The article follows the recent Revenue Assurance Market Leader nomination with 26% share of the $235 million revenue assurance market (according to Stratecast’s "Revenue Assurance and Cost Management Global CSP Sector Assessment”).

As referred from the journalist, despite its smaller size (compared to some other revenue assurance players), WeDo Technologies seems seem to have considerable momentum that goes beyond its top-dog designation last week in Stratecast’s evaluation of the sector.

Read the full article here.

Susana Schwartz's profile
Susana Schwartz is BSS/OSS and Service Delivery Editor for the Connected Planet. Susana covers issues related to the telco back office. She is former technology editor of BSS/OSS World magazine and editor of TM Forum’s publishing arm.

About Connected Planet
Connected Planet is the comprehensive source for service providers and enterprise users of advanced telecommunications and mobile networking services. Grounded in coverage of technology and infrastructure -- IP networks, FTTX, wireless, OSS/BSS and more -- Connected Planet also delivers insight into how yesterday's networks are becoming the "smart pipes" of tomorrow, capable of carrying new network-driven solutions that are helping to reinvent the way the world works.

At this event, almost the opposite happened! Whilst customers were heaping credit on the hosts (there was almost a competition amongst those present about who had received the best service and who had the best implementation with one scoring points against the other). All the while, the management of WeDo was playing down the praises by stating they could always do better and that was the Portuguese way of doing things. The situation was almost surreal and I thought it may have been the effect of too much fresh Atlantic air and the copious quantities of food and Madeira wine, but it wasn’t.  It was the attention to detail that stuck in everyone’s mind. If any company can organise its user event with such meticulous attention to detail with an emphasis on making everyone comfortable and happy, then it must be a indication of how it runs its business. Brilliant.

I was also asked to be part of a panel discussion at WeDo Technologies user Conference on the island of Madeira along with renowned industry journalist, Alun Lewis, Susan McNiece from Stratecast, Eric Priezkalns from TalkRA and Nick Mann from the GSMA Fraud Forum. I attend a number of similar events on behalf of the TM Forum each year and find that even though they are more relaxed than conferences, the level of networking and information sharing is much greater. It is sometimes difficult for vendors to hold such events and not fall into the habit of trying to ’sell’ up the existing customers and impress potential new customers they invite along.

At this event, almost the opposite happened! Whilst customers were heaping credit on the hosts (there was almost a competition amongst those present about who had received the best service and who had the best implementation with one scoring points against the other). All the while, the management of WeDo was playing down the praises by stating they could always do better and that was the Portuguese way of doing things. The situation was almost surreal and I thought it may have been the effect of too much fresh Atlantic air and the copious quantities of food and Madeira wine, but it wasn’t.  It was the attention to detail that stuck in everyone’s mind. If any company can organise its user event with such meticulous attention to detail with an emphasis on making everyone comfortable and happy, then it must be a indication of how it runs its business. Brilliant. [Read full version]

Topics range from customer experience management and revenue assurance to managing product life cycles, the importance of over-the-top and two-sided business models, as well as why cloud computing is creating a storm in communications and much, much more.

Read the full article here.

With non-telco companies like Apple setting the pace with a claimed download total of two billion applications a year after launch - and Nokia’s Ovi store about to undergo a revamp after a slightly disappointing daily performance of only one million downloads a day – things are certainly hotting up.

Since the emergence of Service Delivery Platforms at the start of the decade, a great deal of effort has gone into working out the best ways of controlling the plumbing involved in the delivery of advanced services, content and applications. Only comparatively recently though has attention turned to the problems of managing the extreme complexity that inevitably accompanies an online retail environment composed of many thousands – or even millions – of different offerings.

Who’s managing the App Stores?_AR

Table of Contents
I. Methodology
II. Building Tomorrow’s Revenue Assurance Strategy
III. Revenue Assurance Market Sizing
IV. Embracing Analytics
V. Best Practices for an Effective Revenue Assurance Strategy
VI. The Importance of Business Processes Within Revenue Management
VII. Don’t Forget About the Customer Experience
VIII. Conclusions and Recommendations
IX. Further Reading

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Is it the case that the RA tool, as a specialised piece of software, that can command a premium price, is going the way of the dinosaur? On the phone call, I was able to argue that the configuration work had already been done so it was pointless to repeat it, but would I have an easy as response as this, if the work had not yet been started?

I have recently been thinking again about the TMF’s RA maturity model. What I am sure on is that the benefits from an RA investment (be that time, people or tool), will not be more than the lowest individual dimension of maturity. So if 4 of the 5 dimensions of the TMF maturity are high, but the “people” dimension (for example) is low; then only low benefits will be realised (don’t ask me to define low vs. high benefit).

And so the RA manager’s role must be to align each dimension to deliver and sustain the next level of maturity. Delivering this though requires thought, based on an honest appreciation of where capability is currently at, and strategic leadership to see how to move in the next level.

To bring this back to why I was thinking about this originally, there seems a disconnect between the seemingly unflattering business performance of RA vendors, and the apparent growing need for RA work. It raises the question that, in general, are RA tools and software more mature than the people and processes, or is it the other way around? And depending on that answer, is this recognised by the RA software vendors, and if so what could, or must, they do to lift their own profit?

 Read the blog entry.

Wayne, N.J.-based ATS has provided revenue assurance solutions in North America for the past 14 years. Its customer base includes Tier 1 service providers in the U.S., Canada, and Caribbean. It also serves many Tier 2 providers.

WeDo is based in Lisle, Ill., and has a large following for its Business Assurance RAID system outside of the U.S., particularly in Europe, Asia, Middle East and Central and South America. It has more than 65 implementations in 65 countries. Business Assurance RAID is a Revenue Assurance and Fraud System.

ATS’ flagship product, SimCall, ensures network integrity by validating the accuracy of TDM switch translations. SimCall simulates every dialing combination possible in a fraction of the time it would take to generate such calls.

Randall Guthrie, president of ATS, said that ensuring network integrity and revenue optimization for customers has always been the company’s core strengths. We look forward to expanding these trusted partner relationships to WeDo Technologies’ clients around the world,” he said in a statement.

The companies are already working to develop next generation tools for carriers in the U.S. and abroad. “We will help extend their presence outside of North America and hopefully they will bring us to their clients in North America,” said Sergio Steiger, vice president of business development at WeDo.

ATS provides an expanded network focus for WeDo as it focuses on verifying switch translations. As a provider of revenue assurance solutions, WeDo didn’t have that close connection to network data. “So this is allowing us to expand beyond revenue assurance to our vision of Business Assurance,” Steiger said.

Hans Eisman, director of client services at WeDo, said it also may help the company explore opportunities outside of the telecomm vertical and reach into utilities, health care and other markets.

WeDo Technologies has implemented its solutions in more than 65 different countries and has offices in 12 of them.

Read the article here.

Banerjee said it is critical for service providers to understand the role of revenue assurance in the new digital commerce value chain. “Revenue assurance helps enforce better financial control over partners’ settlement processes, minimize revenue leakage and track content through its life cycle,” he said. He added that revenue assurance vendors such as cVidya, ECtel, Martin Dawes, Razorsight, Subex, TEOCO and WeDo Technologies as well as the big players such as HP, Oracle and SAP, will continue to play critical roles in a space he expects to grow from $821 million today to $1.5 billion by 2013.

The way vendors are acquiring, merging and building their portfolios leaves little doubt that they understand. Here’s a quick look at some of this activity: RazorSight acquired SingleTusk in July, a company that provides transaction, usage and profitability analytics software. TEOCO acquired Vero Systems in October of 2008. Vero Systems is a provider of margin-management products and least-cost routing solutions and has partnered with Netezza for data warehousing. WeDo Technologies’ acquisition of Cape Technologies in September of 2007 was followed by its launch of a fraud management system last year. Subex acquired Lightbridge’s fraud management product as well as Azure Solutions in 2006. Also in 2006 ECtel, a provider of integrated revenue management solutions acquired Elron Telesoft.

There’s more. In 2005, Martin Dawes acquired revenue assurance and data analytics software provider Lavastorm. And this July, Madison, Wisc.-based Custom Call Data Systems acquired an unlimited license and source code for Service Automation Master (SAM) and switch/billing audit software from Network Services Group LLC, while Telesphere Software teamed with Kansys to offer TAXI-CAB, a CABS billing and revenue assurance package to their target market.

Even Nortel got into the act in May in a way by introducing a new revenue assurance voice configuration audit service designed to help service providers achieve revenue retrieval and cost savings from their TDM and VoIP networks. The Nortel service assurance — wherever it ends up — also is designed, for some reason, to work with the IBM Netcool Carrier VoIP Manager solution.

 Read the full article here.

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SingleTusk provides transaction, usage and profitability analytics software. Its suite of solutions, offered as software-as-a-service as are Razorsight’s, addresses data integrity, cost, revenue and margin assurance. They do so by helping service providers visualize, cleanse, correlate, reconcile and receive actionable intelligence to drive incremental revenue, control costs, improve margins, streamline business processes and monetize service offerings.

Though its has flown under the radar of most analysts, SingleTusk lists Verizon, Time Warner, Wide Open West and CenturyLink among its customers.

The company is based near Razorsight in nearby McLean, Va., and both companies have offices in Bangalore, India. Michael Bunyard, vice president of marketing for Razorsight, said that because of this alignment there is opportunity to combine people under the same physical location. “So that was a real good fit,” he said.

Collectively, with SingleTusk’s 50 employees, Razorsight will have approximately 200 employees. SingleTusk founder Suren Nathan will join Razorsight’s executive team as chief technology officer. Charlie Thomas, CEO of Razorsight, said the companies have been working on integrating their products for months and the SingleTusk portfolio will be offered immediately under the Razorsight brand. However, he did say that some integration work on the dashboards remains.

Combined, the portfolio will address profitability analytics (including product line profitability management and analysis), revenue analysis and assurance, wholesale invoice analytics, CABS billing verification and analytics, data integrity management, reporting and data warehouse solutions.

“This acquisition is a key component of our ongoing strategy to increase the breadth of our award winning SaaS solutions to take advantage of the rapidly growing, global communications market with a strong thirst for profitability analytics and actionable business intelligence,” Thomas said.

Peter Mottishaw, principal analyst at Analysys Mason, said that in the current challenging economic climate, communications service providers are increasingly focused on revenue assurance, network cost management, business intelligence and other aspects of business optimization. “Razorsight is already a leader in network cost management. By acquiring SingleTusk Solutions, Razorsight strengthens their business optimization position with the ability to support revenue assurance and complex event analysis.”

Read the full report here.

The Revenue Assurance Maturity Model Study, conducted by TM Forum, assessed the penetration of revenue assurance concepts by geographic regions and markets, including mobile and fixed line. Data was contributed by 33 Communications Service Providers from 26 countries, with subscriber bases ranging from less than 500,000 to more than 10 million. Participants responded to 53 questions that characterized the maturity of their approaches to revenue assurance. The report was supported through sponsorship by cVidya Networks.

As a group, the 19 mobile operators survey participants scored 36% higher than fixed line operators across all the measured dimensions, with an average score of 3.55 out of 5. Mobile operators’ rapid adoption of revenue assurance principles has been driven by their need to generate increasing revenues while rapidly introducing new services and technologies.

“We see strong adoption of the TM Forum Revenue Assurance work in general and of the Revenue Assurance Maturity Model in particular, especially in Europe and Latin America,” said Martin Creaner, TM Forum President and COO. “The study findings demonstrate the growing traction worldwide of Revenue Assurance principles and TM Forum best practices, but also highlight there is still significant room for improvement in service provider’s revenue assurance strategies.” TM Forum’s Revenue Assurance Maturity Model defines a consistent framework for assessing the maturity of a Service Provider’s revenue assurance business, determine their revenue assurance business priorities, and identify a strategic path to improve their delivery of revenue assurance.

The study focused on 5 dimensions of revenue assurance: Organization, People, Influence, Tools, and Process. Service Provider responses were mapped to the 5-step Maturity Model that ranges from Initial, in which revenue assurance processes are dominated by individual, chaotic efforts, to Optimizing, in which the Service Provider takes a holistic approach with continuous improvement feedback.

Tonia Graham, TM Forum Business Benchmarking program manager added, “The industry as a whole scored roughly 3.5 out of 5 overall in the Revenue Assurance Maturity Model. Strong correlation between the scores in all 5 study dimensions indicates the industry is maturing along all 5 simultaneously, which is consistent with TM Forum best practice.” The Revenue Assurance Maturity Model Study is the latest in a series of TM Forum Business Benchmarking studies that provide detailed insights into specific topics. The Revenue Assurance Maturity Model Study report complements the ongoing work of TM Forum’s Revenue Management Initiative, which drives the TM Forum’s extensive billing, revenue, and customer management efforts.

To learn more about this report, or to participate in the Business Benchmarking program, please contact Tonia Graham attgraham@tmforum.org or visitwww.tmforum.org/benchmarking.

Read the full article here.

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