Mediation, the process of converting raw usage data into information that’s usable for calculating pricing for invoices, is a critical piece of the billing process. Depending on the size and scale of a business, usage data may come from many sources and in many forms. The key to successfully collecting usage information is normalizing, aggregating, and transforming that data into standard format that is easily digestible for your billing platform — ideally with no manual intervention.

While legacy billing systems may be able to handle a few data sources and configuration rules, as more and more billing models need to be added and the volume of usage events grows, most legacy systems will struggle to keep up. An agile system featuring automated mediation, on the other hand, makes mediation a breeze, streamlining the ingestion of data, preventing revenue leakage, and minimizing errors to remove friction from the billing process.

You can read more about the ins and outs of mediation here, but for now, let’s zero in on the four key benefits of automated mediation.

Configurable Business Rules

Depending on what kind of data each usage event produces and where all that data comes from, processing it all can be a complicated process. Managing all those rules manually or with spreadsheets can be a tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone process. But an automated mediation system like Gotransverse’s uses configurable business rules to convert the data into the right format for the rating engine. And since those rules are easily configurable, they can be changed and updated quickly when the business model calls for it. No specialty billing experts required.

End-to-End Traceability

Often, gnarly billing issues could have been prevented if the finance team had had the opportunity to catch them higher in the funnel. But most legacy systems don’t offer fully transparent processes — particularly when it comes to complex mediation. The right automated platform, however, provides full visibility into the data at every step of the process to ensure it’s getting normalized, aggregated, and transformed correctly. Businesses can trace their data carefully until they’re comfortable letting their mediation engine run on its own. And even then, it’s easy to check in and see what’s happening at a moment’s notice.

High Volume Event Processing

For many traditional billing systems, rapid customer growth — or even just a particularly busy week — can put a strain on mediation. But an automated mediation engine can process high volumes of data at high speeds without missing a beat. Additionally, the cloud-based engine is designed with elasticity, meaning capacity can grow at a moment’s notice, but it can be reallocated elsewhere in slower times — unlike on-premises mediation solutions that can only grow, in servers and in cost. Long story short: the right automated mediation engine eliminates data bottlenecks during the busy moments to help businesses keep growing.

Error Detection and Prevention

A sophisticated automated mediation engine can identify data problems (like malformed data, format changes, and other errors) immediately and isolate them for repair, potentially even communicating with third-party systems to resolve issues. As a result, glitches disappear before they become problems that negatively impact the customer experience or the bottom line. These proactive quality control measures ensure a frictionless, accurate billing process.

At the end of the mediation process, all that newly normalized usage data must be converted into pricing and then used to bill customers and accept payments. With the right billing platform, billing, payment collection, and revenue recognition go just as smoothly as automated mediation. Gotransverse prides ourselves on taking the friction and the headaches out of every part of the billing process, starting with mediation. That’s why Gotransverse Mediation is configurable and transparent, designed to empower growth with minimal manual intervention. To learn more about our mediation engine — and the rest of the Gotransverse platform — we invite you to take a virtual tour today. When you’re ready, call us to schedule your complimentary, personalized demo.