Situation

Lanter Technologies – a mid sized Managed IT service provider – relied on several disconnected core applications to run parts of its business, resulting in inefficient manual processes and limited synergy between systems. Recognising the opportunity for improvement, Lanter engaged Symphony to leverage its expertise in information integration and process optimisation.

Discovery and Scoping

Symphony’s consulting team worked closely with the Lanter’s stakeholders to document existing processes and technology architecture. This discovery phase identified several improvement opportunities, defined the transformation scope, and quantified expected outcomes to enable informed decision making of the risk and return of each initiative and their phasing.

Solution

The first phase focused on streamlining Microsoft billing—a complex, error-prone process due to the intricate billing rules and Lanter’s on charging processes which relied on manual handling and spreadsheets. As a Microsoft Managed Service Provider (MSP), Lanter manually reconciled licensing fees and apportioned them to clients, consuming significant administrative resources.

Symphony created a robust centralised information foundation, integrated relevant applications, and configured business rules, workflows, and user interfaces to automate the billing process.

Results and Future Plans

This automation freed up administrative resources, reduced errors, and allowed the management team to focus on business growth, delivering a return on investment in well under one year.

As a second phase, Symphony will implement a centralised AI driven data solution enabling seamless information sharing across applications, ensuring consistency and eliminating duplications, omissions, and errors.

Building on this success, Symphony is now leveraging the integration foundation for further automation, such as licensing on charging for other providers, all billing processes and user onboarding and offboarding.