Where Revenue Assurance is headed for 2006 and beyond

Revenue Assurance has became a major issue for Telecom Operators. It is widely known that on average they loose between 2-5% of their revenues. Despite the fact that assuring revenues has always been a concern, it has only recently come into the spotlight of the Management Board. Today, more than ever, this issue must be effectively handled.

The last 5 years' market dynamics, introduction to new technologies and the increasing pressure from regulators has showed that the traditional approach doesn't suffice to deal with revenue leakage.

Neither for today nor in the future. The arising growth of data services and broadband access brings new challenges to Revenue Assurance operations.

The early days of Revenue Assurance

Revenue Assurance as such arose slowly out of Fraud or Internal Audit areas. Understanding the existence and increasing importance of revenue leakage, Telecom Operators have allocated various resources to address specific situations within the network, mediation and billing areas.

Mostly based on audits, procedures and pinpoint solutions, the initial revenue assurance efforts were insufficient but proved the importance of detecting sources of leakage.

Today's best practices

RA has evolved significantly mostly due to the technology made available by software vendors that have brought about a major breakthrough, enabling a new approach to detect leakage and an analysis of its root causes. Today, we see most Telecom Operators worldwide selecting and putting in place end-to-end revenue assurance solutions to automate the RA processes on a daily basis and, instead of a sampling approach, controlling the entire universe of customer and call detail records.

Assuming the role as an independent unit within the finance department, the RA teams worldwide have market available software that provides them with the right tools to perform their job as effectively and efficiently as possible. Performing automated reconciliation these tools provide KPI's Dashboards, Extensive Reporting, Adhoc Querying and Workflow to help detect, analyse, correct and prevent leakage.

Facing the Future

The future presents immense challenges for Revenue Assurance. During 2006 and in the near future, Telecoms Operators will continue the implementation of their RA framework and tools.

Unfortunately, however, they don't always understand the real importance of this step. Focused on voice and SMS revenues streams, they are not aware of the challenges they, and their tools, will need to cope with in the short-term. Are your tools prepared for the future? Can they grow to handle new services, new systems, new processes,...?

Make sure that you select a proven, easy-to-use and flexible solution to automate, manage and grow your end-to-end Revenue Assurance processes.

Your Revenue Assurance processes will have to deal with:

- Broadband technologies
Both fixed and wireless broadband technologies are rapidly evolving and being massively adopted. 3G is being deployed worldwide and research shows customers' willingness to use mobile value added services and to pay for them. Nevertheless, the cost will always be the driver for massive uptake.

- New revenue streams
The surge on mobile content data expected for the future, announced by the early success of SMS, will revolutionise the operators' business. More complex technological and business models involving customers, content providers, advertisers and a large offer of heterogeneous' services, will look like a mine field waiting for careless operator mistakes.

- Merging and International Groups
The consolidation movement among Telecom Operators is fast growing since Telecom Operators are looking for both market opportunities and operational synergies. These major Telecom Operators are conducting or planning global Revenue Assurance strategies and frameworks.

- Convergence between fixed, mobile and ISP
Telecom Operators are converging fixed, mobile and ISP infrastructures looking to improve their operational efficiency, namely regarding their business support systems, while building competitive and complex services and rate plans.

- Regulation
The market regulators are demanding companies improve their operations assuring the existence of effective controls over their business. Sarbanes-Oxley Act(SOX), namely sections 302, 404 and 409, requires the ability to monitor, analyse and report over major processes and to promptly notify material events that may have an effect on the financial results of the business.

A thought for 2006

The Revenue Assurance challenges ahead demand an envisioned approach from the Telecom Operators on the framework and tools to be implemented. Operators should make sure that they are setting the right, flexible technology to cope with current and future business and technological requirements.

Miguel Lopes
Product Marketing Manager
WeDo Consulting, December 2005