pricing costing billing banking TMA services software

Pricing & Billing BlueprintÔ

The purpose of this page is to provide a reasonably detailed description of PBB's business functions and features. The description is intended for an audience such as bank product managers and treasurers as it uses industry specific terminology.

map

about pbb
challenges addressed by pbb

understanding internal economics, market position and value

out of the box contents

platforms
service codes
pricing & billing
pricing & billing - online query
pricing & billing - online data maintenance
pricing & billing - data load & refresh
pricing & billing - batch processing
market segments - out of the box
presentation services
communication services
file transfer services
configuration services
security services
batch control

related sites

[newradial]

to go home:

main topics:

to contact us about you and your company's interest:

write to us

About PBB

The software is responsible for measuring the impact of costs and pricing arrangements, for wholesale banking services and for performing billing calculations. This includes measuring the value of each transaction, customer, product, market segment and service. With PBB, activity based cost studies can be transformed into powerful weapons for devising pricing strategies.

PBB can provide immediate benefits for many banks with the following functionality:

breakdown of transactions into TMA service codes
calculation and reporting of transaction costs
what-if pricing and costing
customer and caa pricing, costing and billing
profitability reports by cost center and market segment
pricing methods such as unit-prices, flat fees, volume discounts, tiering, minimum revenues and percent markups
calculate interest on account balances
calculate earnings allowance
multi-currency support
multiple billing cycles
calculate financial service taxes
complex pricing at point of sale (PPOS)
generate customer statements

Challenges Addressed By PBB

Today, most banking products are commodities. As a result, there is increased pressure on internal costs and on the pricing arrangements used for each customer, transaction, market, product, department and service. This pressure can dominate management time and attention even in the most successful banks. Consider the following:

pricing is a major factor in the decision making process for the customer and in protecting long term customer loyalty
Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) increases competition
there is a significant and global shift towards greater reliance on bank fees and charges in place of higher interest margins and cross subsidies between products

Banks conduct business with their customers but are usually organized along product lines. Often, performance is measured along market segment lines. Those customers can span market segments and they can use services that span product lines. PBB helps you to:

understand and manage profitability from all of these angles
know what services have been used, what were their costs, what fees have been earned and how changes to costs and pricing arrangements will affect profitability

Calculating costs only at an aggregate level makes it impossible to measure the true cost, and hence profitability, of individual transactions, accounts and customers. PBB enables you to apply costs and fees at all these levels.

The ability to manage fee arrangements and special deals based on profitable outcomes can become an essential part of competitive advantage.

fee arrangements will change over time both in value and structure in response to competitive situations
there are many examples of banks chasing increasing market share by unwittingly discounting fees to below true cost

Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and Internet based transactions creates additional business needs for new and innovative fee arrangements.

Understanding internal economics, market position and value

Working with PBB provides the necessary infrastructure to put all the pieces together.

measure internal economics of each product

price and cost services using TMA Service Codes

measure how individual services are being used

measure costs of providing services and their profitability

measure the value of product and service portfolios

measure value internally and to the market

measure the value of each customer relationship

analyze operational transactions

price by market, customer, account, service

price by customer account analysis grouping

create customer understandable services

generate customer, product and operational information

segment the customer base by similar characteristics

calculate interest on account balances

calculate earnings allowance

multi-currency support

multiple billing cycles

calculate financial service taxes

complex pricing at point of sale (PPOS)

feed service details to other finance control systems

generate customer statements

Out Of The Box Contents

PBB is ready to use "out of the box", but can be customized based on individual requirements.

Platforms

Internet web browser screens
Microsoft Windows NT / 2000 / XP-Pro servers
Microsoft SQL Server database
Sun Solaris Unix servers
Oracle database
HP NonStop / NSK Servers
NonStop SQL database
NonStop Payments Factory

Service codes

Service codes representing billable services or combinations of billable events, can be customized to suit individual banks' needs. As default, PBB's billable service codes are based on TMA Service Codes published by the Treasury Management Association. These service codes represents an industry standard for reporting service fees and account statements.

TMA Service Codes are available for the following Product Families:

00 Balance and Compensation Information
01 General Account Services
05 Lockbox Services
07 Merchant Card Services
08 Purchasing Card Services
10 Depository Services
15 Paper Disbursement Services
16 Retained Asset Services
20 Paper Disbursement Reconciliation Services
25 General ACH Services
26 ACH Concentration Services
27 ACH Automated Funding Services
30 EDI Services
35 Wire and Other Funds Transfer Services
40 Information Services
45 Investment/Custody Services
50 Debt Services
51 Trust Services
55 Credit Services
60 International Services

PBB also allows multiple service categories. This means that activity events can be mapped in several different ways, each to a separate billable service category. This is useful for bank and system managers. It allows the data to be viewed from the old bank's and system's perspective, as well as the new merged perspective.

Pricing & Billing