Billing platform meshes with deeply rooted culture of innovation, entrepreneurship, accountability and performance.

OTTAWA, CANADA & DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA -- July 20th, 2017 -- jBilling, the open source billing provider driving digital transformation, and Ignition Group, one of Africa's largest providers of technology, media, telecommunication and financial services, today announced the selection of jBilling for company-wide billing transformation.

Headquartered in Durban, South Africa, Ignition Group services customers worldwide through group divisions offering retail voice and data communications, wholesale telecommunications, financial products, affinity programs and contact center solutions, all of which are underscored by Ignition Group’s purpose—to make life better through innovative technology.

Having been founded in 2002, Ignition Group was experiencing challenges typical of an outgrown, legacy billing system. Being a people-centred organisation, concerns in multiple areas of the business displayed the need for a more streamlined system that would focus on correcting billing issues.

Knowing that their new billing infrastructure would need to support business verticals mandated to swiftly develop, innovate and adapt, the team set out to find an open technology platform that could support universal requirements, as well as be tailored for their very unique needs:

• Eliminate human capital wasted on continuous billing break-fix cycle
• Produce accurate invoices and reduce customer calls to service desk
• Support clear communication with banking partners
• Support value-added services
• Automate the manual processes of determining optimal bill and payment processing dates for customers

“As they undertake digital transformation, wise organizations are prioritizing investment in systems of innovation,” commented Ed Agar, Vice President Marketing and Sales, jBilling. “Unlike traditional systems of record, modern platforms like jBilling are built to remain nimble. We’re thrilled jBilling has joined Ignition Group’s ranks of enabling technologies.”

Ignition Group is leveraging a number of features included with jBilling: Tailored integration and a daily sync to accounting and collections systems provides staff with the intelligence needed for effective operations. jBilling’s highly flexible product catalog is used to extend discounts and provide customer-specific pricing (without having to create additional products in the catalog). And jBilling’s sophisticated rules engine is being used, in conjunction with a third party services, to intelligently process debit orders for maximum transaction success.

“If I could sum it up, our objective with this project is to implement a billing solution that we wouldn’t even know is there, a seamless system that just fulfills its role, billing exactly the right amount, at exactly the right time,” said Russell Stather, IT Director, Ignition Group. “And as entrepreneurs, with our business being dynamic and adaptable at its core, we needed a platform that would support future unknowns. For all these reasons, we selected jBilling.”

Details about Ignition Group’s wide-ranging services can be found at http://www.ignitiongroup.co.za/. More information about jBilling is available at www.jbilling.com.

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About Ignition Group

Ignition Group, now one of Africa’s largest investors in technology, media, telecommunications and financial services sectors, provides a platform for sustainability and success. With a staff complement of nearly 3 000 people, Ignition Group has a team of experts in the fields of IT, Finance, Marketing, Human Resources, Sales, Development, Compliance, Customer Care, Training and Support. Ignition Group has built a sound infrastructure to support a number of business verticals within the Group, allowing the business verticals to swiftly develop, innovate, adapt and support our Business Partners and strategies.

About jBilling

jBilling, a wholly-owned subsidiary of AppDirect, helps companies drive digital transformation by modernizing their billing infrastructure. Legacy business support systems—be they commercial or built in house—are increasingly eroding competitiveness. Forward-looking companies are implementing jBilling as a system of innovation and engagement to help them achieve critical business outcomes such as time-to-market gains, reduced churn and increased revenue per user. jBilling has been adopted by organizations in Telecommunications, SaaS, PaaS, Utilities, Transportation, Government and other industries. An enterprise-grade, open source platform, jBilling is offered as Software as a Service (SaaS) or on premise, and supported by over 100 billing experts and software engineers located across four continents.

Ignition Group Media Contact

Nicola Muir

[email protected]

Phone: +2731 582 8300

jBilling Media Contact

Darcy Jamieson

[email protected]

Phone: 1-415-887-2380

OTTAWA, ONTARIO & MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- January 12, 2017 -- jBilling, the open source billing provider driving digital transformation, and Distributel Communications Limited, Canada’s leading independent telecommunications services provider, today announced a partnership aimed at driving growth across the extensive Distributel brand portfolio. This investment decision comes at a time when accelerated change in the disruption-prone telecom sector is prompting players to reexamine their ability to compete.

Distributel, with a successful track record of almost 30 years, offers a variety of popular services including High Speed Internet, Television and Home Phone services to residential customers. The Business Services Division, known as ThinkTel, provides advanced IP voice and data services for the SMB, Enterprise and Wholesale markets, with one of the broadest footprints in the country. In addition to driving organic growth, the company also has an aggressive acquisition strategy, for example the recent purchase of YAK to enhance consumer offerings. 

As Distributel continues to expand, they identified the need to phase out several disconnected, legacy support systems and consolidate the entire brand portfolio on a single, flexible platform that will allow fast integrations and migration of billing systems. 

“We recognized that our competitiveness and capacity for continued growth rely on our ability to transform and scale business systems,” said Matt Stein, CEO, Distributel. “We selected jBilling because of their open architecture and SaaS deployment model, which means quick implementation and allows us to easily adapt billing to our parameters, as well as accommodate future requirements and acquisitions.”

Legacy commercial and built-in-house billing systems are notorious for requiring long, expensive coding cycles for relatively simple changes and can be risky to overhaul. In contrast, jBilling was designed specifically to provide innovation agility, promote successful market transition and support enhanced engagement opportunities with end customers.

“We’re thrilled to be the billing partner of choice for Distributel and excited to deploy jBilling as the unifying technology across a number of Distributel businesses,” said Emiliano Conde, President and Founder, jBilling. “As with all our customers, we look forward to cultivating a long partnership founded on achieving the specific business outcomes needed by Distributel for continued growth and profitability.”

Plans and pricing for the wide range of telecommunications services offered by Distributel can be found at www.distributel.ca. More information about jBilling is available at www.jbilling.com.

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About Distributel Communications Limited
Established in 1988, Distributel is a leading national, independent telecommunications provider offering residential high-speed Internet, Television, and Home Phone services in Canada. With offices across the country and a National Network, Distributel continues to forge new partnerships and bring innovative solutions to market. ThinkTel, the Business Services Division of Distributel, is a provider of advanced voice and data services for the SMB, Enterprise and Wholesale markets throughout Canada. As a top Microsoft Solutions Partner and a Cisco PMP, the Business Service division is a driving force for innovation in the industry. 

About jBilling 
jBilling, a wholly-owned subsidiary of AppDirect, helps companies drive digital transformation by modernizing their billing infrastructure. Legacy business support systems—be they commercial or built in house—are increasingly eroding competitiveness. Forward-looking companies are implementing jBilling as a system of innovation and engagement to help them achieve critical business outcomes such as time-to-market gains, reduced churn and increased revenue per user. jBilling has been adopted by organizations in Telecommunications, SaaS, PaaS, Utilities, Transportation, Government and other industries. An enterprise-grade, open source platform, jBilling is offered as Software as a Service (SaaS) or on premise, and supported by over 100 billing experts and software engineers located across four continents.

Distributel Media Contact
Gayle Padvaiskas
[email protected]
Phone: 514-317-7776

jBilling Media Contact
Jennifer Steinberg
[email protected]
Phone: 613-680-8280

Ottawa, Ontario, September 28, 2015 - Enterprise jBilling Software Ltd., a leader and pioneer of open source enterprise billing has released jBilling Community Edition version 4.1.1

jBilling’s Community Edition 4.1.1 is a significant improvement in functionality when compared to its predecessor. We are pleased to provide you with many new modules including: Asset Management, Company Hierarchies, Agents and Commissions, and User Notes. This release also includes many feature enhancements such as, Order Changes, Product Dependencies, Account Types and Account Information Types, and more!

“We are thrilled to provide our community with some of the latest and greatest features jBilling has to offer,” says Emiliano Conde, Founder & President of Enterprise jBilling Software Ltd.. “The leap in functionality truly makes this an exciting time for us, and we are happy to share our excitement with our growing community of developers and users.”

jBilling Community Edition - New Features

Asset Management: Manage assets like phone lines, numbers, SIM cards, Modems, etc. and assign them to customers via subscriptions. Keep track of each asset and view their assignment history. In addition, reserve an asset for a specific customer for a configurable period of time. The asset becomes unavailable to all other customers until the reservation expires, or the asset is purchased by the customer who has the reservation.

Company Hierarchies: Create multi-tenancy relationships, where a parent or root can manage elements of Child Companies from a single instance. Also use this feature to handle reseller scenarios, with wholesale and resale rates.

Agents and Commissions: Generate product based commission amounts for users known as agents. Calculate commission based on generated invoices or customer payment amounts. In addition, set-up referral percentages, and define special agent commission rates.

User Notes: Create an unlimited number of notes to keep track of and refer back to a customer’s history.

jBilling Community Edition - Enhanced Features

Order Changes: Define effective dates for each order line before and after an order is saved. When making edits to an order, they are recorded in a change log and display whether or not the change is active or pending. In addition, create unique order statuses, and make changes to previous periods without creating a new order.

Product Dependencies: Create products with mandatory or optional dependencies. A mandatory dependency requires the product include the mandatory item when added to an order. An optional dependency gives a customer the choice to include the dependency product on an order or not.

Account Types & Account Information Types (AITs): Group similar customers together with preconfigured defaults like billing cycle, invoice template, and credit limits. Use AITs to define additional information like address, first name, last name, organization, email and other unique customer specific fields.

ABOUT ENTERPRISE JBILLING SOFTWARE LTD

Enterprise jBIlling Software Ltd, an AppDirect Company, is a global player with consultants on four continents. It is a mature and rapidly evolving open source system. It delivers a comprehensive billing solution that is popular with many industries including: Telecommunications, ISPs, ASPs, and Media.

For information on jBilling, contact [email protected], or visit our website, www.jbilling.com.

A billing project is about more than implementing a billing solution. It involves orchestrating and integrating that solution with many different elements; billing can hardly live isolated from CRM, ERP, Provisioning and other systems.

Join jBilling’s President and founder, Emiliano Conde and Sam Bacon, Director of Business Development on Wednesday, June 24th 2015 to get a sneak peek into our new module: jBilling Workflow. It is a standalone Business Process Management system that integrates and orchestrates steps in jBilling and Salesforce. Reduce time to market, implementation and maintenance cost with a graphical interface that shows you each high level workflow in your organization.

Event Information:

Webinar - Business Process through Billing

Wednesday, June 24 2015

2:00 - 3:00pm EST

Click here to register now!

Ottawa, Ontario, April 29, 2015 - Enterprise jBilling Software Ltd., a leader and pioneer of open source enterprise billing has released jBilling Telco Edition version 4.1.

jBilling’s Telco Edition 4.1 comes with many new features: Invoice Template Generator (ITG), Assignment History, Asset Reservation, Salt Password Encryptor, and Admin Reset Password.

In addition, 4.1 brings several feature enhancements including: Line Percentage Strategy, Plan Pricing Timeline, Customer & Account Type Special Price Start/Expiry Date, Password Lockout, Password Expiry, Meta Field Enhancements, Secure Password Recovery, Multi-Threaded Billing Process, and jQGrid List Views.

“jBilling is dedicated to providing the best technologies for managing complex telco billing,” says Emiliano Conde, Founder & President of Enterprise jBilling Software Ltd.. “This release provides a combination of new and enhanced features to ensure we continue to grow the best open source enterprise billing software solution on the market.”

jBilling Telco Edition new features:

Invoice Template Generator (ITG). Create invoice templates directly in the user-friendly jBilling UI without programming skills (an alternative to Jasper Reports). Manage an unlimited number of templates for groups or individual customers that can contain different logos, address information, billing requirements, billing events, and more.

Asset Assignment History. Track asset assignment changes in jBilling between order, customer or dates.

Asset Reservation. Reserve an asset for a specific customer for a configurable period of time. The asset becomes unavailable to all other customers until the reservation expires, or the asset is purchased by the customer who has the reservation.

Salt Password Encryptor. Secure password hashing using salted passwords. jBilling’s preferred method is: BCRYPT, but other methods such as MD5_SALT, SHA1, SHA256 are also available.

Admin Reset Password. Administrative Users with configured permissions can reset customer and other user passwords via the UI for quick system re-entry.

jBilling Telco Edition Feature Enhancements:

Line Percentage Strategy. Prior to 4.1, this pricing model was a simple field. It is now included in the consolidated list of available pricing models. This allows percentage products to have a price history as well as Account Type or Customer specific percentages.

Plan Pricing Timeline. Apply a start and end date for changes in price to any plan. Price changes can also be applied to individual products within the plan, in addition to the plan itself, for past, present and future dates.

Customer & Account Type Special Price Start/Expiry Date. Define a start and expiry date for products with a special price for Customers or Account Types from the UI.

Late Guided Rating. Support of late event rating based on date specific, or past date subscription rates. Both jBilling Mediation and the application can return correct rates based on any subscription at any point in time.

Password Lockout. Configure the number of password entry attempts a user has before the system locks the account.  

Password Expiry. Define the number of days a password is active. Once the value is reached, the system will require the user to update the expired password.

Meta Field Enhancements. Meta Field Types now define notification variables via the Account Information Type interface only.

Secure Password Recovery. The system provides users with the option to recover either a lost or forgotten password to easily regain access to their billing information.

Multithreaded Billing Process. Several updates were made to increase billing process performance.

jQGrid List Views. In addition to the Route Rate Cards area of the system, configuring one preference now changes the display of most areas of the UI to the jQGrid List View.

ABOUT ENTERPRISE JBILLING SOFTWARE LTD

Enterprise jBIlling Software Ltd, an AppDirect Company, is a global player with consultants on four continents. It is a mature and rapidly evolving open source system. It delivers a comprehensive billing solution that is popular with many industries including: Telecommunications, ISPs, ASPs, and Media.

For information on jBilling, contact [email protected], or visit our website, www.jbilling.com.