization, avoiding costs of undetected over-utilization, and the liabilities of underutilization. Minimizes termination liabilities. Helps optimize new contractual terms by making it easy to compare the terms of two contracts and their effect on spend given actual usage. Helps optimize service and carrier choice with real-time scorecards of performance by carrier, service and location.

How can I check to see that CommADVISOR has reached the right conclusions?
The output of CommADVISOR is not merely a set of reports. The actual detailed analysis behind each recommendation is one click away. Thousands of such explanations lay out the exact information and logic used in the analysis. So you can check the analysis yourself. To assist your checking, the specific data of charges, inventory and contractual terms is only 1 click from its corresponding explanation of the analysis.

How hard is it for my people to use CommADVISOR?
CommADVISOR is a tool to be used directly by various Telecom, IT and Finance role players in your organization. It is not a tool to be used by expert consultants. It presumes no special knowledge to operate.
CommADVISOR has a simple and intuitive interface that can be used immediately, in many cases without any special training. Complex tasks can be executed in a few clicks.
CommADVISOR does not merely provide reports. It shares the data and the reasoning of each analysis, available in thousands of complex explanation documents automatically generated by the system. And our context management system links all the relevant portion of bills, inventory or contracts, making each just a click away.
CommADVISOR automatically filters the view and allowable actions for each role player, so that each user sees only what he should be allowed to see, and executes what he should be allowed to do.
In short, your people will be able to start using CommADVISOR in anywhere between a few minutes to a few hours.



Getting Started

What do I need to do to get started with CommADVISOR?
As a managed service, CommADVISOR takes in a monthly stream of e-bills and activates the entire application, which is available over the Internet. Activating your billing feeds takes anywhere from 30-60 days, depending on the number of carriers.

How long will it take to implement CommADVISOR?
It usually takes a carrier approximately 30 days to "turn up" an electronic billing feed. Cerylion works during this time to encode the customer's contract and inventory information. Then CommADVISOR automatically analyzes the data for the first billing cycle and gives you the results.
If the carrier makes data for previous billing cycles available -- most carriers will provide the previous 3 cycles worth of data and some will provide up to 12 cycles -- CommADVISOR will automatically analyze that data as well.

How do I adapt CommADVISOR to my process and my organization?
In a few hours, it is possible to adapt CommADVISOR to your organizational structure, processes, and accounting system. If you provide Cerylion with your organization's information, Cerylion will help you tailor CommADVISOR. Here is what we need from you:

• Your organization chart (reporting structure)
• Your business units, by location (address)
• The General Ledger codes you wish to use for accounting purposes
• The names of role players in various processes, and the authorization levels for each player
• Your policies and preferences on a variety of factors (alerts, audit trails, etc.)

Here's what the tailoring of CommADVISOR to your organization will enable:

• Analysis and reporting will be structured by your business units.
• Reports can be for any departments and can be aggregated on demand by any level in your organizational chain of command.
• CommADVISOR can output detailed accounting information to your company's General Ledger (payments, accruals, credits etc. allocated by business unit, cost center or other charge coding).
• An Audit Trail for every action taken by every player in every process.

How do I integrate CommADVISOR with my organization's systems (General Ledger, etc.)?
CommADVISOR's Invoice Processing and Accounting Module can feed your General Ledger directly.

• Payments, accruals, credits are automatically calculated based on the approvals of your staff using CommADVISOR
• Telecom expense is automatically allocated by business unit according to the rules that you define
• Each dispute is treated as a separate accrual account, one that automatically processes credits from bills, until the accrual can be closed out.
• Direct integration with mainstream accounts payable systems like PeopleSoft, SAP or Oracle Financials makes the entire process hands free.

Can I start with just one carrier?
It is often best to start with only one carrier's bills. This allows you to quickly experience what CommADVISOR can do for you, and to then make broader deployment decisions.

Can I add other carriers?
Adding additional carriers is simple. All that is needed is authorization allowing us to access your account data from the carrier.

Do I need any special IT support from my organization?
Because CommADVISOR is offered as a secure managed service, all you need is an Internet browser and a password. You can access CommADVISOR securely from any location in the world.
The result: you do not need any special assistance whatsoever from your IT department, and you do not need any special IT budget for software or hardware purchases or for maintenance.



CommADVISOR Savings

What kind of savings can I expect using CommADVISOR?
CommADVISOR can save your company money in many ways, all across the telecom life cycle.

• Audit and Recovery Expense Savings: you no longer need to incur the expense of hiring auditors and consultants to recover over-payments and resolve disputes.
• Reduced Overpayments: you will no longer have overpayments, because your bills are analyzed 'in-cycle', meaning all overcharges are identified and disputed before the bill is paid.
• Reduced over utilization costs: you no longer will lose money by continuing disadvantageous contracts once their utilization requirements have been met.
• Reduced underutilization costs: you will reduce the costs of underutilization penalties because you are alerted to underutilization trends long before the penalty date, and can therefore shift usage to underused contracts.
• Budget Reporting to Management: you can reduce the costs of creating reports to management, since a wide variety of reports are automatically generated.
• Procurement cost savings: you can avoid the costs of provisioning services against the wrong contractual terms and the costs of first bill reviews.
• Contract management costs saved: you can avoid the costs of labor needed to manage contracts.
• Invoice Processing & Cost Accounting savings: you can avoid the costs of special accounting labor to process invoices, maintain accruals on disputes, allocate costs to various business units .and enter data to the General Ledger.
• Contract Compliance cost savings: you can avoid the costs of sub-optimal procurement.
• SOX Compliance cost savings: you can avoid the costs of special labor to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements.

Can I have an evaluation or trial period?
CommADVISOR comes with a 90 trial period. During that time we will activate your carrier billing feeds, inventory and contracts. Then you have a chance to use CommADVISOR to see how easy it is use, and how powerfully it allows your staff to do the work-all the work-at a level of precision and effectiveness not possible before.

Why not just use CommADVISOR for a while and then turn it off once everything is cleaned up?
CommADVISOR is a full life cycle telecom facilities management package that keeps on finding new cost savings in each of the following areas.

• Cleaning Bills. Since most errors happen at the time of moves, adds, changes or deletes, billing errors never go away completely. In a world of accelerating changes in lines, services and providers, billing errors are incessant, and need on-going correction.
• Reducing costs of Telecom Operations. CommADVISOR reduces the cost of Telecom Facilities Management in an on-going way across multiple processes including billing error detection, managing disputes, maintaining accurate financials, and managing transitions to new services and providers.
• More effective Transition Management. CommADVISOR can accelerate the transition to more cost-effective telecom options. By keeping track of actual usage by inventory, service, and carrier, CommADVISOR supports transitions more cost-effective alternatives, and enables better contract negotiations.
• Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) Compliance. CommADVISOR allows SOX compliance by putting in place on-going methods and procedures to minimize telecom expense and the means to accurately track telecom expense in financials.

In addition, many dispute resolution processes take months to conclude. So, clients find that it does not make sense to jump in and out of using CommADVISOR.



Using CommADVISOR

How does CommADVISOR work in a distributed organization with multiple regions and cost centers?
CommADVISOR works well across multiple business units. E-billing feeds can be received for a single national site, or for multiple local sites. No matter how many e-billing feeds are received, CommADVISOR's processes ensure that contracts, inventories, disputes, cost allocations, financial accruals, scorecards, alerts etc. are all organized by any set of cost centers or hierarchical organizational units that you wish to specify. Organizational definitions are easily changed at any time, and instantly generate recalculations of all dimensions listed above.
CommADVISOR provides workspaces for all the players inside your organization -- network operations, accounts payable, procurement, local management, and accounting -- as well as external players -- service agent, carrier account mangers -- to access selected CommADVISOR functions.
When we set up CommADVISOR for your organization, you define who gets a workspace, what role they play, what rights they have, and how processes such as service orders or disputes will be routed. While CommADVISOR has default processes already set up, you can rapidly adapt them to the way you work, and not adapt your work to the software.
Each role player logs onto his workspace and finds all the information and tools needed to do their job. Each user can access details, take authorized actions, and automatically route work to the next player in the workflow. Each player's session is completed by emptying the "inbox" for that function.

What additional information do I need to provide to start-up CommADVISOR?
CommADVISOR requires very little information from you:

• Authorizations. You sign a letter of authorization to each carrier that permits us to receive contract terms and electronic copies of your bills.
• Organizational Information. We also need to know the locations you want to group together as cost centers and the organizational hierarchy of cost centers.
• Designated Role Players. You need to define which people in your organization will use CommADVISOR, what roles you want them to play, and what access privileges you want to assign to them.
• General Ledger details. For CommADVISOR to update any of your general ledgers, you need to define details about how to provide/format input files.

Will there be extra work for my staff?
No. There is no extra ongoing work for your staff. In fact, many of the automated features of CommADVISOR will reduce their workload and permit them to spend time on other activities. For example, CommADVISOR automates:

• Identification of billing errors.
• Generation of dispute documentation.
• Reconciliation of each dispute against payments and credits in subsequent bills
• Routing and tracking of disputes
• Generation of cost allocations and accruals for the general ledger
• Bootstrapping and updating of inventory
• Identification of more cost effective options by carrier and geography.
• Generation of transition planning scorecards and benchmarks.
• Notification of contract over/under utilization trends
• Maintenance of audit trails for system actions

The net result is to significantly reduce staffing devoted to these tasks once you have provided the start-up information mentioned above.

Will CommADVISOR integrate with my cost accounting systems?
Yes. CommADVISOR can dramatically simplify your cost accounting by automatically generating accurate monthly cost allocations to each cost center in the organization, making accruals for each dispute and allocating cumulative accruals to cost centers, and by tracking the reconciliation of each dispute from credits received across billing periods. These processes can be completely automated since the resulting accounting entries can be integrated with your general ledger categories and cost centers. Direct integration with mainstream accounts payable systems like PeopleSoft, SAP or Oracle Financials makes the entire process hands free.

What about security of my data?
CommADVISOR provides built-in data security based on a patented Service SandboxT that provides a dynamic firewall for your data. Unlike some service providers, your data is always owned and controlled by you, and we do our best to help you protect it.



Installing CommADVISOR

Is CommADVISOR purely software, or does it include hardware?
CommADVISOR is software. It is a J2EE application developed by Cerylion, Inc. Most clients elect to use CommADVISOR as a hosted service, accessed via the Internet. A few prefer to use it as a managed service behind their own firewall.

What hardware is required to run CommADVISOR?
CommADVISOR runs on standard Intel based Web Servers, App Servers, and Database Servers.

Do I need to purchase additional hardware to run CommADVISOR?
No, the majority of our customers access CommADVISOR using our hosted service.
If there is a requirement to run the application in-house, CommADVISOR is offered as a managed router on the customer's premise.

Can my organization host CommADVISOR?
Yes. We offer a Managed Service package in which the Service Router that hosts CommADVISOR is placed on your premises, behind your firewall.