- Annual administration fee is a fee charged by customer to accredited certification bodies. It is calculated based on the certification bodies respective certificate holder portfolio.
- The customer has standard Annual administration fee factors based on Annual administration fee policy for the fee structure of various certificate holders.
- Certification bodies provide the data necessary for calculating the Annual administration fee in the relevant fields in the customer certificate database.
- Annual administration fee is computed quarterly on the Determination Dates set by customer’s Annual administration fee policy and is based on ‘as-on-date’ snapshots. The calculation engine computes the fee due on each certificate based on the snapshot according to the prevailing policy. For each certification bodies a summary calculation is then produced.
- Notification emails are sent to certification bodies to view the fee calculations for their certificate holder portfolio.
Industry
Not-for-Profit
Customer Profile
Established in 1993, the customer is a global not-for-profit organization that promotes socially beneficial and economically prosperous management of the world's forests. They aim to meet the current needs for forest products without compromising the health of the world's forests for future generations.
What was the problem?
- The existing Annual administration fee structure, designed in PHP, was maintained outside and hardcoded within the fee calculation script.
- The script was executed quarterly in Power Query to access the Salesforce database but addressed only high-level scenarios, leaving the remaining cases overlooked.
- Snapshot data was stored in Excel, making data comparison challenging to verify calculation accuracy.
- Inaccurate results prompted the need for a comprehensive solution to manage fee structure and snapshots sent to certification bodies.
How did we help?
- The Annual administration fee structure feature maintains the fee based on different policies. The customer can now easily modify the fee structure and process the related calculations.
- From the certificates, the Annual administration fee calculations process captures quarterly snapshots on the first day of each quarter.
- The Annual administration fee calculation engine feature was enabled, which functions based on a pre-defined logic.
- Built Annual administration fee batch functionality, facilitating report generation. These reports help to bill certification bodies every quarter.
- The mirrored dataset in Dynamics 365 ensures accuracy and enables comparison for validating the details used in Annual administration fee calculation.
Impact & Benefits
- The revised Annual administration fee structure offers multiple benefits to certificate holders.
- It grants the customer additional funding for investment purposes, creating more value for certificate holders.
- This additional funding facilitates the acceleration of value chain development and enables the implementation of critical technological upgrades, strengthening system integrity.
- This additional investment also enhances stakeholder engagement.
Key Challenges
- Handling duplicate data based on customer needs.
- Flexibility to accommodate various calculations and inclusions.
- Refactoring the Annual administration fee Calculation engine due to new policy changes.
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