Request for Information: KiwiRail Freight Billing Automation Solution

Details

Core Capabilities
• Product and pricing catalogue management with support for complex pricing structures
• Rules engine capable of applying business logic to calculate charges based on events and activities
• Integration with event data from operational systems (CTMS, Amicus)
• Integration with customer master data from Dynamics 365
• Integration with SAP for invoice generation and financial processing
• Support for customer-specific pricing, discounts, and contractual terms, rebates, credits
• Ability to combine multiple charge types into consolidated invoices

Operational Requirements
• Ability to handle exceptions and incidents through manual intervention when needed
• Support for credit notes and billing adjustments
• Transparent audit trail of how charges were calculated
• Customer-facing visibility of pricing and charges
• Scalability to support multiple business units with different billing requirements
• Modular architecture allowing components to be added or removed without affecting other systems

Complex Billing Scenarios
Our solution must be capable of handling several complex billing scenarios, including:
• Round-trip pricing: Containers that move empty in one direction and loaded in the return direction, with different pricing rules applied. We want the customer to see the final price.
• Aggregated invoicing: Collecting multiple events over a defined period (e.g., three days) or defined set of activities before generating a single invoice
• Customer-specific contracts: Managing different pricing structures, discount rates, and terms for individual customers
• Event-triggered charges: Automatically applying charges based on specific operational events
• Rebate processing: Seasonal or off-peak rebates, round trip rebate, performance-based rebates, early payment rebates
• Billing by container, by weight, train
• Making day of decision changes