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A Telecom Provider Builds an Open, Scalable Revenue Platform for Its Next Decade of Growth

“Coastal has consistently brought best‑in‑class architectural guidance, thoughtful solutioning, and a forward‑looking approach that positions [us] for scalability, operational efficiency, and future innovation.”

— Platform Development Manager, Salesforce, Telecom Provider

Challenge

The telecom industry moves fast, and the systems that quote and fulfill service have to keep pace. For the provider, a decade of product growth had run on a deeply customized CPQ environment that served the business well. But leadership was already looking beyond today’s operations to what came next: a self-serve customer portal, rising B2B order volumes, and an AI-driven automation roadmap that would all lean on the same platform.

Built on Steelbrick CPQ, that environment gave the business a solid foundation to scale on. As the provider’s ambitions expanded, leadership saw an opportunity to make it even more efficient. Key challenges included:

  • Custom Ecosystem: Steelbrick's deep customization adds effort to integrating external tools, including the company's self-serve portal and billing system.
  • Untapped Scalability: The existing architecture had room to grow before it could process the quote and order volumes the provider's trajectory requires.
  • Layered Subscription Overhead: Mid-term contract changes were stored as individual records, creating technical complexity, operational overhead, and reporting challenges.
  • Emerging AI Opportunity: An environment built on custom code and workarounds was not yet set up to support intelligent quoting or workflow automation.

The company wasn't looking to patch what it had. It wanted a platform built for where the business was heading, and that work is still underway.

Solution

Coastal's history with the provider, dating back to the original CPQ implementation, shaped the migration, resulting in a Revenue Cloud Advanced environment built for its specific subscription and catalog needs, not a generic telecom template. For the company’s leadership, the investment is more than a system replacement. It's the backbone for adopting Salesforce as a core platform for years to come, unlocking capabilities that weren't possible on the previous stack:

  • Open Platform Architecture: Standardized, API-friendly design supports the integrations the company's roadmap depends on, including its self-serve portal, service delivery platform, and billing system without the custom-code dependencies of the legacy environment.
  • Scalability for Growth: It removes the architectural ceiling on quote and order volume, building toward the processing capacity the company's B2B expansion will require.
  • Consolidated Subscription Model: The platform consolidates subscriptions into a single, current-state asset, supported by a purpose-built Evergreen & Co-Term solution, giving the company an accurate, real-time view of its month-to-month contracts without the manual reconciliation the legacy system required.
  • AI-Ready Foundation: By standardizing quote-to-cash on a modern Salesforce platform, the company positions itself to implement quoting agents and workflow automation once those capabilities are built out.

Clouds & Products

  • Revenue Cloud

Results

The provider's near-term milestones mark the start of the journey, not the end of it. The real payoff is the open platform, scalability headroom, and AI runway this investment was designed to create.

  • Migration Milestones Complete: The company migrated roughly 600,000 Asset records, creating a base to build on.
  • Foundational Commitment: The company's leadership has committed to Salesforce as the long-term backbone of its revenue operations, managing $36 million in Monthly Recurring Revenue, rather than a point solution for today's needs.
  • Established AI Pathway: The provider now has a standardized quote-to-cash data model to build quoting agents and workflow automation on, creating a path that didn't exist on the legacy stack.

A revenue platform earns its keep over years, not at go-live. The provider's investment leaves room to add self-service, scale order volume, and layer in AI on one modern foundation as those priorities mature.