Internet startup launches while embracing adoption

When Brightspeed launched in 2022, the fiber broadband internet service had ambitious goals, acquiring a service territory encompassing more than 6.5 million locations in mainly rural and suburban communities in 20 U.S. states.

As the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company planned its fiber build plan across its footprint, the company’s IT specialists realized that, with artificial intelligence (AI) emerging as the consummate transformative technology, Brightspeed needed to embrace adoption or fall behind.

In particular, the company had to integrate billing data from SAP S/4HANA, an enterprise resource planning software designed specifically for large enterprises, with SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (BRIM) and replicate the information to Google BigQuery, a fully managed, AI-ready data analytics platform.

Once the system was up and running, Brightspeed would have the ability to operate in multiple formats and multiple engines in real time via the cloud. However, the transition would be challenging.

With millions of records to filter, comprising several terabytes (TB) of data, the IT team was hampered with processes that were manual and repetitive. The poor data quality distorted findings and compromised real-time decisions, as well as created unpredictable scenarios that had to be remedied one at a time.

With plans to reach more than three million new fiber network passings – locations where the company connects fiber to homes and businesses – change was essential and could only be achieved by implementing a seamless adoption strategy.

Harmonizing data

The project to adopt the existing technologies and replicate the data on Google BigQuery launched with the inherent knowledge that it would be impossible to successfully manage voluminous, multiple gigabyte (GB) transactions daily without first achieving data harmonization.

It required Brightspeed to provide information on revenue, payments, receivables, and payables using accurate, real-time numbers to support recognized revenue, revenue reported, deferred revenue and payment summaries; resolve disputes; and help with dunning – the process of regularly reminding customers that a particular bill was due.

This would require data semantics, an understanding of the components in a database and their relation to each other, as well as data fabrics, the architecture facilitating end-to-end integration of the various data pipelines and cloud environments.

The world’s leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendor, SAP, was selected to spearhead the undertaking for a variety of reasons, including its SAP Datasphere solution, renowned for converting businesses to data-driven enterprises, and the existing partnership with Google Cloud.  

Once the project was completed, Google BigQuery users would have the ability to ingest real-time billing and finance information from SAP BRIM, which specializes in businesses with high volumes of customers, subscriptions, and pay-per-use transactions, as well as established ERP software SAP S/4HANA.

In addition to the range of enterprise-grade data and analytics solutions available from SAP, the multinational’s management and solutions (M&S) teams have taken an active role in supporting customers with adoption and consumption.

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