London, England -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/22/2011 -- MetraTech Corp (http://www.metratech.com/), the innovative telecom billing, SaaS billing and financial services billing solution provider, has announced its sponsorship of a newly published whitepaper. The paper, from leading independent UK-based analyst house, Innovation Observatory, addresses the increasingly pressing issue of how businesses today can respond effectively and efficiently to industry change.

The report finds companies who succeed in fast-moving sectors do so partly by ensuring that, every time they need to change the way their business works, they aren’t constrained by what their IT systems allow them to do.

The Innovation Observatory whitepaper looks at examples of how innovative companies have separated their IT systems from underlying business rules and have benefited as a result. Companies cited in the paper include MetraTech customers City of Chicago and the DTCC, which worked with MetraTech to deliver enterprise billing and billing-related customer care services across its global product portfolio.

The paper recommends that companies clearly define their business strategies and think through how their IT strategies will support them. Innovation Observatory advises that companies consider how IT platforms will cope with any strategic changes and then design, build or buy platforms with reusability in mind.

Businesses might also look to sectors outside their own for best practice flexibility, the paper concludes. “Companies can learn from the experiences of others in sectors where there is a fast pace of change in areas such as service innovation, consolidation on both supply and demand sides of a market, and technology improvement," said Danny Dicks, author of the whitepaper and principal consultant, Innovation Observatory. "Thinking about the architecture of critical IT applications makes a big difference to a company’s ability to respond effectively.”

Complimentary copies of the full paper are available at http://www.metratech.com/.

About MetraTech
Billing solution provider MetraTech Corp. offers a new approach to charging, billing, settlement and customer care enabling organizations to embrace change without compromise. MetraNet, our flagship product, is unique in its ability to automate business processes and business models that address rapidly changing, complex or radical business strategies across any industry for an unlimited number of services.

MetraNet is deployed globally by a diverse customer base, including industry leaders such as City of Chicago-O’Hare, Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, InterCall, Microsoft Online, PGi (Premiere Global Services), and OnStream (National Grid). From telecom billing to SaaS billing, our customers use MetraNet to build innovative and successful business models, securely collect revenue, and manage their entire customer lifecycle in some 12 languages, 28 currencies and 90 countries. For more information, please visit http://www.metratech.com/.