Building Revenue Assurance Capabilities in the Telecom Enterprise

• Main Author: Danchev, Vasil
• Format: Others
• Published: Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School 2010
• Subjects: Engineering; Systems Engineering
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/etd/386; https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1389&context=etd

The function of revenue assurance is central in today's telecom industry. Although it has been always important there are a couple of factors that have now brought it to the forefront. On one hand, the highly competitive telecom market, coupled with the current economy slowdown forces telecoms to employ every possible way to increase earnings. On the other hand, Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory requirements are mandating telecom managers to definitively prove the numbers that they report to shareholders and to the public. Accommodating those needs requires maximum flexibility from legacy systems, which makes it increasingly difficult to keep the revenue management process flawless. Telecoms provide consistent level of service but often recognize less revenue than they are entitled to. Different market surveys indicate that revenue losses can add up to 15% of the total telecom revenue. According to the study conducted by the research company Analysys, the average global level of telecom revenue loss for 2007 was 13.6% of the telecom's gross income. Considering the size of the revenue stream for a telecom provider it is obvious that even 1 % revenue loss represents a significant amount of money. The goal of revenue assurance is to protect the telecom income by finding revenue losses, discovering the root causes for that losses, and ultimately proposing corrective actions. The challenge for revenue assurance practitioners is the lack of standardization body and scientific research that would drive agreement about the scope and methods of the activity. This research uses the enhanced Telecommunications Operations Model to establish revenue assurance scope. Further, the study evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of data quality and process improvement methods and describes the best practice approach for establishing revenue assurance capabilities within the telecom enterprise. Finally, the research evaluates the prospective development of a traffic monitoring and control system ( also referred to as ""revenue assurance system""). The analysis is made in the requirements definition and analysis domain, as described in the Friedman and Sage framework, by comparing system engineering guidelines in the domain with the real practices used by the telecom industry.