In the Zone at MetraTech

Zone said MetraTech has taken the leap to say a [billing] application should let the CIO innovate with ways to support new models rather than looking for a new model in a box that might save money, but won’t provide the flexibility required to compete. "You don't just want the knowledge," he said. "You want the ability to acquire and develop your own knowledge." 

There are three rules MetraTech lives by in designing its products. The first is that products must be operationally superior to the black box billers, those being the industry’s legacy billing providers. “Competitors say that because we have an open billing model, we can’t be as reliable,” Zone said. “So we have invested significantly in providing high throughput performance.”

The second rule is to enhance the ability to automate new business models and the third is to offer both off-the-shelf capabilities as well as enablement technology for developing differentiated business models and services.

“There have been a number of projects in the last year where people have gone in to replace wireline billing systems with more black box systems and lo and behold in four to five months they are out of there,” Zone said. “No matter what the IT people say, the market demand for innovation is just too big to put in black box systems anymore.”