Case study

Online Business Technology: billing Cortex and AutoTask in one place

OBT outsources IT infrastructure and hosts applications (Desktop Anywhere). A custom ASP.NET 3.5 app pulled contractual, helpdesk, and ad-hoc charges into invoices, 40 man hours a month down to under an hour.

Customer

Online Business Technology

What they do

Outsourced IT infrastructure; hosted applications (Desktop Anywhere)

Business problem

Manual invoicing. Over 40 man hours each month. Error prone. Three to five days to issue invoices.

Solution

Custom ASP.NET 3.5 three-tier app. Cortex, AutoTask, Telerik Reports to PDF.

Outcome

40 man hours down to under an hour (about 30 minutes), with fewer mistakes, and items that had not been billed captured.

Background

OBT provides outsourced IT infrastructure and hosted applications that can be used from any computer (Desktop Anywhere).

They needed to bill across three sources: Cortex (provisioned customers); AutoTask (helpdesk charges); and ad-hoc, once-off charges.

Before the billing application, invoices were raised by hand.

Challenge

The manual process took over 40 man hours per month and was error prone. Issuing invoices took three to five days each month.

They needed one place to bill Cortex (provisioned customers), AutoTask (helpdesk charges), and ad-hoc charges.

Solution

A custom application in ASP.NET 3.5, over a three-tier architecture.

Cortex was connected through a custom stored procedure, with real-time access to the Cortex database. AutoTask supplied non-contractual / helpdesk charges. Telerik Reports laid out the invoices and wrote PDFs from the billing database.

What it did

  • Per-customer pricing
  • Invoice departments inside one customer: offices in more than one country or state
  • Bill in advance and in arrears
  • Ad-hoc invoices
  • Contractual invoices via Cortex
  • Non-contractual invoices via AutoTask
  • Exclude customers and users from invoicing
  • Custom reporting

Results

  • Invoice generation went from 40 man hours a month to under an hour, about 30 minutes
  • Fewer mistakes than the manual process
  • Items that had not been billed were captured

Technology stack

  • Cortex: provisioned customers
  • AutoTask: helpdesk / non-contractual charges
  • ASP.NET 3.5: three-tier application
  • SQL Server: billing database
  • jQuery: client script
  • Telerik Reports: PDF invoices

Talk through a billing or systems-integration problem

Thirty minutes. Bring a sentence about the systems that already hold the charges. We will tell you whether a custom billing pass is the job, this write-up is an older project, not a product brochure.