Why this migration matters to your teams

• Tell us briefly what triggered this billing modernization initiative and the target timing. Options: End-of-life vendor notice, Failed product launch, Regulatory requirement, Proactive modernization, Other
• In the last 12 months, how many billing incidents caused customer credit or revenue adjustments? Options: None, 1-2, 3-5, 6-10, More than 10
• Describe the top two commercial outcomes your leadership expects from replacing the billing platform.
• Who will be the single executive sponsor and which functions will regularly attend migration governance meetings? Options: CIO/CTO, Head of BSS, Head of Finance, Head of Product, Customer Ops, Other
• Estimate the maximum acceptable revenue variance during cutover, expressed as a percentage. Options: <0.1%, 0.1%–0.5%, 0.5%–1%, 1%–2%, >2%

Where billing failure shows up and who notices

• If a single billing error could make your CFO refuse to approve new product launches, which failure would that be?
• Walk me through the last time a billing discrepancy reached customers or regulators, including root cause and time to resolve.
• Which product types or partner settlements consistently require manual intervention during invoicing? Options: Converged bundles, Roaming, Interconnect settlements, Promotions and discounts, Prepaid rating, Other
• What parts of your current reconciliation process consume the most finance headcount weekly? Options: Payment reconciliation, Partner settlements, Invoice adjustments, Chargeback investigations, Data cleansing, Other
• Would uncovering a reproducible mismatch in partner settlement during pilot stop the program, or is remediation acceptable before go-live? Options: Stop immediately, Allow remediation during fixed window, Depends on severity

Hidden decision points and the people who make them

• Who inside procurement, legal, or finance can veto the deal and on what grounds would they do it?
• List the approval gates, required signatures, and expected review timelines from your procurement team to board-level sign-off.
• Tell us which financial reports or KPIs must be preserved exactly during migration for leadership to accept the cutover.
• Assuming the proof shows parity on billing scenarios, who would still block the final decision and why?
• Are there internal teams that prefer an incremental, module-by-module migration versus a full cutover, and which do they recommend? Options: Incremental migration, Big-bang cutover, Hybrid phased approach, Undecided

Technical integrations that will make or break cutover

• Which one integration or data feed would cause an immediate stop if unavailable during cutover?
• Confirm whether your mediation layer, CRM, rating engine exports, and payment gateway provide production read and write APIs that can be tested. Options: All provide APIs, Some provide APIs, some need work, No APIs available, Unsure
• Identify the owners of each API and the typical lead time to issue test credentials.
• Do you have a complete export of historical billing and rating rules that can be delivered for migration, and in which formats? Options: Yes, full export in standard formats, Partial export available, No, needs extraction, Unsure
• Estimate the minimum internal technical headcount you can commit full time during migration, by role. Options: 0-2 engineers, 3-5 engineers, 6-10 engineers, 10+ engineers

Alternatives on your shortlist and the internal DIY option

• Assuming you decide to remain with the incumbent or build internally, what would have to change in their plan for you to walk away from this evaluation?
• List the external vendors, the incumbent, and any internal rebuild options you are actively evaluating today.
• How high is the appetite to build a migration toolset internally versus buying a vendor-provided accelerator? Options: High appetite to build internally, Prefer buying vendor toolset, Undecided, Depends on cost and timeline
• Do internal stakeholders believe an in-house approach can meet your cutover accuracy and timeline targets? Options: Yes, No, Unsure
• Name the single advantage held by a competitor or your internal plan that would cause you to select them over a third-party platform.

Acceptance criteria that must be met to route live traffic

• Suppose the proof period runs for six months and misses one top billing scenario, would you accept an extension or stop the project? Options: Accept extension and remediate, Stop the project, Escalate decision to executive sponsors
• Please list and rank the billing scenarios and edge cases that must pass during acceptance, including partner settlements and converged bundles.
• Provide your minimum acceptable automated reconciliation success rate during pilot, as a percentage. Options: >99.9%, 99.5%–99.9%, 99%–99.5%, <99%
• Identify the individuals and titles required to sign the cutover acceptance, and whether each is enabled to approve live traffic.
• Where do you draw the line between acceptable post-cutover adjustments and failures that require rollback?

Schedule realities and the single constraint that derails plans

• Name the constraint, whether scheduling, partner commitment, or regulatory window, that would force you to delay cutover beyond target.
• When is your target go-live, quarter or month? Options: Next quarter, Within 6 months, 6-12 months, 12+ months, Undecided
• State your acceptable blackout window for cutover validation in hours or days. Options: <4 hours, 4-24 hours, 1-3 days, 3-7 days, >7 days
• Are there immovable external dates such as regulatory reporting runs, partner invoicing cycles, or seasonal peaks we must avoid? Options: Yes, regulatory reporting, Yes, partner invoicing, Yes, seasonal peaks, No immovable dates, Multiple
• Specify who has authority to re-prioritize cutover date and describe the escalation path they will use.

Data readiness, reconciliation targets, and who owns them

• Point to the single dataset or report whose inaccuracy would immediately undermine revenue recognition.
• Provide the legacy billing export formats you can deliver on demand and the teams that own each export.
• When you run historical reconciliations today, how far back do you validate invoices and rating rules? Options: Last billing cycle, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, All history available
• Describe your reconciliation cadence, including the key KPIs you report to finance and operations.
• Would persistent unreconciled deltas discovered during pilot be a program stopper, or acceptable if resolved within an agreed remediation window? Options: Program stopper, Acceptable with remediation, Depends on size of delta

Next steps, risks that accelerate or kill the deal, and immediate asks

• If we could deliver a validated migration plan covering your top five scenarios within 8 weeks, what would prevent you from accelerating approval?
• Outline the top three risks you want the seller to accept in contract and the ones you expect to retain.
• State the earliest date your teams can commit to begin pre-deployment readiness activities.
• Could you continue the engagement if a required API or data extract is unavailable in the first four weeks? Options: Yes, with mitigations, No, we would pause, Depends on which API/data
• Share the immediate access items your team can grant in the next 5 business days to keep momentum. Options: Test credentials to mediation, Export of historical billing data, API contact and SLAs, Signed NDA, Other

• Solution Experience Session

• Confirm the current state and its cost
• You confirm the demonstrated workflow removes the manual workarounds you described in Discovery.
• Provide the three highest-risk billing scenarios with representative sample records for the configured proof.
• Map operator requirements to platform workflows
• You agree that partner settlement and real-time charging behaviors in the proof meet your finance and commercial acceptance criteria or identify specific gaps.
• Deliver a configured sandbox pre-seeded with the selected scenario and test accounts before the proof execution session.
• Run an end-to-end proof for one buyer scenario
• Confirm the stakeholder list and explicit acceptance criteria required for finance and operations sign-off at cutover.
• You sign off on the remaining evidence and timeline required to advance to a structured proof period.
• Produce a runbook and test plan for the executed scenario, including expected reconciliation reports and tolerance thresholds.
• Show reconciliation and migration safeguards
• Validate fit to your acceptance criteria
• Agree next evidence and decision milestones

• Solution Experience Session
• Solution Experience Deck
• Solution Brief

• meeting
• slides
• document

• Migrate subscriber and account records
• Migrate historical charging and usage history
• Deploy product catalog and offer composer
• Configure real-time rating and charging engine
• Activate mediation and usage event ingestion
• Configure converged billing flows (multi-service)
• Integrate payment gateway and payment processing
• Configure partner settlement and revenue sharing
• Migrate interconnect tariffs and settlements
• Enable invoice generation and bill presentment
• Deploy customer self-care billing portal
• Perform billing cutover and reconciliation

Migrate subscriber and account records

• How many subscriber and account records need to be migrated from your current provisioning and CRM systems? Options: Less than 100k, 100k-1M, 1M-10M, More than 10M
• Which source systems contain authoritative identifiers for your subscribers (HLR/HSS, CRM, provisioning database, LDAP) that must be reconciled? Options: Provisioning DB, CRM, HLR/HSS, Other / custom system
• Are subscriber billing hierarchies in your data (parent account, sub-accounts, corporate billing relationships) required to be preserved exactly in the target model? Options: Yes, No, Partial — need mapping rules
• Who in your organization owns subscriber identifiers and account mapping decisions during migration?
• Provide the acceptable data accuracy threshold for MSISDN, IMSI and ICCID mappings at cutover (for example 99.99%).
• What are the acceptance criteria you will use to validate a successful subscriber and account migration (for example record counts reconciled, sampled bill verification, zero critical identifier mismatches)?

Migrate historical charging and usage history

• How much historical charging and usage history (GB of CDRs or number of days/months) must you migrate into the billing datastore? Options: Last 30 days, Last 90 days, Last 12 months, More than 12 months / complete history
• Which mediation export formats hold your historical records (flat CDR files, 3GPP XDR, CSV exports, database dumps) that we must ingest? Options: CDR flat files, 3GPP XDR, CSV/TSV, DB export / proprietary
• Are rating lookup keys and legacy custom rating keys required to be imported alongside usage history so historical bills can be re-generated? Options: Yes, No, Only for flagged customers
• Who will provide archived exports or SFTP/object storage endpoints for your historical CDRs and usage files?
• Provide the regulatory or audit retention window you must preserve for charging history (for example 5 years for tax audits) and any markets with longer retention requirements.
• What are the acceptance criteria you will use to confirm historical charging completeness (for example percent of records reconciled, zero-mismatch for top N customers)?

Deploy product catalog and offer composer

• How many active products, SKUs, and bundle templates will you publish into the new catalog at go-live? Options: Less than 100, 100-500, 500-2,000, More than 2,000
• List the product attributes you must preserve in your catalog (pricing tiers, validity periods, rating keys, usage buckets, partner codes).
• Do you require catalog features such as versioning, staged activation, and rollback for offers during commercial launch windows? Options: Yes — all three, Only versioning and staged activation, No — simple publish only
• Which teams in your organization will own bundle configuration and offer lifecycle in the catalog (product managers, commercial operations, pricing)? Options: Product management, Commercial operations, Finance/pricing, Other
• When do you plan an initial catalog freeze for migration to guarantee stable offer definitions (provide a date or sprint boundary)?
• Describe any external partner offers or marketplace connectors that you must model in the catalog (for example third-party streaming partners, MVNO reseller offers).

Configure real-time rating and charging engine

• Specify the peak concurrent online charging sessions your real-time rating engine must support (sessions per second or TPS) during busy periods.
• List the charging protocols and interfaces you require for integration with PCRF/PCF/OCS and network elements (for example Diameter Gy/Gx/Gy, RESTful OCS APIs, gRPC). Options: Diameter (Gy/Gx/Gy), RESTful OCS APIs, gRPC, Other
• Will offline rating and mediation lookups be required by your finance team for postpaid reconciliations of historical CDRs? Options: Yes, No, Only for exception cases
• Which teams will own policy definitions for real-time discounts, spend-limits, and fairness rules in your organization? Options: Product, Network / engineering, Finance, Commercial ops
• State the SLAs you require for rating latency (for example 50 ms median, 200 ms 99th percentile) for your real-time charging flows.
• What test IMSIs, test MSISDNs, or emulation feeds will you provide to validate the real-time rating logic against simulated 5G slice traffic and high-volume events?

Activate mediation and usage event ingestion

• Specify how many mediation adapters and event sources you need connected at go-live (PCRF, GGSN/PGW, IMS, streaming gateways). Options: 1-3, 4-10, 11-25, More than 25
• Identify the message formats your network probes and gateways emit that we must support (CDR, IPDR, JSON, protobuf). Options: CDR, IPDR, JSON, Protobuf, Custom binary
• Confirm whether existing mediation rules for filtering, enrichment, or transformation (for example IMSI normalization, roaming mapping) must be ported to the new mediation layer. Options: All must be ported, Only critical rules, No — we will reimplement
• Name the operations role that will maintain ingestion pipelines and own event schema changes during deployment and after cutover.
• When will you be able to provision test feeds or replay archived mediation files for validation in a staging environment?
• Detail any privacy or lawful interception constraints on your usage events (for example masked MSISDNs, encrypted payloads) that will affect ingestion or storage.

Configure converged billing flows (multi-service)

• Estimate the number of converged service types you need unified billing for (mobile voice, SMS, data, fixed broadband, IPTV). Options: 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, More than 6
• Identify the bundling rules you require (cross-service discounts, tiered allowances, carryover data) and examples of bundles you run today.
• Do any of your services require separate tax treatment on invoices by jurisdiction (for example telecom excise, VAT, municipal levies)? Options: Yes — by market, No, Partial — specific products
• Name the finance lead who will define converged bill presentation order, summary lines, and per-service subtotals.
• When do you require cross-service rating precedence to be enforced (for example real-time overrides vs offline batch rating) during launch?
• Attach or describe anonymized examples of complex bills or account statements we should use to validate converged billing flows.

Integrate payment gateway and payment processing

• State how many payment methods you must support at go-live (card networks, direct debit, mobile wallet, carrier billing). Options: 1-2, 3-5, 6-10, More than 10
• Indicate which billing ledger will record payment transactions for reconciliation in your chart of accounts (receivables ledger, settlement ledger, escrow). Options: Receivables ledger, Settlement ledger, Escrow, Other
• Do you require 3D Secure, tokenization, or PCI-compliant vaulting for card transactions processed through the new gateway? Options: Yes — tokenization and PCI vaulting, Yes — 3D Secure only, No special requirements
• Please confirm the team responsible for merchant account onboarding, chargeback handling, and dispute resolution during migration.
• When do you plan to enable recurring billing mandates and token refresh to align with your payment provider certification schedule?
• Are there country-level payment routing rules or foreign exchange settlement constraints (for example local acquiring, split settlement) we must implement? Options: Yes — multiple markets, Yes — one market, No

Configure partner settlement and revenue sharing

• Estimate how many partner contracts require automated settlement and revenue-share calculations at go-live. Options: Less than 10, 10-50, 51-200, More than 200
• Define the partner types you need to model for revenue share (content providers, MVNOs, roaming partners, wholesale carriers). Options: Content providers, MVNOs, Roaming partners, Wholesale carriers, Other
• Do partner contracts include minimum guarantee clauses, tiered revenue shares, or waterfall splits that you expect to be automated? Options: Yes — minimum guarantees, Yes — tiered/waterfall, No
• Please identify the owner of your master schedule of partner rates, tariffs, and invoice templates for settlements.
• When are your partner cut-off windows for settlement runs (for example daily 00:00 UTC, weekly, monthly) and which timezones apply?
• Detail the settlement outputs you require for downstream accounting (partner statement, interconnect reconciliation, GL posting file).

Migrate interconnect tariffs and settlements

• Indicate the count of interconnect partner agreements and tariff rate sheets that must be migrated from your legacy system. Options: Less than 50, 50-200, 200-1,000, More than 1,000
• Describe the billing cycles and settlement frequencies defined in your interconnect contracts (for example hourly, daily, monthly) that we must preserve.
• Please enumerate any historical interconnect settlement disputes that require remediation or special mapping during migration.
• Please confirm the finance contact who will reconcile interconnect GL postings to the billing ledger during migration cutover.
• What is the required lead time (in days) to complete end-to-end interconnect validation before you will approve routing live traffic? Options: 1-3 days, 4-7 days, 8-14 days, More than 14 days
• Are there partner portals, legacy EDI feeds, or custom CSV formats for interconnect that will require bespoke adapters for automated settlements? Options: Yes — partner portals, Yes — EDI feeds, Yes — custom CSV/other, No

Enable invoice generation and bill presentment

• Confirm the number of invoice templates and local-language variants you must support at go-live. Options: 1-3, 4-10, 11-50, More than 50
• Please enumerate the tax regimes and local invoice fields required per jurisdiction (for example VAT IDs, invoice footers, local tax lines).
• Will you require self-service invoice and balance retrieval APIs for customers and partners (for example REST endpoints for invoice download)? Options: Yes — public APIs, Yes — partner-restricted APIs, No
• Please provide the approver who will sign off on final invoice rendering rules and layouts prior to the cutover acceptance gate.
• When should invoice generation be scheduled relative to nightly rating and billing runs (for example immediately after run, next business day)? Options: Immediately after run, Next business day, Custom schedule
• Please identify any mandatory e-invoicing formats or local regulatory XSDs per market that we must validate generated invoices against.

• decision_readiness
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• desired_state
• stakeholders
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• Order Form / Subscription Agreement
• Master Services Agreement (MSA)
• Statement of Work (SOW)
• Service Level Agreement (SLA)
• Data Processing Agreement (DPA)
• Migration and Cutover Plan
• Cutover Acceptance & Sign-off
• Change Order Agreement
• Source Code Escrow Agreement (conditional)

• Go-live Health Check (weeks 1-4)
• First Measurement Review (weeks 4-10)
• Acceptance Gate — Outcome Validation and Formal Decision (around day 90)
• Monthly Operational Review — Hypercare and Issue Burn-down (monthly for first 6 months)
• Quarterly Review — Outcome Realization and Revenue Reconciliation

• Close or provide mitigation for the top five high-severity billing incidents and publish verification logs.
• Confirm legacy system decommissioning status and the archive report that satisfies retention requirements.
• Publish the formal acceptance decision and supporting evidence into the contract repository.
• Execute the legacy decommissioning checklist or document retention-as-read-only and deliver the archive verification report.
• If remediation is required, deliver the corrective action plan with verification steps and target re-evaluation date.
• Incident queue and burn-down review
• Reduce the number of high-severity billing incidents and demonstrate month-over-month incident burn-down.
• Keep mean time to resolve billing incidents within the target threshold recorded in Solution Evaluation.
• Prioritize enhancements that materially reduce reconciliation effort or recurring errors for the next release window.
• Re-confirm success criteria and ownership
• Publish the prioritized enhancement backlog items that affect reconciliation, with estimated delivery quarters.
• Deliver the monthly reconciliation package showing reconciled amounts, variance explanations, and outstanding recon items.
• Quarter reconciliation and variance presentation
• Confirm that billing accuracy rate and cumulative revenue reconciliation variance meet or are on a path to meet targets recorded in Solution Evaluation.
• Agree concrete medium-term adjustments where recurring errors or process gaps are identified.
• Validate that finance operations are consistently completing reconciliations within agreed SLAs.
• Deliver the quarter reconciliation workbook with line-item variance explanations and supporting source extracts.
• Schedule required configuration changes or process training sessions to address the top recurring error categories.
• If residual legacy history remains, provide a migration or archive plan with milestones and verification steps.
• Confirm there are no unresolved critical blocking failures preventing billing runs from completing.
• Agree owners and deadlines for all high-priority go-live issues and remediation verification steps.
• Verify hypercare contacts and escalation paths are active and reachable.
• Deliver a migration validation log snapshot showing successful record counts and any failed records for analysis.
• Publish the go-live issue register with owners and target resolution dates.
• Provide an access list and first-week activity summary for finance and billing users.
• Present first measurement data
• Determine whether billing accuracy rate and revenue reconciliation variance are progressing toward targets recorded in Solution Evaluation.
• Document root causes for the top discrepancies and agree remediation owners and dates.
• Confirm the set of verification artifacts required for the acceptance gate in Solution Evaluation.
• Produce a root-cause analysis for the top three billing errors affecting accuracy rate.
• Deliver a reconciled revenue variance report showing ledger entries and recon difference explanations.
• Schedule the acceptance gate evidence collection and define the required data extracts from production and legacy runs.
• Restate acceptance criteria and targets
• Produce a documented acceptance decision per criterion recorded in Solution Evaluation, with signatory or authorized decision record.
• If any criteria failed, agree a remediation plan with dates that will allow re-evaluation and closure.
• Deployment and migration validation
• Diagnose gaps and root causes
• Billing accuracy and recurring error trends
• Present outcome data against each criterion
• Adoption and operational usage checks
• Document pass/fail per criterion and formal decision
• Operational process and adoption review
• Agree corrective actions and timeline
• Enhancement request pipeline and prioritization
• Early adoption and operational signals
• Remediation plan for any failed criteria
• Blockers and open issues
• Agree medium-term adjustments
• Confirm readiness to proceed to acceptance gate
• Open risks and escalations
• Agree immediate remediation actions
• Commitments for next month
• Incumbent system decommissioning and archive verification