GB941_RA-Guide_V1-0

Revenue Assurance

Guidebook

GB941

Version 1.0 November 2006

TeleManagement Forum 2006

GB941 Revenue Assurance Guide Book

GB941 - Version 1.0 TeleManagement Forum 2006 of 70

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Table of Contents

Notice .................................................................................................................................................................. 2

Table of Contents .............................................................................................................................................. 3

List of Figures .................................................................................................................................................... 5

Executive Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 6

Background ........................................................................................................................................................ 8 1.1 Dimensions to the RA problem ........................................................................................................ 9 1.2 Economical Perspective ................................................................................................................... 9 1.3 Different Approaches to RA .......................................................................................................... 10

1.3.1 Reactive, Active, and Proactive RA ...................................................................................... 10 1.3.2 Data Quality & Data Integrity vs. Process Improvement ..................................................... 11

1.4 Best Practices ................................................................................................................................ 11 1.5 RA Maturity Model ......................................................................................................................... 12

2 RA – NGOSS, eTOM and SID .................................................................................................................... 16 2.1 NGOSS .......................................................................................................................................... 17 2.2 The eTOM ...................................................................................................................................... 18 2.3 The SID .......................................................................................................................................... 18 2.4 The proposal .................................................................................................................................. 19

3 Revenue Assurance and Fraud ................................................................................................................ 22 3.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 22 3.2 Revenue Leakage – Differentiating Fraud and Revenue Assurance Issues ............................. 22

3.2.1 Case 1 .................................................................................................................................... 23 3.2.2 Case 2 .................................................................................................................................... 24 3.2.3 Case 3 .................................................................................................................................... 24 3.2.4 Case 4 .................................................................................................................................... 24

3.3 Relationship between Fraud and Revenue Assurance ............................................................... 24 3.3.1 Collaboration for multi-dimensional leakage: ....................................................................... 25

3.4 Recommendations for a Collaborative Approach ........................................................................ 26 3.4.1 Collaboration Components ................................................................................................... 26 3.4.2 Key Benefits of a collaborative approach ............................................................................. 28

4 Revenue Assurance and Regulation ....................................................................................................... 29 4.1 Sarbanes Oxley ............................................................................................................................. 29

4.1.1 Relevant Sections of SOX .................................................................................................... 29 4.1.2 Interplay between SOX and Revenue Assurance ............................................................... 30 4.1.3 Linkage between SOX and eTOM processes ..................................................................... 32 4.1.4 Key Requirements for Revenue Assurance Activities to Enable SOX Compliance .......... 32 4.1.5 Illustrations of Interplay between SOX and Revenue Assurance ....................................... 34 4.1.6 Benefits for SOX Compliance Derived from Revenue Assurance ..................................... 34

4.2 Europe & UK specific linkages ...................................................................................................... 34 4.2.1 Introduction: ........................................................................................................................... 34 4.2.2 Implementation of the new European regulatory framework .............................................. 35 4.2.3 Scope, Aims and Definitions ................................................................................................. 35 4.2.4 Structure - National Regulatory Authorities .......................................................................... 36 4.2.5 Obligations and Tasks of National Regulatory Authorities .................................................. 36



4.2.6 Maturity Status of National Regulatory Authorities .............................................................. 37 4.2.7 Regulatory Requirements v/s Revenue Assurance ............................................................. 37

5 Revenue Assurance for Content and Advanced Services................................................................... 39 5.1 Challenges ..................................................................................................................................... 39

5.1.1 Challenge #1: CSPs and the multi-party value chain .......................................................... 39 5.1.2 Challenge #2: More complex Rating and Billing processing ............................................... 41 5.1.3 Challenge #3: Economic impact of errors ............................................................................ 41 5.1.4 Challenge #4: Complex payment arrangements and revenue stream bypass .................. 42

5.2 Recommended Strategies ............................................................................................................ 42 5.2.1 Key Strategies ........................................................................................................................ 42

6 Revenue Assurance Scenarios ................................................................................................................ 44 6.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 44 6.2 Perceived Root Causes................................................................................................................. 44 6.3 Revenue Leakage Points .............................................................................................................. 46 6.4 Revenue Assurance Classifications ............................................................................................. 52

7 Appendix A: Introduction to Telecom Frauds ........................................................................................ 63 Fraud - Unnoticed? .................................................................................................................................. 63 How does fraud happen? ........................................................................................................................ 64

8 Administrative Appendix ........................................................................................................................... 66 8.1 About this document ...................................................................................................................... 66 8.2 Document Life Cycle ..................................................................................................................... 66 8.3 Document History .......................................................................................................................... 67

8.3.1 Version History ....................................................................................................................... 67 8.3.2 Release History ...................................................................................................................... 67

8.4 Company Contact Details ............................................................................................................. 67 8.5 Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... 68 8.6 About TeleManagement Forum .................................................................................................... 69



List of Figures

Figure 1: Leakage and Drip Trays 10

Figure 2: Outline Revenue Assurance Maturity Model 13

Figure 3: The NGOSS Model 17

Figure 4: Revenue Assurance ABEs 19

Figure 5: RA eTOM processes 21

Figure 6: Categories of revenue leakages 23

Figure 7: Interplay between SOX, RA and other Risk Management Functions 31

Figure 8: SOX related eTOM processes 32

Figure 9: COSO Internal Control Framework 33

Figure 10: Old Value Chain 39

Figure 11: New Value Chain 40

Figure 12: Perceived Causes 45



Executive Summary

Revenue leakage is often considered a hidden and uncontrolled cost of doing business in the telecom industry. In addition to fraud, reasons for revenue loss include network provisioning, mediation and CDR errors, billing and interconnect inconsistencies, loss of data and corrupted files, fragmented support systems, incoherent databases, and manual or ill defined business processes. According to various Revenue Assurance (RA) research reports, the degree of exposure lies in the range of 3% to 15% of the Communications Service Providers‟ (CSP) gross revenue depending on factors such as networks and services type, geography, carrier type, and Revenue Assurance maturity level.

In the context of Revenue Assurance - the main question for any business is how much leakage is acceptable and how to improve the operations and systems that will minimize those leakages. An effective RA process must ensure the integrity and synchronization of both data and processes across all the disparate systems and the network itself, in order to sustain operational and financial efficiency. RA provides analysis of the relationship between network resources, services, customers, and generated revenue, and enables the CSP not only to detect revenue leakage (e.g. un-billed customers, mis-billed customers), stranded assets, and operational inefficiencies, but also to understand the reasons for these undesired occurrences.

This Guidebook originates from TMF Revenue Assurance Technical Report 131, a technical report on RA issued by TMF in 2004, and leads the reader through different facets of RA, collecting the experiences of various professionals.

In its evolution from a technical report to a guidebook, the Guidebook aims at broadening the target audience from the original group of RA technical practitioners to a broader set of business stakeholders including other contributing, influencing or benefiting organizations in a CSP. Additional topics have been investigated; others that were only outlined in TR131 have been further expanded.

In particular, the Guidebook deals with the following topics, each one covered in a separate chapter:

SID and eTOM models‟ support for RA, according to the recent proposal of TMF Modeling team to integrate RA into the SID and eTOM

View at Regulatory Compliance through the prism of RA, addressing Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and regulation in general.

Linkages between Fraud Management and RA, a section in which several options of how to effectively address RA issues are recommended to CSPs.



RA for Content Services, giving recommendations and highlighting some of the new challenges currently posed to CSPs by the delivery of new advanced content-based services.

Business Scenarios in which RA becomes significant, providing an insight of perceived root causes and a classification of main areas affecting RA

In conclusion, a technical Appendix introduces the reader to the Telecom Fraud topic, ending with taxonomy of possible frauds.

A background section follows, to briefly highlight some the key aspects of TMF TR131 which may be considered a starting point for this work: Traditional RA approaches, drip tray model, RA maturity model, and RA best practices.



Background

In 2004 the TeleManagement Forum undertook an initiative to better define and standardize the issue of revenue assurance for CSPs. The findings were published in the technical report named TMF Revenue Assurance Technical Report 131 (TR131), publicly available on TeleManagement Forum‟s web site since April 2005. TR131 is based on the accumulated experience of many operators, vendors, and system Integrators (SIs). TR131 report lays out the de facto standard by which CSPs can benchmark their maturity in the RA process.

Revenue Assurance is a well-known challenge in the Telecommunications sector, mainly rooted in the Telephony world as a set of techniques and methodologies to identify and fix revenue leakages and/or prevent or detect errors resulting in unbilled or uncollected revenues of the CSP. Today‟s accelerated growth in the data, IP and real-time services market introduces additional complexity and exposure for RA due to dynamically evolving technologies, continuous demand for new services, more complex business processes, new value chains, additional external partnerships, new business models and an every increasing and more complicated operational and business systems infrastructure.

The above factors, coupled with the tumultuous economic climate that started with the slowdown in 2001 and the revitalization in 2004-5 and the current regulatory environment, provide evidence and compelling need for RA in more and more CSPs. This need, in turn, together with the acknowledgement of the strategic significance of RA for CSPs, resulted in the formation of organizational units to ensure the accuracy of financial reporting and revenue recognition. Given increased regulatory and competitive pressure and in order to remain competitive and profitable, CSPs are continuingly restructuring their organizations according to new business targets and priorities. These structural change and the response to market conditions suggest the benefits of the acceptance of a holistic RA process to optimize the business process, the usage of existing assets, the data integrity and as a result - maximizing revenues and in parallel - reducing costs and increase profitability.

Up to 2004 no CSP emerged as credible industry leader, nor was a unique definition available to comfortably align RA practitioners from different business domains. This situation may be understood since RA evolved from several organizational units (Finance Control, Network Operations, Fraud Management, Billing Operations, etc.) each of which has a different perspective, approach to RA and own priorities.

Moreover, RA is an over-used buzzword. It often reflects the financial needs as well as objectives related to a business problem. These needs and objectives tend to be defined differently by different stakeholders, hence the confusion associated with the term of RA.



1.1 Dimensions to the RA problem

For the revenue stream in the usage-based billing environment (i.e. billing that is based upon data volume, duration of sessions, etc.), a comprehensive analysis of the entire process from capturing and recording a billable event through billing, cash collection, accounting and revenue recognition is required. One example of an approach used by a CSP offering voice telephony services is to compare the network‟s CDRs (Call Detail Records) to SS#7 events to verify the proper ratio of CDRs to SS#7 events. An alternative technique uses test calls that are generated either manually or automatically, to compare the generated CDRs to the record of the event from the subscriber‟s perspective.

The subscription-based charging model (recurring or one-time fees) requires an inspection of the data pertaining to the servicing network elements and comparing it to the subscriber‟s billing data. However, order management, asset/inventory management and provisioning systems should also be part of this assessment because data discrepancies may result in the billing process not being aligned with the number of orders, order details or services actually provisioned within the network. Additionally, stranded assets in the network inventory (assets shown in use by the operational support systems but no service actually utilizing the asset) can result with excessive CapEx due to discrepancies in network capacity and orders or allocated resources.

For event-based charges (SMS, MMS, etc.) the tariff structure could be regarded as even simpler and requiring only reconciliation. Some providers tend to tie such charges to those of content delivery service (video, music, etc.), which include quality of service related attributes; this requires much stricter controls to be performed.

There are other dimensions to the problem such as pre-paid and post-paid issues, wholesale and retail differences, and so on. Each one requires particular care and may even require a distinct approach, since the type of service or targeted customer segment influences choice of methods and priorities for the CSP‟s RA program.

1.2 Economical Perspective

Assessing costs and benefits is a required first step prior to introducing new often-complex projects within a business. This is also the case for an RA initiative. To address this issue, TR131 includes a detailed discussion of the outcomes of a real life example of a cost-benefit analysis performed by an operator.

The analysis uses a drip tray model; a common metaphor used in describing the affect of errors in processing charges, a term commonly referred to as “leakage”. The metaphor is appropriate as the loss of water from a pipe exhibits similar properties to the loss or corruption of data as it is processed from one system to the next.

The amount of water lost by the pipe could be measured by comparing the amount that goes into one end of the pipe against the amount that comes out of the other end



of it. Though simplistic, the comparison of ins and outs lies at the heart of activities intended to monitor, diagnose, prevent and measure the extent of error.

Figure 1: Leakage and Drip Trays

Some drip trays will lead to the capture of errors, some will lead to their capture and resolution. Capturing errors without resolution means that errors are measured but still take place. Capturing and resolving errors means measurement of errors that would have gone unresolved without the drip tray. A drip tray that captures errors without leading to resolution has a cost, but no clear attributable economic benefit.

The analysis indicates the benefits of an effective and on-going RA strategy greatly outweigh the costs associated with the project and the operation.

1.3 Different Approaches to RA

1.3.1 Reactive, Active, and Proactive RA

Using the following definitions for different styles of revenue assurance initiatives

Reactive – doing something as a response to existing leakages, for example a project to identify and resolve the causes of actual revenue loss;

Active – doing something to address problems as they occur, for example by monitoring of problems in real-time. This approach is designed to initiate corrective responses prior to any revenue loss takes place;

Proactive - acting in anticipation, by implementing controls and other measures to prevent problems from occurring

In general, the reduction in time required to respond to a problem is the basis for the shift from reactive to active RA. The goal is to anticipate what can go wrong and prevent it. This “pre-emptive” approach is the basis for proactive RA.

The Reactive, Active and Proactive approaches to RA are complementary approaches. A good RA practice must always include Reactive controls, to identify leakages and create the case for the Active and Proactive controls. Active controls are required to discover problems in near-real time, and to correct their outcomes before they cause a real damage. Proactive controls are the ultimate goal. These

In Out

error not captured

error captured not resolved

error captured and resolved



controls help preventing the problems from occurring in advance and normally do so by being addressed in the design and deployment phases. That said, it is a bad practice to rely only on Proactive controls since, as a result of the significant complexity of the operations and business systems and processes of a CSP, some problems may not be able to be detected proactively

1.3.2 Data Quality & Data Integrity vs. Process Improvement

An approach pursuing Data Quality & Data Integrity focuses on improving the quality of data to ensure accuracy of revenue. This normally involves the extraction of data, from one or a number of systems and/or the consistency validation of the data when moving from network to billing.

Process Improvement is normally undertaken by a review of the business processes supporting the generation and management of revenue generating events (e.g., Order to Cash processes). The aim is to ensure that processes are designed properly and performed as expected.

In this type of audit style approach, RA tends to identify where potential areas of risk exposure might exist: within system functionality, handoff between systems, as well as supporting business processes and interaction between the processes and systems.

Both approaches are complementary and we recommend combining them. There are RA problems that will be detected only by one of the previously mentioned techniques. For example, an automated provisioning process that generates many errors and needs human intervention, may end with successful provisioning and complete data integrity, but cause revenue leakages (the customer will start to use the product later) and subsequently increase the CSP‟s costs (the cost of the human intervention). This problem will be detected only by using Process Improvement techniques and not by Data Integrity techniques.

1.4 Best Practices

Best practices have been constituted to ensure that comprehensive strategies include network element configuration data, OSS service activation data, usage data, mediation rules, and customer account data from order entry, billing and CRM.

Best practice in RA represents a dynamic striving for optimization rather than the static delivery of a particular series of methods, controls and tools. RA best practice itself shall be subject to perpetual review and shall not be considered as a static process.

For an RA strategy to be considered effective it is mandatory to include all of the following components: technology, people and processes.

Technology component includes identifying data discrepancies and prioritizing the correction efforts, which is a daunting task, and needs the support of software to be



carried out. eTOM and SID, to some degree inherently provide for improved benefits of technology integration that reduce some, but not all of the potential fallout associated with technology components that do not interface without a global standards adoption.

People component includes the necessary quick investigation of suspicious data by RA analysts and subject matter experts, intended to determine the validity of threshold violations when abnormalities occur.

Process component refers to the solid understanding of the complex interdependencies among network infrastructure, B/OSS environment and business processes in CSP‟s operations that the expert should have. eTOM Layer 0 – 2 processes establish some of the interdependencies and cooperation across business units, departmental approaches and various company objectives.

RA systems should be designed to support data acquisition from network elements, provisioning systems, mediation platforms, billing systems, order management systems, asset management systems, intercarrier exchanges, partner relationship management, etc., according to the specific business scenario. Beyond data access capabilities, RA systems should also implement key functional features to perform appropriate detection techniques (monitoring, reconciling, correlation and so on) and include reporting tools such as dashboards, tracking and correction panels, case management tools and enterprise controls visibility across all business functions, especially given the new financial regulatory environment such as Sarbanes-Oxley.

1.5 RA Maturity Model

TMF Revenue Assurance Technical Report 131 (TR131) also sets forth five successive stages that characterize the RA level of maturity within a CSP. Not only does this scale give CSPs a benchmark to measure their progress against other CSPs, but it also lays out a road map for other RA operations.

Five steps of maturity have been identified, with the fifth step an ideal to be reached.

Initial, when no RA process has been established and only arbitrary ad hoc reactions to circumstances;

Repeatable, when RA processes are developed at the level of individual projects, products and implementations. Flaws are identified and remedial action is taken.

Defined, when RA processes are developed for the whole organization. Organizational priorities for revenue assurance are understood and guide proactive deployment of resources.

Managed, when RA processes provide consistent quantitative measures. Measures drive planning and control.

Optimized, when the measures, planning and controls implemented in order to improve the business themselves become the subject of continual improvement.



Figure 2: Outline Revenue Assurance Maturity Model

Five distinct aspects have been identified to help assess the RA maturity level of a business:

Organization aspect of RA responsibilities reflects how well the objectives of individual staff and of the business as a whole are aligned with the goals of revenue assurance.

People that are dedicated only to revenue assurance or provide secondary support.

The influence of RA knowledge over the company refers to the ability to proactively instigate, manage and deliver change.

The effectiveness of design and implementation, the synergy use of different tools to meet multiple business objectives.

The improvement of company processes, including RA, which is itself a process that should be improved over time.

The economic benefits of following a defined RA process gradually take shape as a company moves up the maturity ladder. In the first few stages of maturity, there is low hanging fruit - economic benefits that are easy to identify and provide an immediate return. These benefits are realized by finding discrepancies in data that directly impact billable and collectable revenues. Although the benefits from resolution of these problems continue to exist, CSPs can see significant economic improvements when they focus on process improvement. At this level, usually in the managed stage and above, a CSP can prevent a “less than optimal” business process from evolving and thus take its revenue assurance activity to the higher level of maturity, producing more profound, long term results.

The level of economic benefit that a CSP can realize goes hand in hand with its RA maturity as defined by TR131. There are no shortcuts in this process. An organization

5. Continuous improvement via feedback. Decentralized ownership, central control.

4. Leakage quantitatively understood and controlled.

3. Standardized approach developed. Designing-in control commences.

2. Basic project/process management. Repeatable tasks.

1. Ad-hoc, chaotic. Dependant on individual heroics.



must go through these stages to build the required level of trust that will allow it to maximize the benefits of a full and effective revenue assurance process.

Current RA Trends

The process of RA maturation within an individual service provider is a response not only to the growth of internal RA experience and expertise, but also reflects the influence of a number of external macro- and micro-development factors on the perceived RA needs of the business and the prioritization of RA activities. These external drivers also evolve over time. The primary categories are as follows:

Macro-economic: the overall state of local and global economies and their impact on business confidence.

Commercial: the need to increase revenues/margins and lower costs; competitive pressures.

Industry Regulation: the development of industry-specific regulatory initiatives, ranging from the general, such as liberalization and privatization in developing markets, to the specific, such as OFCOM‘s OTR003 in the UK which requires service providers to demonstrate metering and billing accuracy with potentially stringent penalties for non-compliance.

Corporate Governance & Fiscal Legislation: most notably the Sarbanes- Oxley Act in the US and the EU‘s 8th Directive, introduced to restore public faith and transparency in the governance, internal controls and audited financial statements of public companies. (See section 5 ff)

The initial surge of interest in RA coincided with the worsening economic conditions in developed markets experienced by the high technology sector – including the telecoms industry – at the start of the century. Cyclical economic factors are now improving and causing a concomitant change in the corporate mindset from „accountancy-led‟ back to „entrepreneurial-led‟. There is now some evidence that the role of „mature‟ RA is being asked to change in response, and the Maturity Model (see section 1.7) may need to be amended to accommodate this.

Some of the noted responses are as follows:

Responsibility for and ownership of the maintenance of ‗primary‘ quality assurance replacing revenue assurance and being returned to business and operational units. In mature RA environments where RA culture has become embedded across the business this trend is not unexpected, and it potentially allows for cost reductions through personnel reductions and may encourage immediacy at the point of origin for some – but not all - revenue leakage scenarios. However, there is as yet no clear trend in the relationship between the core RA team and the departmental QA owners.

As above, RA core teams are being downsized as the more immediate firefighting aspects of RA have been taken in hand and the opportunities for obvious and quick wins have lessened.

Core RA teams are being refocused with priority give to compliance and governance related activities. RA has provided much of the knowledge and operational enactment of SOC programs in conjunction with Internal Audit. As some recent surveys have



highlighted the fact that compliance is now a bigger driver for IT initiatives than ROI, this reprioritization is, again, not unexpected. However, there are some key differences between RA and Internal Audit drivers. Whilst demonstrating the accuracy and completeness of financial reporting is of high relevance to RA, the primary goal has historically been to satisfy commercial imperatives – increasing revenues and margins whilst reducing costs – and these are not key compliance targets.

RA is maintaining input into planning processes, but primarily with a focus on cost management slant. Typically in such cases, RA expertise in being targeted at ‗tactical‘ than ‗strategic‘ objectives.

These changes are not necessarily in the best interests of either the evolution of effective RA or for the broader benefit of service providers looking to ensure cost effective operations for new generation services.

As RA has increased its influence, and through the necessary efforts of groups such as the TM Forum‟s RA Working Group and Catalyst projects, the knowledge and expertise of the RA practitioners is beginning to be standardized into a core RA process methodology that can be applied across all business units to uncover, recover and inhibit revenue leakages from a wide variety of different systems, processes and circumstances. This is critical for the benefit of the entire telecoms industry, and can provide a critical bridging of operational and business (financial) processes. However, the business value of RA is engendered in people – whether in an internal RA team or external consultants – and not solely in formularized process.

Service Providers in newly competitive, high growth/low penetration markets – where RA is typically less „mature‟ – are largely unaffected by this trend at present, and may even benefit from the inbound relocation of experienced RA practitioners. However, as the technological and legislative drivers they face become increasingly similar to those in developed markets, it may only be a matter of time before the commercial drivers fall into line as well.

The global RA community is now facing up to the challenges of new generation infrastructure and services – those based primarily on IP and designed to exploit convergent service opportunities. In parallel, complex 3rd party commercial relationships are evolving. A balance between the maintenance of strong process-driven RA derived from the traditional PSTN world and the evolution of a new generation of RA skills evolved from an „IP mindset‟ will be required to guide the transition and ensure that we learn from past mistakes rather than repeat them.



2 RA – NGOSS, eTOM and SID

Revenue Assurance is not yet part of the NGOSS eTOM (enhanced Telecom Operations Map) and SID (Shared Information and Data) paradigms. The TeleManagement Forum‟s Revenue Assurance modeling team submitted a proposal about the integration of RA with the SID and eTOM. This proposal is under review, and our expectation is that it will be accepted with minor changes in the next few months. In this document, we present the highlights of the proposition.

The eTOM Business Process Framework serves as the blueprint for process direction and the starting point for development and integration of Business and Operations Support Systems (BSS and OSS respectively). The SID, as the NGOSS information model, provides an information/data reference model and a common information/data vocabulary from a business as well as a systems perspective. Using the SID in combination with the eTOM business process and activity descriptions, it becomes possible to create a bridge between the business and Information Technology groups within an organization, providing definitions that are understandable by the business, but are also rigorous enough to be used for software development. The integration of RA into the eTOM and SID will greatly impact the standardization of RA, permitting service providers, system integrators, and vendors, to implement RA in a canonical way, reducing costs, and ensuring interoperability between systems and processes.

For the sake of the RA practitioners who may not be familiar with the NGOSS, eTOM and SID framework, we first provide a short introduction to NGOSS, eTOM and SID.



2.1 NGOSS

Figure 3: The NGOSS Model

NGOSS is a comprehensive, integrated framework for developing, procuring and deploying operational and business support systems and software.

NGOSS is the TeleManagement Forum initiative to drive efficiency in and cost out of the operation of telecom networks. NGOSS enables service providers to change the way they think about their business and operations.

NGOSS is a comprehensive, integrated framework for developing, procuring and deploying operational and business support systems and software. It is available as a toolkit of industry-agreed specifications and guidelines that cover key business and technical areas.

Through an integrated system of business and technical elements, NGOSS allows OSS/BSS systems to become as interoperable as they have been never before.

NGOSS positions Service Providers with a repeatable process for automation of complex operational tasks and positions vendors with the most effective open interfaces in the industry today.

Business Process Automation delivered in the enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM™)

Systems Analysis & Design delivered in the Shared Information/Data Model (SID)

Solution Design & Integration delivered in the Contract Interface and Technology Neutral Architecture (TNA)

Conformance Testing delivered in the NGOSS Compliance Tests



Procurement & Implementation delivered in ROI Model, RFI Template, and Implementation Guide documents

This approach enables all players in the OSS/BSS supply chain to use the elements appropriate for their business but with the confidence that these elements all fit together with a reduced level of “integration tax.”

NGOSS-based solutions use mainstream IT concepts and technologies to deliver a more productive development environment and efficient management infrastructure. NGOSS is prescriptive for only those few „cardinal points‟ where interoperability is key while enabling ease of customization across a wide range of functionality. This allows NGOSS-based systems to be tailored to provide a competitive advantage while also working with legacy systems.

2.2 The eTOM

The Enhanced Telecom Operations Map® (eTOM) is the ongoing TM Forum initiative to deliver a business process model or framework for use by service providers and others within the telecommunications industry. The TM Forum eTOM describes all the enterprise processes required by a service provider and analyzes them to different levels of detail according to their significance and priority for the business. For companies adopting eTOM, it serves as the blueprint for process direction and provides a neutral reference point for internal process reengineering needs, partnerships, alliances, and general working agreements with other providers. For suppliers, eTOM outlines potential boundaries of software components to align with the customers' needs and highlights the required functions, inputs, and outputs that must be supported by products.

2.3 The SID

The SID, as the NGOSS information model, provides an information/data reference model and a common information/data vocabulary from a business as well as a systems perspective. The SID uses UML to formalize the expression of the needs of a particular view.

The SID provides the common language for communicating the concerns of the four major groups of constituents represented by the four NGOSS Views: Business, System, Implementation and Deployment, defined in the NGOSS Lifecycle. Used in combination with the eTOM business process and activity descriptions, SID makes it possible to create a bridge between the business and Information Technology groups within an organization, providing definitions that are understandable by the business, but are also rigorous enough to be used for software development.

In order to integrate Revenue Assurance into the NGOSS framework, and to gain all the benefits of this framework, RA must be integrated at least into the Enhanced Telecom Operations Map® (eTOM), which defines the business processes in the



telecommunications industry, and into the Shared Information/Data Model (SID). The integration of RA into the eTOM permits telecommunications operators to have a better understanding of the function of RA at the operational level and to comprehend the interactions between RA and other processes. The integration into the SID allows identifying the common data/information model that should be followed by RA solutions, permitting structured and easy integration between RA solutions, and between RA solutions and other entities in the telecommunications operational map

2.4 The proposal

The TMF RA modeling team made a detailed proposal of integration of RA into the SID and eTOM. Below is a high-level description of this proposal. The reader should keep in mind that this description is neither detailed nor exhaustive, and that exactitude was sacrificed for simplicity.

We identified 7 RA Aggregate Business Entities (ABEs) that should be incorporated into the SID

Revenue Assurance controls,

Revenue Assurance violations,

Revenue Assurance key performance indicators (KPIs),

Revenue Assurance objectives

Revenue Assurance rules that map revenue assurance KPIs and threshold violations to revenue assurance trouble tickets.

Revenue Assurance actions/responses

Revenue Assurance assessments

Figure RA.4 depicts the Revenue Assurance Aggregate Business Entities (ABEs) within the SID Framework.

Figure 4: Revenue Assurance ABEs

Enterprise (Under Construction)

Revenue Assurance

RA Control

RA Violation

RA Trouble Ticket

RA Action_Response RA KPI

RA Assessment

Enterprise

Revenue Assurance

RA Control

RA Violation

RA Trouble Ticket

RA Action_Response RA KPI

RA Assessment

RA Objective



The Revenue Assurance Control ABE defines policy-based rules that represent the logical definition of comparisons performed on entities to identify Revenue Assurance Violations. For example a Revenue Assurance Control may compare pre mediation and post mediation call details records (CDRs) to identify improperly dropped CDRs, i.e. Revenue Assurance Violations

Revenue Assurance KPIs are defined on Revenue Assurance Violations and on other revenue assurance related entities, such as bills and CDRs. For example a RA KPI may count the number of Revenue Assurance Violations found by the Revenue Assurance Control that compared the pre and post mediation CDRs.

Revenue Assurance Objectives are targets whose infringement may trigger the creation of Revenue Assurance Trouble Tickets. Examples of Revenue Assurance Objective are that the value of the Revenue Assurance KPI that counted the number of dropped CDRs is lower than 50,000, or that the trend of this value over a period of time is negative (the number of violations is dropping). When one or several Revenue Assurance Objectives are violated, a Revenue Assurance Trouble Tickets may be issued. For example if the number of dropped CDRs is higher than 50,000 a Revenue Assurance Trouble Ticket may be issued and assigned to someone, to check the cause of the problem, and to try to recycle the dropped CDRs. Revenue Assurance Trouble Tickets may be created as a result of the infringement of one or more Revenue Assurance Objectives, or as a result of the finding one or more Revenue Assurance Violations.

Revenue Assurance actions/responses reconcile revenue assurance trouble tickets, and Revenue Assurance Violations and may bring the Revenue Assurance Trouble Tickets to closure by initiating and performing a series of one or more activities. These activities may include corrective activities, e.g., correcting and recycling the dropped CDRs, and other activities such as sending reports to all the people that should be aware of the violation of the objective, e.g., sending a report to the CFO if more than 50,000 dropped CDRs were found. Revenue Assurance Action/Response ABE entities also may consist in root cause analysis.

Revenue Assurance Assessment ABE entities measure the effectiveness of Revenue Assurance Controls, Revenue Assurance Objectives, and Revenue Assurance KPIs. Revenue Assurance Assessment ABE entities include recommendations of refining controls, objectives, and KPIs.

The RA ABEs proposed are based on existing SID ABEs, for example the Revenue Assurance Trouble Tickets is defined using the already existing SID ABE of TroubleTicket, and the Revenue Assurance actions/responses is defined using the already existing SID ABE of Activity.

Revenue Assurance (RA) business entities support the complete RA lifecycle. These processes range from creating RA controls, KPIs and RA objectives, identifying RA violations and trouble tickets, resolving trouble tickets to assessing an enterprise‟s RA program. RA eTOM processes are shown in Figure RA.5.



Figure 5: RA eTOM processes



3 Revenue Assurance and Fraud

3.1 Introduction

Traditionally, most CSPs identified fraud management as a priority in the early days of operations. The early focus and implementation of systems contributed to the development and maturity of fraud management practices and systems. Although there is a clear relationship between fraud management and revenue assurance, fraud management has evolved as a separate function, often under different department and sponsorship within the organization. Industry-wide, there is consistency in the approach and system functionalities for fraud management.

However, revenue assurance is still an immature activity for many CSPs. Revenue assurance activities in most of the CSPs are independent of their fraud management practices. As new issues and systems come into place, there is an increasing need to look at both fraud management and revenue assurance together due to the nature of the leakages and the solutions and practices to identify these.

The purpose of this section is to demonstrate the relationship between fraud management and revenue assurance and recommend different options for CSPs to effectively tackle revenue assurance issues.

3.2 Revenue Leakage – Differentiating Fraud and Revenue Assurance Issues

Revenue leakage in any CSP‟s operations can be grouped into three categories, namely, Fraud, Revenue Assurance and Bad Debt. Revenue Assurance problems are mainly due to the operational inefficiency in the systems or processes. Fraud represents the deliberate intention to avoid payment and Bad Debt is the combination of un-intentionable and intentionable revenue loss.

An example of this segmentation is a new bundle offer from an operator may cause leakage due to illegal use of services and network or non-payment of the dues by the customer. Other leakages such as the customer not being billed properly as in the case of under billing or over-billing and issues such as the order not being provisioned are due to inefficiency in the system.



New Bundle Offer• Multiple products & services

• Multiple price plans

• Special Promotions

• Inter-related multi-tier discounts

• Contractual Clauses

• Customer not billed correctly Under-Billing = Lost Revenue

Over-Billing = Customer Churn

• Order not provisioned

• Illegal use of services &

network

• Customer does not pay

FraudFraud Operational Operational

InefficiencyInefficiencyBad DebtBad Debt

• Customer does not pay

Figure 6: Categories of revenue leakages

It may not be possible to have a clear segmentation and resolution for the following reasons:

Differentiating factor is very thin: The root cause of fraud and revenue assurance can be the same. Intent and root cause are the differentiating factors. Incorrect provisioning of service at the switch without provisioning at the billing system causes revenue leakage, as the service usage cannot be billed for. The root cause could be a shortfall of the provisioning process or an intentionally performed activity. In the former case, this is a revenue assurance problem and in the latter case, it is an internal fraud.

In case of most of the problems, since the data analyzed is the same, it would be reflected on multiple tools and systems. This trend is likely to continue and become more significant in case of IP and event records.

3.2.1 Case 1

Service is not provisioned for a particular subscriber in the billing system, but the subscriber is using the service. The subscriber is provisioned in the network element. This scenario can be interpreted in the following way:

The subscriber has been illegally provisioned in the network element

The subscriber was genuine, but because of a process error or error in provisioning system, only network element was provisioned.



3.2.2 Case 2

A sudden increase in the number of CDRs generated for a subscriber could be interpreted as three different scenarios

Increased call pattern that is detected by the fraud management system as a potential fraud;

Increased number of records that may be due to malfunctioning of switch causing multiple records or incorrect guiding of records

Genuine increase in usage of the subscriber that could be potentially new revenue opportunities for the service provider.

3.2.3 Case 3

A sudden increase in traffic is detected from a trunk configured for national calls from an interconnect operator. This scenario can be interpreted as:

Incorrect trunk configuration causing other traffic (such as international traffic) to be routed through the trunk;

A third company is illegally routing its calls through the trunk using devices such as gateway SIMs

There is a genuine increase in traffic. This calls for a renegotiation of the existing contracts and tariffs.

3.2.4 Case 4

As a part of new product development and testing, a CSP provisioned mobile phones and services for field-testing. This testing included quality of service and network coverage testing.

At the end of the testing period, the majority of the phones were not returned but services on them were left activated due to a process error.

After the launch of the new service, fraudsters gained access to these test phones and used them for illegal call selling, causing significant losses.

3.3 Relationship between Fraud and Revenue Assurance

The relationship between the two domains is illustrated below:

Revenue Assurance issues that may be exploited for fraud:

Certain frauds, especially internal frauds are caused when fraudsters are able to exploit data integrity issues or process loopholes. New systems, services, and equipments are potential vulnerable areas that can be used by fraudsters. Test phones or a SIMs can also be a target for such misuse. Some of the common examples of these frauds are in the following areas:



New product development;

System configurations;

Test configurations and equipment.

Fraud scenarios that can cause revenue leakage

Certain fraud scenarios result in revenue loss for subscribers not related to the fraud. This loss is usually data integrity issues caused by the fraud. Identification of such issues is critical for recovery of revenue from non-fraud subscribers. An example of such case is an internal fraud by illegal configuration in the system such as suppression of records for fraudsters causing revenue leakage for other subscribers.

Revenue leakages that may be detected by fraud analysis and vise versa.

Due to the nature of fraud and revenue assurance issues, it would be possible to find indications on either system. This is important in case of new frauds and systems. Use of such information is critical in solving the issues within the shortest possible time to reduce the impact. An example that was detected by a revenue assurance system is Interconnect fraud, which is done by modification of some parameters such as source or origin of calls to apply different rates.

. Fraud management system‟s real-time processing capability for detecting integrity issues will significantly improve the RA team‟s resolution/correction response time.

3.3.1 Collaboration for multi-dimensional leakage:

As illustrated by the above cases, there is a need to look at each issue identified by fraud management or revenue assurance systems in multiple perspectives.

It is usually possible to detect the leakage and identify the cause area. However, it is difficult to find out the root cause (such as intent or process error) without taking a holistic view of the issue;

It is possible that a revenue assurance problem, such as scenario defined in case 4 can easily pave the way for fraud to be committed on the network. The revenue assurance problem, if not corrected with a holistic view, can provide loopholes for fraudsters to attack the network. Identification of the relationship and its effects is critical for choosing the correct resolution and prevention methodology.

Certain internal frauds are likely to be detected by the revenue assurance system first. Unless the exact cause and intent of the problem is identified, it may not be possible to prevent the issue from reappearing. If treated as a revenue assurance problem alone, it is likely to be used in a different manner by the fraudster to exploit the loopholes. Therefore, the issue requires analysis by both revenue assurance as well as fraud management systems.

Time for resolution of issues is critical. For faster resolution of certain problems detected by one of the functions, it may be necessary that the information be passed on to the other relevant function at the earliest opportunity. A collaborative approach facilitates transfer and early action on such issues.



3.4 Recommendations for a Collaborative Approach

To analyze and resolve revenue leakage issues at a holistic level and in many cases evolve revenue generation opportunities out of this effort, it is important to adopt a collaborative approach to revenue assurance. We recommend collaboration between Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management at three levels: the team level, the process level, and the tool level. In many cases, such collaboration permits analysis and resolution of revenue leakage at a holistic level that would be missed otherwise.

Nevertheless, our recommendation is for collaboration between RA and Fraud teams, and not necessarily for having common people dealing with both.

Similarly our recommendation is to use tools and processes for RA and Fraud that permit sharing data, KPIs, case management, dashboards and reports. However, we do not necessarily recommend using the same tool or process for revenue assurance and fraud (additionally, we do not necessarily recommend to use of the same tool for all revenue assurance tasks, we recommend rather to use the best of breed). Our recommendations are explained in the following sections.

3.4.1 Collaboration Components

3.4.1.1 Collaboration of Teams:

Collaboration of fraud management and revenue assurance teams results in more effective dissemination and transfer of information helping in faster resolution of issues. Some of the options for collaboration of teams are:

Co-location of the teams that allows easier communication;

Common team members and managers with clear roles and responsibilities who can liaise between the two teams;

Common team members who analyze both fraud and revenue assurance issues.

3.4.1.1.1 Key advantages of collaboration between teams are:

Cross-fertilization of information;

Faster communication of issues and detected discrepancies;

Faster handover of issues between the teams;

Faster identification of key issues and information

3.4.1.1.2 Challenges in collaboration between revenue assurance and fraud management teams are:

In many CSPs, Fraud and Revenue Assurance teams exist as different departments and may even have different executive sponsors. There may be a need to change existing organizational structures or define structures that allow effective exchange of information.



Prioritization of issues – Fraud is usually given high importance since it is considered an unwelcome attack from outside. It may be necessary for organizations to define new priorities.

Political considerations on the role, responsibilities and authority of members of collaborative team.

Security issues: Access to information from the fraud management team can be restricted in some CSPs due to regulatory issues. Hence it may be necessary to address such restrictions;

Mission Differences – The Fraud team typically tries to stop the fraud without sharing information with the whole organization (to prevent others from doing a similar fraud). On the other hand the RA mission is to divulge the information found throughout the whole organization, both to help entities prevent similar RA issues in the future, and to gain future collaboration.

Skill-sets: Collaborative team members may need to acquire additional skill-sets to handle issues related to both domains.

3.4.1.2 Process

Integration of the fraud management and revenue assurance processes helps streamline information flow and improve issue resolution. Integration of processes encompasses setting common objectives and KPIs, integrated resolution methodology and procedures, transfer of information and cases, inter-department communication and other related areas. Depending on the nature of the business, scope and ability to affect changes in the existing structure, integration can be adopted in all the processes or specific areas. For example, integration can be adopted only for prevention activities and not for operations.

3.4.1.2.1 Advantages of collaboration of process:

Streamlined activities that facilitate faster resolution of issues, especially for cross-functional issues;

Reduce redundant processes.

3.4.1.2.2 Challenges brought about by process integration are:

Risk of increasing complexity;

Most of the operators have established working processes and procedures to fight fraud and operational inefficiency. There may be resistance to modify these;

Political considerations in treating processes from both domains.

3.4.1.3 Tools

Fraud Management and Revenue Assurance tools can be integrated at two levels – Data Management layer and Business layer.

At the data management layer, the systems use the same data processing and storage for the interfaces that are commonly used by both. Integration of tools can provide in significant operational expenditure and infrastructure savings for the CSP.



At the business layer, the integration involves common alarms, workflow, reporting and presentation. This allows users to share and collaborate effectively. Automation helps in faster issue communication and resolution, provided appropriate processes are set up and issues are summarized correctly.

3.4.1.3.1 Advantages of integration of tools:

Integrated view of the revenue assurance and fraud management issues;

Ease in impact analysis of enterprise wide issues at a management level

Holistic problem resolution and workflow.

3.4.1.3.2 Challenges:

Integrated platform that can address both revenue assurance and fraud management issues;

Modes of operation of fraud management tool and revenue assurance tools are typically different. Due to the nature of the problem, its perceived impact on the business and economic considerations, fraud management tools are typically real-time systems whereas RA tools generally work in a batch-processing mode.

Standard interfaces for tools to collaborate.

3.4.2 Key Benefits of a collaborative approach

Key benefits of a collaborative approach are:

Faster issue resolution: A collaborative approach facilitates easy transfer of information from one system and team to another. This enables faster resolution of issues.

Increased productivity through eliminated repetitive processes: A collaborative approach calls for tighter processes that are common to the different activities. It eliminates processes that are redundant and streamlines the activities.

Resource optimization through shared infrastructure: Eliminate separate systems to address fraud and revenue assurance results. A collaborative platform can help in reduction of infrastructure.



4 Revenue Assurance and Regulation

The discipline of Revenue Assurance by its nature addresses a number of topics that are subject to a variety of international and statutory regulations.

Diverse regulations, each having its unique focus, can be aligned into two major groups of industry-neutral, and industry-specific regulations. Examples of the former include European Union‟s “8th Directive” and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), which is often considered the most significant and illustrative regulation with respect to its rigorous compliance rules. Examples of the latter group, with regard to telecommunication industry, include a wide range of guidelines and standards, covering billing accuracy, network and service availability, settlements between CSPs, customer relationship management, privacy of customer data, revenue booking and recognition and many other telecom issues.

The objective of this chapter is to provide an overview and guidance on some of the regulatory requirements that could be partly or fully addressed by a comprehensive Revenue Assurance function.

4.1 Sarbanes Oxley

The Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 was enacted largely in response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals involving some of the most prominent companies in the Unites States. These scandals have resulted in loss of public trust in reporting practices and corporate accounting. The objective of the SOX Act is to restore investor confidence in public markets and enhance penalties for corporate wrongdoing. The SOX Act has entitled the PCAOB (Public Company Accounting Oversight Board) to oversee compliance with relevant provisions of the Act.

4.1.1 Relevant Sections of SOX

While SOX is an extensive regulation encompassing all transactions related to financial reporting for Organizations, from a regulatory compliance perspective telecom CSPs need to focus primarily on the Act‟s following most important sections:

Section 302 – Accuracy of Financial Statements

The signatories to the Financial Statements are responsible for

Designing, Establishing & Maintaining the Disclosure Controls

Evaluating the effectiveness of Disclosure Controls



Presenting Conclusions

Fraud, Deficiencies & Significant changes in the Disclosure Controls should be disclosed

Section 404 – Internal Controls

Management accepts responsibility for establishing & maintaining Internal Controls

Management is responsible for assessing the effectiveness of Internal Controls

External Auditor attests management‘s assessment of Internal Control

4.1.2 Interplay between SOX and Revenue Assurance

Revenue Assurance is essentially a set of activities involving detailed data monitoring, analysis and control, aimed primarily at minimization of financial losses. It holistically encompasses the Operator‟s entire workflow from service provisioning to billing, to payment allocations, and beyond. RA should perform a thorough evaluation of Operator‟s every domain to ensure there are no leakages at a process as well as technology level. Revenue Assurance is also about risk assessment and risk management with respect to processes that support revenue management chain and collateral areas.

Evidence resulting from in-depth Revenue Assurance activities in the form of monitoring reports, investigation results, reconciliation, and synchronization procedures helps responsible management to gain assurance of data completeness and accuracy, as well as to assess the internal control environment over respective processes. Integration of SOX compliance initiatives into Revenue Assurance function creates a functional tool in the hands of financial and operational departments to properly monitor as well as control a great number of risks that are subject to financial reporting compliance. In absence of a comprehensive Revenue Assurance function, the financial institutions would have to delve into the intricacies of individual functions to analyze specific risks. SOX compliance requirements can serve not only as one of the key drivers, but also as the point of alignment, for many different risk management initiatives undertaken within organization.

Key elements of NGOSS framework, namely eTOM and SID, referred to in the Chapter 2 of this Guidebook, could be successfully used as an efficient basis for the development of diverse risk management functions, including Revenue Assurance, Regulatory Compliance and others. This idea is illustrated by the below diagram:



Figure 7: Interplay between SOX, RA and other Risk Management Functions

The objectives and focus areas of each of the above risk management functions are different:

Revenue Assurance: data quality and process improvement aimed at prevention and management of revenue leakages or instances of fraud, caused by subscriber, external party or a Company‘s employee.

SOX Compliance: maintenance and enhancement of an adequate system of internal controls over financial reporting through the period of compliance.

Internal Audit: independent assurance of compliance with Company‘s internal policies and procedures.

Business Risk Management: alignment of risk management with strategy, people, business processes and related technology.

IT Governance: alignment of IT processes with business requirements to meet organizational objectives.

Revenue Assurance

Regulation Compliance

IT Governance

Internal Audit Business

Risk Management



4.1.3 Linkage between SOX and eTOM processes

Linkage between Revenue Assurance and SOX can be realized at Level 2 of eTOM. Figure 8 below represents processes in Operations area that are subject to SOX compliance in terms of internal control for financial reporting that could be considered part of “Enterprise Risk Management” or “Stakeholders & External Relations Management” at Level 2 within Enterprise Management area.

Figure 8: SOX related eTOM processes

4.1.4 Key Requirements for Revenue Assurance Activities to Enable SOX Compliance

From SOX perspective, any Control Framework developed within the Company should explicitly show the following sections:

Monitoring

Information and Communication

Control Activities

Risk Assessment

Control Environment

The above layers are defined by COSO (The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission) integrated control framework that is adopted by PCAOB (Public Company Accounting Oversight Board) as the most relevant for use from compliance perspective. COSO is a voluntary private sector organization dedicated to the improvement of the quality of financial reporting through business ethics, effective internal controls, and corporate governance. COSO was originally formed in 1985 to sponsor the National Commission on Fraudulent Financial Reporting, an independent private sector initiative that



studied the causal factors that can lead to fraudulent financial reporting, and developed recommendations for public companies and their independent auditors, for the SEC and other regulators, and for educational institutions.

Figure 9: COSO Internal Control Framework

Control Environment encompasses the tone of an organization, and sets the basis for how risk is viewed and addressed by an entity‟s people. This includes risk management philosophy and risk appetite, integrity and ethical values, and the environment in which they operate.

Risk Assessment includes risk analysis, assessment of a risk‟s likelihood and potential impact, as a basis for determination how those risks should be managed. Risks are assessed on an inherent and a residual basis.

Control Activities represent policies and procedures that, when established and implemented, help to ensure that responses to risks are effectively carried out.

Information and Communication ensures that relevant information is identified, captured, and communicated in a form and timeframe that enable people to carry out their responsibilities. Effective communication also occurs in a broader sense, flowing down, across, and up the entity.

Monitoring ensures that internal controls are monitored and modified as necessary. Monitoring is accomplished through ongoing management activities, separate evaluations, or both.

Control activities have to be properly documented to enable regular assessment of their design and operational effectiveness. The usefulness of the above framework is in that internal control system, designed according to the definitions of the framework layers, could be successfully used for different risk management objectives, e.g. the ones formulated in the areas of operational efficiency, compliance or financial reporting.



4.1.5 Illustrations of Interplay between SOX and Revenue Assurance

An integrated Revenue Assurance function could provide facilitation for the following sample list of control objectives mandated for telecom operators by the Sarbanes Oxley legislation:

Ensure that all collected events are processed according to established filtering rules.

Ensure that duplicated records are identified, labeled and analyzed.

Ensure that Customer information items stored in different internal data sources are synchronized or regularly reconciled.

Ensure that all payments made and received for telecom services are properly allocated to Customer or Service Partner accounts within proper period.

Ensure that external Customer information is regularly verified against internal customer information.

Ensure that usage records are obtained from each Service Partner and reconciled with internal records whenever applicable to verify accuracy of Service Partner invoice.

Ensure that all billable usage records from Service Partner are processed and billed according to the billing rules consistent with existing contracts.

Ensure accuracy of service fees and charges classification to enable proper matching of revenues and expenses.

4.1.6 Benefits for SOX Compliance Derived from Revenue Assurance

RA enables risk assessment across revenue management chain and collateral processes

RA ensures data integrity for financial reporting purposes

RA detects leakages at system integration points

RA provides evidence for internal control evaluation and documentation

In sum, Revenue Assurance and SOX Compliance are two tightly inter-mingled functions that not only have a number of overlapping business critical objectives, but also have a strong dependence upon each other.

4.2 Europe & UK specific linkages

4.2.1 Introduction:

This section is aimed at providing a broader view of European telecom regulation, which is structured around the concept of “Promoting competition to the maximum benefit of users, contribute to the development of the internal market and promote the interests of EU citizens.”

It should be noted at the onset that within Europe the European Parliament and Council provide directions and guidelines around the Regulatory Framework. The



implementation of this is left to the NRA‟s (National Regulatory Authorities). As a result there is a vast disparity on the maturity, implementation and monitoring of the Regulatory requirements within EU members.

4.2.2 Implementation of the new European regulatory framework

The European Parliament and Council set a legal deadline of 24 July 2003 for the transposition of the main provisions of a new framework.

The "Framework Directive" forms part of the "Telecommunications Package designed to recast the existing regulatory framework for telecommunications in order to make the electronic communications sector more competitive. This new regulatory framework consists of this Directive plus four specific Directives, namely the:

Directive on the authorization of electronic communications networks and services (the " Authorization Directive");

Directive on access to, and interconnection of, electronic communications networks and associated facilities (the ―Access Directive");

Directive on the universal service (the "Universal Service Directive");

Directive concerning the processing of personal data (the "Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communication‖).

As of 1 November 2003, only eight countries had taken action to incorporate these into national law. These countries are: Denmark, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

In some cases, secondary legislation is still required to ensure full transposition. Of those Member States that have not yet notified the Commission of transposition measures, there is particular concern that the passage of drafts through the legislative process is likely to be lengthy (Germany, France); that political uncertainties are causing delays (Belgium); or simply that despite the existence of drafts the legislative process has not yet been completed (Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal).

4.2.3 Scope, Aims and Definitions

The objective of this Directive is to establish a harmonized framework for the regulation of electronic communications networks and services. It lays the foundation in the form of horizontal provisions serving the other measures: the scope and general principles, basic definitions, general provisions on the national regulatory authorities, the new concept of significant market power, and rules for granting certain indispensable resources such as radio frequencies, numbers or rights of way.

In response to convergence of technologies and the need for horizontal regulation of all infrastructure elements, the new framework is no longer limited to telecommunications networks and services but covers all electronic communications networks and services. This includes, for example, fixed and mobile telecommunications networks, cable or satellite television networks and electricity networks, where they are used for electronic communications services. On the other



hand, the content of services delivered over electronic communications networks, such as broadcasting content or financial services, is excluded, as is telecommunications terminal equipment.

The Directive defines a series of terms related to electronic communications, including:

"Electronic communications networks" means transmission systems which permit the conveyance of signals by wire, by radio, by optical or by other electromagnetic means, including satellite networks, fixed and mobile terrestrial networks, networks used for radio and television broadcasting and cable television networks;

"Electronic communications service" means a service, normally provided for remuneration, which consists in the conveyance of signals on electronic communications networks. Services providing, or exercising editorial control over, content transmitted using electronic communications networks and services are excluded;

"Associated facilities" means the facilities associated with an electronic communications network or service which enable the provision of this service via that network or service. This includes conditional access systems - any technical measure whereby access to a protected radio or television service is made conditional upon subscription or other form of prior authorisation - and electronic programme guides.

4.2.4 Structure - National Regulatory Authorities

4.2.4.1 Independence

Member States must guarantee the independence of national regulatory authorities by ensuring that NRA‟s are legally distinct from and functionally independent of all organizations providing electronic communications networks, equipment or services.

4.2.4.2 Right of Appeal

At national level effective mechanisms must allow any user or undertaking providing electronic communications networks or services the right of appeal to an independent appeal body in the event of any disputes with a national regulatory authority.

4.2.4.3 Impartiality and transparency

Member States must ensure that national regulatory authorities exercise their powers impartially and transparently. They must also ensure that the national regulatory authorities make arrangements for consultation of the interested parties if they intend to take measures, which could have a significant impact on the market.

4.2.5 Obligations and Tasks of National Regulatory Authorities

To promote competition in the provision of electronic communications networks and services, the primary tasks for the national regulatory authorities are:



Ensuring that users derive maximum benefit in terms of choice, price and quality;

Encouraging investment in infrastructure and promoting innovation;

Encouraging efficient use and management of radio frequencies and numbering resources.

The national regulatory authorities must also contribute to development of the internal market by, inter alia:

Encouraging the establishment and development of trans-European networks and the interoperability of pan-European services;

Ensuring that there is no discrimination in the treatment of undertakings providing electronic communications networks and services;

Cooperating with each other and with the European Commission to ensure the development of consistent regulatory practice and consistent application of the new regulatory framework for the telecommunications sector.

The final task of the national regulatory authorities is to promote the interests of the citizens of Europe by, inter alia:

Ensuring that all citizens have access to a universal service, as specified in Directive;

Ensuring the availability of simple and inexpensive dispute resolution procedures;

Contributing to ensuring a high level of protection of personal data and privacy (―Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications‖.)

4.2.6 Maturity Status of National Regulatory Authorities

It is quite apparent that the maturity status of regulatory requirements varies according to the maturity of the country‟s NRA and this could vary significantly as is apparent in above.

Taking this fact into consideration there is a need to map an Organization‟s Revenue Assurance functions to its obligations towards the Telecom Regulatory Requirements.

4.2.7 Regulatory Requirements v/s Revenue Assurance

One of the major constraints on revenue assurance evolution is the need to overcome senior management skepticism about its benefits. Skepticism about the merits of revenue assurance is due to:

Doubt over the magnitude of benefits that can be earned from implementing fixes and improvements that arguably could and should have been made unnecessary had systems and processes been initially implemented correctly;

The difficulty of quantifying the unknown (the ―iceberg‖ paradox); and

The immaturity of revenue assurance as professional discipline.

But when regulatory requirements come into play, the scenario is changing. Depending on the regulatory requirements some form of Revenue Assurance functions may need to be addressed. And if, whilst doing this, benefits to both the



Business and customer perceptions are realized, management skepticism, to a certain extent can be mitigated.

The issues at this stage are two-fold:

Regulatory requirements imposed by NRA on Business can be costly to address and provide only minimum benefit from the business standpoint (An example of this includes an instance in which an operator was required by NRA to set up test call generators for all of the operator‘s switches,);

The Business could get complacent about effectiveness of its Revenue Assurance function by assuming that meeting the Regulatory requirements is sufficient for Revenue Assurance needs.

It can hence be stated that compliance with regulatory requirements should not be deemed to address the completeness of Revenue Assurance. On the other hand a mature Revenue Assurance function should be able to address the Regulatory Requirements.



5 Revenue Assurance for Content and Advanced Services

With voice services becoming increasingly commoditized, CSPs are turning to content and advanced services, e.g., gaming services, to boost falling revenues. These services have attracted a large market and are boosting network traffic with the promise of increasing the ARPU. This market will be the mainstay for CSPs growth strategy. Forecast for revenues for this market provided by various industry analysts and research firms validates that content and advanced services promise to amplify the bottom-line for many CSPs pursuing such opportunities.

In every new market and technology, the challenges increase exponentially. Careful attention to the impact on the operational infrastructure and processes is required for CSPs to realize the potential profits that this market offers.

This section of the Guidebook addresses three main challenges. We offer general strategies to overcome the challenges to realize the profits that this new breed of services can bring in for the CPSs.

5.1 Challenges

5.1.1 Challenge #1: CSPs and the multi-party value chain

Old Value Chain

Figure 10: Old Value Chain



Under the old value chain, CSPs owned the network, OSS/BSS systems and owned the bilateral relationship with the customers. Consequently, network operators had complete control of services offered to the customers. Figure 4 describes schematically the old value chain for network operators. As long as network operators effectively controlled their infrastructure (OSS/BSS) from process and data integrity perspective, they were covered from a revenue assurance perspective.

New Value Chain

Figure 11: New Value Chain

Figure 11 illustrates the new value chain. Under this new environment, new roles are formed. This new value chain is more complex as each link has a discrete part to play in providing a service to the customer, from the application developers dreaming up new products to the providers of this content to aggregators to distributors, along with the payment handlers and service operators to the bearer or incumbent providers. The traditional role of Network operators is no longer owning network, OSS/BSS and controlling services. CSPs may choose any or all of the new roles, from playing a role in distributing content, aggregating content, developing content, handling multi-party settlement and managing the new, more complex relationship with end user. Or the CSP might find itself focusing on smaller portion of the value chain, while others take over the traditional roles of the operator, such as network operations, and even handling the relationship with the customers, as it is in the case of Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs). In place of the familiar bilateral relationship between customer and network operator, operators now have to deal with a multi-party value chain.

Management of new value chain relationships puts forward many challenges for operators.

One of the challenges that become evident with this value chain is the emergence of new business model called the revenue-sharing arrangement. Based on the role and responsibilities a CSP takes, and on who else is involved in the value chain, the CSP has to develop a robust settlement process to accurately bill and settle with the various parties in the value chain including the end user.

Another challenge with this new value chain is the level of control that the CSP can exercise over the content and advanced services and over the customer experience for the service. By level of control we mean control over service setup, sales, provisioning, and fulfillment processes that now involve many parties, as well as effective control and availability of accurate data from those involved parties.

Games Ga

Game

Application Developers

Content Providers

Content Distributors

Payment

Handlers Bearer Providers Customers Service

Operators Content Aggregators



The other challenge is that the new value chain relies on multiple parties to provide critical information to enable the CSP to formulate the event record. The CSP faces the daunting task of assembling information from all these parties, a task that poses a great source of process and data integrity challenges.

This new way is in sharp contrast with traditional voice service, in which a call detail record generated by switch has been the main source of information for the rest of downstream OSS/BSS systems.

5.1.2 Challenge #2: More complex Rating and Billing processing

To offer the content and advanced services, CSP‟s has to set up its billing system to use the complex set of rules and maintain the transient data for rating, taxing and billing, data that may have been obtained from external sources. There are new attributes for quality of service (QoS), complete versus incomplete transactions, bandwidth used, time of the day, level of service (e.g. silver, gold, etc.), multi-party discount and multi product discounts. Configuration issues, data availability and compatibility, and the need to handle multiple and complex methods for rating and billing pose data and process integrity challenges for CSPs, especially if their systems were not designed to handle such complex processing. Billing On Behalf Of (BOBO), revenue sharing arrangements, display of events, activities and charges accurately on the bill are key challenges that require exceptional revenue assurance controls to maximize the revenue from the content and advanced services.

To highlight the complexity of the new value chain, let‟s take a simple scenario in which a consumer has downloaded content. This simple business transaction requires careful process and data integrity considerations to meet the demands of the new world. The following questions illustrate the types of processing requirements, to be taken into consideration to avoid the process and data integrity issues with the advent of content and advanced services.

How does a content provider get paid for download attempts—even those that weren‘t successful?

Is there a re-attempt time frame, perhaps a window of one to four hours?

Is the customer entitled to download one instance of content again with any re-attempts not to be rated?

Also, if subscribers purchase content, how long do they own it? And, as subscribers change their handsets, how do you migrate the content from one handset to another?

What are the digital rights to the content in this instance? Is the subscriber eligible to share the content with other subscribers under the same account (family members, for example)?

5.1.3 Challenge #3: Economic impact of errors

The significance of errors in processing of content and advanced services transactions and sessions has magnified potential loss due to error for network operators.

In this new value chain, an event transaction or session has replaced the CDR processing. It means that accessing a mobile content offered by trusted third party is considered totally



different from making a simple voice call. The user activities in such a transaction could spawn a set of multiple interactions and multiple dependencies with a number of third parties such as ring tone and device wallpaper vendors, chat rooms, music and video content and MMS providers– each of which has to be accurately billed, with a portion of each payment being shared with the owner of the content or service.

Suddenly the CSPs find themselves vulnerable for far more than just the cost of a voice call in the event of billing errors. Error management becomes very complex and may involve resolution of errors by multiple parties.

5.1.4 Challenge #4: Complex payment arrangements and revenue stream bypass

As part of the content value chain (e.g. content developers, content aggregators and content distributors) may be independent of the CSPs and thus may offer their services and products to more than one CSP in parallel, and get to the end customer in more than one way, there may be a situation in which the end customer pays directly to the content vendors for the content itself. The payment for the content delivery may be done directly to the CSP by the end customer, or through the content vendor / aggregator. This is a whole new concept for CSPs and it actually reduces the control that the CSPs have over the revenue stream, hence increases the risk for revenue leakages.

This new environment offers many options to all players and to the customers in selecting the payment arrangements and settlement agreements. The CSPs, and all players in the value chain must determine their business strategy and goals. All in the chain are interdependent for the production and delivery of the product. For payment and settlements, each must have arrangements with the value chain members and the customer. Scenarios might include:

CSP handles all functions for the value chain. CSPs have some expertise and offers to handle the payment (they know the customer), be the clearing house for the value chain settlements (they have expertise with interconnections).

The value chain uses an outsourced payment and settlements clearing houses (bank or Credit Card Company).

This is a whole new concept for CSPs and it reduces the control that the CSPs have over the revenue stream, hence increase the risk for revenue leakages.

5.2 Recommended Strategies

5.2.1 Key Strategies

Clearly define and address the business process, systems and integration requirements to support the new services.

Identify the control points required in the new value chain, what controls they provide, cost of control and time to implement.



Define a New Services Launch Process for revenue impact assessment. This process needs to be examined closely and testing of the launch process needs to be evaluated from distribution of content and revenue recognition perspective.

Do not assume that legacy infrastructure would be sufficient to address the evolving value chain. Carry out the assessment and review of the legacy infrastructure in support of the new value chain. Identify the gaps, process and data integrity challenges.

Segregate the new value chain processes, reconciliation and accounting procedures from the existing business processes and procedures.

Identify and partner with the vendors who can provide infrastructure with in-built assurance framework necessary for mobile content and advanced services

Define the Clear set of rules of engagement with the value chain partners. Carefully define the details on contract terms and conditions with partners of the value chain to address the roles and responsibilities.

Evaluate the Settlement Challenges. Settlement requirements need close examination. Content partners‘ need to provide the accurate and timely data feed for settlement information. Settlement process robustness from a business requirements perspective and reverse settlement perspective needs to be evaluated. Configuration of the partners within the settlement and billing system needs to be evaluated from data accuracy and data completeness perspective

Call Centers Methods and Procedures (M&Ps) related to customer requests for credits and adjustments for content need to be closely evaluated. Customer adjustments need to be closely linked with the settlement process with the partners to ensure the company can realize the adjustments from the content providers in case if they have provided adjustments to its customers

Event data must be evaluated on a continuous basis in correlation with the common customer problems for these services to identify data and process integrity issues.



6 Revenue Assurance Scenarios

6.1 Introduction

Revenue Assurance is an ongoing, ever evolving process in organizations. Regardless of which evolutionary step the RA Team is currently in, each RA Team continually evaluates and reviews its processes and data quality. Part of this process is the recognition of different scenarios in its methods/procedure/process that create revenue/cost loss.

The purpose of this chapter is to:

Provide some practical examples of revenue affecting issues, based on the combined experience of the TMF working group,

Enable the reader to gain an insight in the many and varied causes of under and over billing that are present within the industry

Provide a framework to assist the reader in classifying recurring revenue assurance problems and provide some practical guidelines for their detection and correction

It should be noted that whilst these are real examples, no one CSP is expected to suffer from all of the issues described here. Our goal is to provide an extensive but non-exhaustive list of examples of events that have been observed within member organizations. Murphy‟s Law states that if something can go wrong, it will … eventually.

As a team, our objectives are to help, share, and add to the shared knowledge of all members. If you have other examples that would help or enlighten future readers, please forward to Gadi Solotorevsky (email: [email protected] )

6.2 Perceived Root Causes

The following diagram shows the main perceived causes of revenue loss by the telecoms industry, based on a survey of the industry during 2005.

mailto:[email protected]



0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

2003

(sample 50)

2004

(sample 100)

2005

(sample 104)

Other

Optimised call routing errors

Invoicing system errors

Rating / prepaid charging errors

Fraud by other operators

Internal fraud

External fraud

Interconnect / partner payment errors

Applying new products / prices

Poor systems integration

Poor processes / systems

Incomplete / incorrect usage data

Credit management

Source: Azure/Analysys Research, 2005

Average implied revenue loss (2005)

% r

evenue lost

to s

pecific

causes

Figure 12: Perceived Causes

Fraud Covers deliberate exploitation of billing weaknesses or use of service without the intention to pay. Three classes of fraud were identified: internal (perpetrated by an operator‘s own staff), other operators (perpetrated by an operators trading partners), external (perpetrated by customers of the operator).

Credit management Insufficient or ineffective credit management procedures performed upon registration of a new customer, allowing customers with bad credit ratings or scoring to get access to services, and creating high risk of payment default on those revenues.

Incomplete/incorrect xDRs

Revenue leakage caused by inaccurate or missing usage information and incorrect distribution of that information within the billing environment.

Poor processes/systems

The desire to launch services ahead of the competition and the constant change to in-service products and services to maintain competitive advantage often causes products to be launched without full billing support and/or be supported by manual processes. It is possible for these systems and processes to exhibit weaknesses that result in incomplete billing.

Poor systems Poor integration between the systems within the billing



integration streams can often cause revenue loss – often a symptom of poor systems testing prior to their release into production environment.

Applying new products/prices

The process of introducing a new product or changing an existing product can introduce billing errors – often a symptom of poor system testing prior to release of the new product or tariff.

Interconnect errors The interconnect settlement process can also suffer from inaccurate charging, especially when one operator is unable to validate an invoice received by another party.

Invoicing system errors

Covers the errors encountered in the process of producing a complete invoice, including one-off and recurring as well as usage charges, adjustments, tax calculations, volume and cross-product discounting, etc.

Rating system failure Inaccurate tariff implementation or product/service classification can cause services to billed at an incorrect rate, causing over- or under- billing.

Optimized call routing errors

Revenue loss associated with using high cost routes when cheaper alternatives are available.

6.3 Revenue Leakage Points

Leakage will occur at every weak point in all systems, whether automated or manual. The list is not exhaustive but it provides an introduction/foundation for the detection of leakage.

We have grouped leakage points by functional business lines followed by a list of examples and the type of leakage. Leakage is not only lost revenue (although significant) but can be a cost leakage. The definitions for each are:

Revenue leakage is defined as revenue not received due to missed opportunity, failure to bill for the services provided or failure to collect the payment.

Cost leakage is defined as overpayment of costs for chargeable services to third party.

A Ordering and cancellation

A.1 Contract is incomplete or different to the customer requirements Revenue Leakage

A.2 Capture inaccurate or insufficient customer information for billing purposes Revenue Leakage



A.3 Order details were not entered correctly onto order entry system Revenue Leakage

A.4 Billing ceased but service still provided Cost Leakage

A.5 Error in calculation of charges e.g. discounts calculated incorrectly Revenue Leakage

A.6 Customer allowed to sign-up to an expired service or promotion that can no longer be billed Revenue Leakage

A.7 Stranded assets Cost Leakage

A.8 Over provisioning of ports Cost Leakage

A.9

Briefcase time. Submission of a customer order is delayed by a sales person; therefore revenue was not earned between the date the order was received and the date it was submitted Revenue Leakage

A.10 Costs incurred by Operator for leasing service from a third party whilst an order is on-hold Cost Leakage

A.11

Where costs from 3rd parties are still being incurred by Operator after an order has been deactivated and 3rd parties were not notified of that Cost Leakage

A.12 Delays in the submission of a customer cancellation, lead to delay in cancellation of costs to 3rd party Cost Leakage

B Provisioning

B.1 Failure to correctly record the provisioning of a service on the network, and subsequently do not produce a correct bill Revenue Leakage

B.2 Service activated but no billing account created Revenue Leakage

B.3 Service activated but billing account not set to bill Revenue Leakage

B.4 Billing for services not provided Revenue gain

B.5

Pre-installation cancellation where a customer has cancelled due to the failure by Operator to provision a solution within a reasonable timeframe Revenue Leakage

B.6 Ported in numbers not billed Revenue Leakage

B.7 Ported out numbers not de-listed from billing for which costs are still paid to third parties Cost Leakage

B.8 Post-paid handsets activated as prepaid handsets Revenue Leakage



B.9 Product sold and provisioned for customer, but no process to bill (could be due to inability to bill customers on new service) Revenue Leakage

B.10

Fulfil delays. Where the provisioning of a customer order is delayed, there is a potential loss of revenue which could have been earned between the date the order was received and the date it was provisioned Revenue Leakage

B.11 Paying retail rates to third party suppliers for lines which should be charged as wholesale Cost Leakage

B.12 Wrong service provided but billing as actual service requested by the customer Cost Leakage

B.13 Number ranges already in use are assigned to new operator Revenue Leakage

B.14 Incorrect capture of physical assets provisioned to customer and not billed Revenue Leakage

C Network management

C.1 Loss of CDRs caused by local storage failure on switch Revenue Leakage

C.2 If a route is unavailable on the Operator network, a 3rd party network must be used, incurring costs Cost Leakage

C.3 Costs paid in excess of the cheapest route for a call (Least Cost Routing) Cost Leakage

C.4 Loss of traffic resulting from barring countries from sending traffic over Operator network Revenue Opportunity

C.5 Invalid customer allowed to make call Revenue Leakage

C.6 Route info set-up complete prior to rating & billing set-up Revenue Leakage

C.7 Failure to bar IMSI from roaming Revenue Leakage

C.8 Incorrect set-up of GSM gateways lead to off-net calls being processed as on-net calls Revenue Leakage

C.9 Customer not set up on network Revenue Leakage

D Event Recording & record processing

D.1 xDR not produced Revenue Leakage



D.2 Incorrectly record the duration of a call Revenue Leakage

D.3 Trunk names incorrectly set-up leading to wrong call origination and destination being recorded Revenue Leakage

D.4 Rounding of the calls on the switches is not set to maximize revenue Revenue Leakage

D.5 CDR produced, but not written into file on switch Revenue Leakage

D.6 Any data lost during file transfer between switch and mediation Revenue Leakage

D.7 Any data lost during file transfer between Mediation and Billing System Revenue Leakage

D.8 Billable xDRs incorrectly ignored Revenue Leakage

D.9 Data records incorrectly suspended and written-off Revenue Leakage

D.10 Number of calls per month which are not billed as the billing system incorrectly identifies them as 'duplicates' Revenue Leakage

D.11 Leakage may be caused when incorrect enrichment of xDRs occurs after they have been recorded by switches Revenue Leakage

D.12 xDRs incorrectly correlated and therefore not billed Revenue Leakage

D.13 Prepay billing system downtime prevents billable events to be charged Revenue Leakage

D.14 Free prepaid usage during maintenance periods Revenue Leakage

D.15 xDRs too old to bill and subsequently written-off Revenue Leakage

D.16 Missing long duration call segments Revenue Leakage

D.17 Incorrect routing of usage records to end systems Revenue Leakage

D.18 Prepaid usage not triggering IN platform Revenue Leakage

D.19 TAP files from foreign operators not received from clearing house Revenue Leakage

D.20 TAP files from network not sent to clearing house and foreign operator Revenue Leakage

D.21 Incomplete processing of records from POS to the financial system revenue leakage

E Rating Reference Data set-up



E.1 Non-usage charges entered incorrectly in rating/billing system Revenue Leakage

E.2 Interconnect call rates set up incorrectly in the rating system. Revenue Leakage

E.3 Retail call charges entered incorrectly in the rating system Revenue Leakage

F Rating process

F1 Misidentification of traffic type and origin incorrectly identified Revenue Leakage

F2 Incorrect charges applied to events Revenue Leakage

F3 xDRs written off due to inability to rate the event Revenue Leakage

F4 Leased lines set up incorrectly on billing system as zero-rated Revenue Leakage

F5 Incorrect international country zone assigned Revenue Leakage

F6 Premium rate numbers not linked to billing accounts Revenue Leakage

F8 Misclassification of number range sub-sets Revenue Leakage

G Pricing Structure

G1 Call rates priced below standard cost charges, creating a negative margin. Revenue Opportunity

G3

Costs paid by Operator to third parties are not fully passed on to the clients. E.g. When an interconnect partner changes its charging structure and the additional cost is not passed on to Operator customers Cost Leakage

G4

Arbitrage; the estimated over-inflation of traffic by other operators to capitalize on a flaw in the Operator call pricing structure for wholesale Cost Leakage

G7 The money lost if customers are not fulfilling the usage commitment, but are still being billed at discounted rates Revenue Leakage

G8 Low Margin Calls: Cases where Operator has set call rates significantly lower than other operators Revenue Opportunity

G9

Inability to differentiate charges for time of day for international traffic by Operator billing reports, and a blended rate is applied causing charging inaccuracies Revenue Leakage

G10 By Pass numbers not charged Revenue Opportunity



H Billing operations

H1 Bill not produced Revenue Leakage

H2 Bills produced do not cover the services provided Revenue Leakage

H3 VAT calculated incorrectly Revenue Leakage

H5 Print vendor does not receive all complete bills Revenue Leakage

H6 Discounts applied incorrectly Revenue Leakage

H7 Bundle allowance applied incorrectly Revenue Leakage

H8

Failure to produce correct bills which need to be raised manually to collate charges from various sources or internal accounts Revenue Leakage

H9 Non-usage charges calculated incorrectly Revenue Leakage

I Bill Payment, Collection and disputes

I.1

Revenue loss due to uncollected billed revenue. This is the value of bad debt written off by Operator after the litigation process Revenue Leakage

I.2 Goodwill credits given too readily Revenue Leakage

I.3 Overbilled for usage by 3rd party operator Cost Leakage

I.4 Care credits are applied to a customer account inappropriately Revenue Leakage

I.5 Prepay top-up payments are allocated to incorrect customer accounts Revenue Leakage

I.6 Commissions payments paid to channel partners when not appropriate Cost Leakage

I.7 Revenue is shared with partners inappropriately (e.g. where content provision has failed) Revenue Leakage

I.8 Revenue share percentages are applied inaccurately Revenue Leakage

I.9 Wholesale costs are not passed on accurately to customers Revenue Leakage

I.10 Wholesale traffic is not recorded accurately and passed onto partners for billing Revenue Leakage



I.11 Cash collection process failure Revenue Leakage

6.4 Revenue Assurance Classifications

The RA Team has collectively classified revenue assurance efforts into the following areas. In addition, we have compiled a list of scenarios according to these classifications for ease of reference.

Classification Source Related Process

Description

Sales Assurance To ensure products sold as intended, including no over discounting. Make sure sales incentive scheme in line with business objectives.

Credit Assurance To ensure all subscribers have passed appropriate credit checks before being accepted as subscribers – make sure they are likely to pay for the services they consume.

Subscription Assurance To ensure the provisioning function accurately reflects the order that was submitted and that billing is in line with the services and features actually provided within the network, that recurring charges are correct and that service deactivation releases all resources for reallocation to new subscribers.

Usage Assurance To ensure that service usage is accurately and completely processed from initialization point until it is reflect on customer bills. Covers usage data generation, rating and billing.

Fraud Assurance To ensure that loss of revenues due to internal and external fraudulent activities are minimized.

Collection Assurance To ensure that all revenues are collected. Includes active management of aged debt.



Classification Source Related Process

Description

Quality Assurance To ensure compliance of service performance to contractual service level agreements, and that penalties and rebates are minimized.

Cost Assurance To ensure operating costs are minimized. Includes accurate inventory management, least cost routing, identification and release of stranded assets.

Process Assurance To ensure systems and processes are fit for purpose

Corporate Governance To ensure regulatory compliance, e.g. National telecoms regulator and Sarbanes-Oxley



6.5: Revenue Assurance Scenarios

In describing the scenarios, we are classifying as above, providing an explanatory title and market segment before describing the problem, identified root cause of the problem, how the leakage was detected, what was done to correct the problem and what steps were implemented to prevent the problem from reoccurring.

Title Voicemail (333)

Market segment Mobile (GSM)

Classification Usage Assurance

Leakage Point D.8

Description A European GSM mobile operator offered a voicemail service and provided a short code of 333, enabling subscribers to access their voicemail. Voicemail retrieval was offered free of charge. The introduction of this service caused billing to cease for a region of an international destination, but was not detected until nine months after launch.

Root Cause The mediation system was instructed to remove usage records representing voicemail retrieval from the billing stream, to avoid the billing system being overloaded with unbillable records. However, the mediation system vendor implemented this rule as a prefix match rather than an exact match. The result being that all usage records to numbers that started with 333 were removed from the billing stream rather than those that were just 333. 33 is the country code of France, and 3 is the Northeastern region of France, so in this case calls to this area remained unbilled.

Detection This problem was difficult to detect due to the fact that the mediation system did not provide a summary of the number of usage records removed using this rule. It was detected by accident when a programmer was looking at the code provided by the vendor for a different purpose.

Correction Correction to this problem was simply to change the filter to an exact match.

Prevention The following techniques could be used in combination to prevent recurrence of this or similar issues: Independent analysis of network usage records and comparison with billing summaries for international traffic would have detected the anomaly Improved testing process of new releases of mediation software



Title Unexpected roaming

Market segment GSM (Inbound roaming)


Leakage Point Ref. C.5

Description Subscribers of a foreign operator were able to connect, make and received calls, within a visited network where no inbound roaming agreement existed between the two parties. The problem existed for approximately six months before it was detected; the operator of the home network was unable to recover any of this revenue. In addition, the operator had also received and paid charges relating to termination of calls off-net that originated by these foreign subscribers.

Root Cause The network allowed foreign subscribers from this particular roaming partner to gain access to the home network.

Detection This problem was detected during a usage assurance audit that analyzed network usage data and compared it to an analysis of the roaming clearing (TAP-out) files sent to the operator‟s roaming clearing house. Files were not present for one of the foreign operators that were observed in the network usage data.

Correction The network was corrected so that these subscribers could no longer gain access to the network.

Prevention The following techniques could be used in combination to prevent recurrence of this or similar issues:

Review of process by which the network is open to foreign subscribers. Ensure roaming agreements are correctly implemented within the network Independent analysis of network usage records and comparison with billing summaries for

traffic would have detected the anomaly



Title Fraudulent interconnect traffic

Market segment Interconnect settlement


Leakage Point D.2

Description International traffic for terminating routed via PTT in such a way as avoid paying termination charges. The problem existed for approximately nine months before detection.

Root Cause A loophole in the recording of usage data by the gateway switch was exploited by a competitive operator, causing terminating international traffic to be recorded with a zero duration Additionally, the process existed to specifically remove zero duration calls from the interconnect settlement billing stream.

Detection When analyzing usage patterns for a fixed line operator an unexpected high number of zero duration calls was observed for international calls but only on routes relating to a particular operator. On further inspection, the calls were found to have represented real, successful calls; they had a start time and an end time, but had been recorded by the network with zero duration.

Correction Initially, the mediation system recalculated the duration from the start and end times. Ultimately the switch was corrected.


Independent analysis of network usage records and comparison with billing summaries for international traffic would have detected the anomaly

Recalculation of duration from start and end times to compare with recorded duration Periodic network testing to ensure accurate recording of usage information



Title Unbilled Service

Market segment Data Services

Classification Sales Assurance

Leakage Point Ref. A.4

Description Customers of a large operator took part in a trial period for a new service. When the trial period has expired – some of the customers that took part in the pilot continued to use the service and were not charged for it

Root Cause Once the pilot period has ceased, some of the participating customers did not request to continue with the service, hence – the billing system was not updated with the relevant service profile for those customers. The result was customers who did not have their billing profile updated continued to use the service under the same terms of the pilot period i.e. without being charged for the service.

Detection The detection of the problem was achieved by comparing the actual service topology on the network with the profile of the customers on the billing system, i.e. the list of the service for which each customer is being charged.

Correction The billing profile of the relevant customers was corrected.


Test the data integrity between the network and the billing system whenever a trial period (or any other special period) elapses.



Title Stranded Assets

Market segment Broadband & Data Networks

Classification Cost Assurance

Leakage Point Ref. A.7

Description A DSL service involved many installations for customers joining the service and de-installations for customers who decided to cease the service. Apparently, the utilization of the network elements supporting the DSL service did not prove to be optimal, and that, in turn, required the purchase of an excess amount of network equipment.

Root Cause During the cease process the service resources were released correctly in the network inventory database, but were not de-activated in the physical network, and the service was not deleted properly from the billing system.

Detection This problem was detected by comparing the information from the physical network, using an NMS with information from the network inventory system, provisioning and activation system and the billing system. This comparison highlighted the discrepancies between the information, as it was stored in the OSS and the billing and the actual status of the NE utilization.

Correction The network was corrected so that the network assets were marked again as available for use and the billing customer profiles were updated to reflect the cease of the service for the relevant customers.


Review of the process and the business rules involved in activation / de-activation of a service for a customer, with contingency for failures overcome.

Analysis of the usage on the whole network assets against their operational status could reveal „in use‟ components with zero utilization on them.



Title Under billed services

Market segment Service Provisioning

Classification Subscription Assurance

Leakage Point Ref. B.1

Description A customer was offered a new DSL service and ordered the lowest rate and least expensive option. In the middle of the provisioning process – the customer asked for an upgrade in the service to premium option. The service that the customer got eventually was the premium service, but the customer was charged for the cheaper option.

Root Cause In the process that begins with a service order and completes with the activation of the service for the customer – the billing system was involved at the stage of the initial order as to which price-plan is relevant, and receives an event that initiates the actual charging when the activation is complete. However, if a change to parameters is done between the initial order and the activation – the billing system is not aware of this change.

Detection The detection was possible through the comparison of information in the network inventory system, the billing and the actual service status, as reflected by an NMS system. This comparison revealed the discrepancy between the services defined in the billing system as the basis for charging and the actual service that was both defined in the network inventory database and that was actually configured in the network.

Correction As a short term remedy – the definitions in the billing system were updated to be aligned with the actual service provided


Updating the business process to include an update to the billing system with any change that is being done to an open order.

Proactively initiate a timely check to ensure that the information in all the OSS the BSS and the network are aligned and synchronized.



Title Real Time Toll Ticketing files analysis

Market segment Mobile (GSM/UMTS)


Leakage Point Ref. D.12

Description A tier 1 mobile operator experienced a systematic loss of revenues due to a particular type of international roaming. Visiting users roaming onto the operator network originated calls that were incorrectly billed only by their home operator (TAP OUT flow). The problem persisted for almost six months till its definitive solution.

Root Cause Such kind of roaming calls generate the production of composite xDRs, called CAMEL xDRs. Camel xDRs are composed by two simple xDRs: a Mobile-Land xDR and a Land-Land xDR. In this composite xDRs, the network‟s nodes generated some unexpected fields causing the inappropriate billing of these international roaming calls.

Detection Discrepancies between Usage data and Billing data for international roaming calls pointed out the anomaly. Such analysis is performed periodically and however with a low frequency.

Correction The mobile operator introduced an automatic network-testing tool, which allowed the real time analysis of toll ticketing files where xDRs are included. The real time analysis allowed checking xDRs fields against semantic rules. Warnings and alarms were set to notify when incorrect xDRs exceeded defined thresholds. These alarms enabled the operator to spot roaming issues before post processing activities.

Prevention Most often such analysis are not performed real time but after post processing activities due to the lack of an appropriate automatic tool enabling real time analysis.

Based on the frequency of batch analysis and the kind of similar issues spotted only after post processing the leakage involved may vary too little to considerable amounts of money.

Improved testing of international roaming for calls and services.



Title Mobile content services roll out

Market segment Mobile (GSM/UMTS)

Classification Process Assurance

Leakage Point D.1

Description A competitive mobile operator was forced to roll out in a very short time new services (games java-based) to stay competitive. Such services required a change of release and some patches on SGSN and GGSN nodes. Time constraints required the testing activities for service rollout to be significantly reduced. After service rollout the operator suffered from revenue losses, i.e. poorer margins than expected, without clear evidence of the causes. This alarmed the operator since loyalty and churn issues turn into rolling out of new services almost every month.

Root Cause SW upgrades and patch activities on network‟s nodes are key factors in new services rollouts. These activities are delicate. The correct setting of all parameters affecting service delivery and the testing often are complex and involve test scenarios within several and different network nodes. Time-to-market constraints unfortunately imply a limited set of tests cases to be performed. Limited set of sample tests mean that more errors, read revenue issues, are likely to occur after the service has been deployed.

Detection Post processing analysis of both missing expected xDRs and badly generated xDRs (incorrect fields) related to recently launched services pointed out the issue.

Correction The objective of this testing is to encompass an adequately wide test cases base spanning different user profiles, roaming types, geographical locations, etc. Review of new services deployment testing procedures and sample test cases, patches and upgrading activities (time consuming heavy non regression tests).

Prevention Such activities have to be performed in a very short time yet they should include many testing activities, to cover the different service scenarios.

Review of testing procedures and processes to avoid leakage, inaccurate billing or poor service levels.

Use of automated tools to shorten testing activities period, make them easily repeatable and widen their scope preferably including capabilities of:

Artificial traffic generation Actual traffic analysis in real time Flexible configuration of analysis to accommodate new services Massive testing Centralized architecture to reduce costs related to technical personnel involved in remote

on the field tests



Title WiFi

Market segment Mobile (WiFi)


Leakage Point D.18

Description Business customers of a national data-voice Service Provider were able to get WiFi connection even if their credit was void. Such leakage was solved only after several weeks.

Root Cause The updating of a Lucent Navis radius version required syntax changes in radius policies. Navis Radius versions installed in production and testing environments were different. This discrepancy raised troubles for changed syntax and generated leakages because what tested didn‟t fit production environment. In fact the user was actually able to connect even though NAS returned zero as maximum duration for connection.

Detection Subsequent analysis of WiFi connections pointed out some odd long connections with abnormal amount of downloaded data. A restricted user base initiated them, which was easy to catch.

Correction Analysis of old backup Radius policy spotted the misaligned syntax for production version and then leads for it to be fixed.

Prevention A tool for automated check and fixing on software versioning between testing and production installation base was introduced. Such a decision allows preventing also unknown discrepancies, which may arise form misaligned software versions and generate leakages for the service provider.

Title WiFi Roaming

Market segment Mobile (WiFi)


Leakage Point D.18

Description Roaming for WiFi connections of a medium size Italian Service Providers towards a particular operator was systematically unbilled. Navis Radius was failing to properly connect to the rating engine.

Root Cause Connection management for roaming calls toward the third operator of interest was managed by a piece of software not correctly updated. Such software requires two separate calls to the rating engine. The first aims at calculating user‟s remaining connection time from his remaining credit and user‟s location. The last one aims at deducing the remaining credit from actual connection time and user‟s credit before starting the call, as a double check. Second call to the rating engine was not properly implemented.

Detection The problem was resulting in different billing data from the two involved operators since only one of them was properly rating and billing user‟s WiFi connections. Analysis of connections data pointed out the actual trouble since all connections was properly tracked.

Correction Install and configure up-to-date software for the second call to the rating engine to properly be accomplished.

Prevention Legacy solution to monitor tracked connection data and rated values was implemented. Moreover as a development mandatory policy was prohibited to release single java classes not included in packages.



7 Appendix A: Introduction to Telecom Frauds

Fraud in telecom networks has been a problem that has always plagued the bottom line of operators. The lure of easy money turns many a man into a fraudster. There are many ways to defraud and abuse telecom networks - both wireline and wireless. Ingenuity and innovation are the hallmarks of this tribe of modern-day bandits.

Telecom companies have a long history of fraud fighting but the imaginative methods employed by fraudsters call for continuous improvements on the solutions deployed, to check fraud.

Fraud - Unnoticed?

In spite of the fact that many telecom companies worldwide have lost significant amounts of money due to fraudulent activity in their networks, a large number of CSPs are still not addressing this crucial issue. In many cases, they even feel that fraud does not exist. Even though one wishes that this should be the case, this is never true. Losses due to fraud often get swept under the carpet as bad debt. A recent study has proven that the portion of revenue lost due to fraud could form 40-50% of the bad debt component! Another aspect is the belief that networks based on digital technologies are „secure‟. The networks that were rolled out earlier used analog technologies that had several technical loopholes. Fraudsters exploited these opportunities to make money. The advent of digital technologies like GSM put paid to most of the technical frauds. Perhaps this could be the reason why many GSM operators feel that they are safe from the clutches of villainous fraudsters.

Innovative fraudsters soon managed to find simple, non-technical ways to continue their nefarious activities even in technically advanced digital networks. The much dreaded „subscription fraud‟ is the best example of this scenario. This is a case where fraudsters obtain legal connections from telecom companies with no intention of ever paying their bills. The companies have no way of collecting these outstanding amounts, as the fraudsters can never be traced. The very nature of subscription fraud misleads operators into considering losses from fraudulent activities as ordinary bad debts. The danger here is that the fraud - which actually requires focused attention - goes unnoticed and in due course of time leads to a significant amount of revenue loss.



How does fraud happen?

There are many methods employed by unscrupulous elements to defraud telecom networks. Technical frauds like cloning and tumbling used to be the major causes of worry for analog network operators. Such technical frauds cannot be perpetrated in digital networks (even though there are unconfirmed reports that cloning is possible in GSM). Only digital networks are being deployed by telcos and this has resulted in the evolution of non-technical frauds.

This acquires gigantic proportions in a roaming scenario due to the delay in accessing call detail records and subsequent detection. One can understand the possibility of this fraud when we realize that roaming is a key feature offered by GSM operators and has many business benefits. Subscription fraud in the roaming situation is often referred to as Roaming Subscription Fraud.

Subscription Fraud is the most damaging amongst the non-technical frauds. The methodology adopted here is simple with the fraudster obtaining a connection from the telecom company using the normal, accepted procedure of the company. The fraudster has no intention to pay and rings up huge bills, in a very short time frames. The telecom company comes to know of such high usage only after some time and by then it would be impossible to trace the fraudulent subscriber. Ultimately all the payments that were to be recovered from this subscriber will have to be written off.

A variation of this is what is called the Call-Sell Fraud. Here the fraudster abuses the call-forwarding feature of networks and uses his connection to set-up multiple, simultaneous calls for his „clients‟. The „client‟ pays a lesser amount of money than they would normally pay the telecom company. The fraudster can, of course, afford to offer such a „subsidy‟ as he has no intention of ever paying any money to the telecom company. By the time, the bills are raised and the company comes around to collect the money, the fraudster would have made a significant amount of money and flown the coop.

There is also another interesting variant called Premium Rate Services (PRS) Fraud. Premium Rate Services are closely associated with fraud in two ways - fraudsters are likely to abuse the network to call these numbers and the PRS content providers themselves might defraud. The PRS content provider first obtains a subscription through some devious means and then uses this subscription to make calls to their own PRS service and thus inflates the transactions to their service. The CSPs pay the PRS content provider irrespective of whether this fraudulent subscriber has paid or not. Call selling and PRS are the major contributors to losses due to subscription fraud and could be more than 50% of the total fraud loss.

Wireline networks face some other frauds like PBX Hacking and Clip-on Fraud. The first type of fraud is possible where the PBX supports a feature called Direct Inward System Access (DISA). Here, an employee of the organization owning the PBX can dial into the PBX and get access to an external line - for making long distance and international calls - through keying an authorized PIN. Hackers dial into such PBXs and crack the PIN and thus gain access to an external line that allows them to make long distance and international calls. The organization owning the PBX will get an inflated bill that includes calls made by such hackers. As the name suggests, Clipon fraud is an unauthorized



physical connection to a telephone line using some clamping devices (like alligator clips). This is one of the oldest forms of telecom fraud. Both of the above types of fraud are „surfing‟ frauds, which imply unauthorized use of a service or a product.

Pre-paid systems that were deployed initially had several inherent problems such as last call exposure and were prone to fraud attacks like hacking of platform. Vendors of pre-paid systems understood the seriousness of the issue and upgraded the technology in the platforms, making them more secure. This has led to a false belief among operators that pre-paid systems are „fraud-free‟. This is not true and huge losses are being reported due to Pre-paid Fraud. Fraudsters have found it possible to defraud pre-paid platforms through the abuse of security codes, using ghosting techniques to confuse the platform, internal fraud etc.

In addition to the above, there exists the problem of internal fraud wherein employees within the operator or associates of the company aid outsiders in defrauding the network. Employees have access to all parts of the network and are sufficiently knowledgeable to know where to play the dirty tricks. There have been instances wherein employees have used highly sophisticated instruments (which were actually meant to be used for network troubleshooting) to obtain confidential information and make money using this information. Internal Fraud is extremely dangerous and can lead to a quick erosion of revenue.

Interconnect fraud is another important area. Some of the common interconnect frauds include partners introducing additional traffic not covered by the contract by unapproved use of GSM gateways. This allows partners to terminate large amount of calls that are not accounted for. Another interconnect fraud is the modification of call parameters such as A-number to modify the nature of the call to apply lower charges. By modifying the A-number, international calls that attract higher rates can be modified to look like a local call. Other interconnect frauds include illegal bypass of traffic through cheaper unauthorized networks whereas regulation mandates transit through authorized carriers.



8 Administrative Appendix

This Appendix provides additional background material about the TeleManagement Forum and this document.

8.1 About this document

This is a TM Forum Guidebook. The guidebook format is used when:

The document lays out a ‗core‘ part of TM Forum‘s approach to automating business processes. Such guidebooks would include the Telecom Operations Map and the Technology Integration Map, but not the detailed specifications that are developed in support of the approach.

Information about TM Forum policy, or goals or programs is provided, such as the Strategic Plan or Operating Plan.

Information about the marketplace is provided, as in the report on the size of the OSS market.

8.2 Document Life Cycle

The Revenue Assurance Guidebook is being issued as Member Evaluation Version 1.0. It can be considered valid until July 2006. The purpose of an Evaluation Version is to encourage input based on experience of members and the public as they begin to use the document. Following the Evaluation Period, documents that are seen to deliver value are candidates for formal approval by the TM Forum. All documents approved by the TM Forum undergo a formal review and approval process.

This document will continue under formal change control. Supporting work will be issued as companions to this document. A document of this type is a “living document,” capturing and communicating current knowledge and practices. Further inputs will be made because of detailed work ongoing in the TM Forum and the industry.



8.3 Document History

8.3.1 Version History

<This section records the changes between this and the previous document version as it is edited by the team concerned. Note: this is an incremental number which does not have to match the release number>

Version Number Date Modified Modified by: Description of changes

0.1 19-DEC-2005 Mike Willett First issue of document

0.2 21-DEC-2005 Kathryn Durham Updates

0.3 26-JAN-2005 Mike Willett First update with review comments

0.4 10-MAR-2006 Kathryn Dunham First Revision after TAW

0.5 10-MAY-2006 Mike Willett Editors review to release to group

0.6 01-JUN-2006 Gadi Solotorevsky

Internal review before release to TMF members review

0.7 9Jun06 D Burkett Minor edits in preparation for Approval Committee review.

0.8 5th-July-06 T.O‟Sullivan Final modification prior to ME

posting.

0.9 11-October-06 Gadi Solotorevsky

Minor formatting and numbering changes as result from review process

1.0 08-Nov-2006 Tina O'Sullivan Updated for Public sharing

8.3.2 Release History

<This section records the changes between this and the previous Official document release>

Release Number Date Modified Modified by: Description of changes

1.0 19-Dec-2005 Mike Willett Initial Release

8.4 Company Contact Details

Company Team Member Representative

cVidya Networks Name Dr. Gadi Solotorevsky Title Chief Scientist Email [email protected] Phone +972 3 6441644 Fax: +972 3 6441881

Telstra Corporation Ltd

Name Mike Willett Title General Manager, Fraud & Revenue Assurance Email [email protected] Phone +61 3 9634 5421 Fax:

The Billing College Name Kathryn Dunham Title Vice President Email [email protected]






Phone +1 904 317 7973 Fax +1 201 833 8444

Cable & Wireless Name: Nitin. Patel Title: RA & Regulatory Consultant [email protected] Phone+44 1908 833546 Fax:

Logan - Orviss Name: Hugh Roberts

Title: Associate Strategist Email: [email protected] or [email protected] Phone: +44 1962 813376

Fax: + 44 87 0139 1082

Azure Solutions Ltd Name: Geoff Ibbett Title: Product Portfolio Manager Email [email protected] Phone +44 7977 449832 Fax + 44 207 826 5437

Subex Systems Name: Vinoo P. Jacob

Title: Product Manager Email [email protected]

Phone+91 80 5759 8700

Fax: +91 80 2563 4100

Infogix, Inc Name: Tracy Miller Title: Vice President Email [email protected] Phone +1 214 534 0803

Datamat SpA Name: Alberto Canadé Title: Product Manager Email: [email protected] Phone: 39-335-7847-467

Revenue Protect Limited

Name: Eric R. A. Priezkalns Title: Director Email: [email protected] Phone: +44 7958 467273

+44 1707 259895

8.5 Acknowledgments

The members of the TeleManagement Forum Revenue Assurance Technical Team prepared this document:

The Revenue Assurance Guidebook, GB941, is a genuinely collaborative effort. The TeleManagement Forum would like to thank the following people for contributing their time and expertise to the production of this document.

Mike Willett - Telstra, Editor

Kathryn Dunham - The Billing College, Editor

Nitin Patel - Cable & Wireless, Editor











Dr. Gadi Solotorevsky - cVidya, Team Leader

Doron Avidar - cVidya

Alberto Canade - Datamat

Dabra Huneycut – Convergys

Debbie Burkett – TeleManagement Forum

Geoff Ibbett – Azure

Vinoo P Jacob – Subex

Nilesh Karani - Convergys

Ilya Kuznetsov - Ernst and Young (CIS) B.V.

Eric Priezkalns - Revenue Protect Limited

Hugh Roberts, Logan-Oviss International

John Reilly - MetaSolv Software

Tracy Miller, Infogix Inc.

Stephen Tebbett - Ernst & Young

Junkee Wang – China Unicom

Dmitry Y. Kirsanov - Ernst and Young (CIS) B.V.

Maxim Kulchenko - Ernst and Young (CIS) B.V.

A number of people provided input and/or formal contributions. Although not an exhaustive list, many thanks to the following for their thoughtful input and contributions

Enrico Angori - Datamat

Sachdeva Deepika – Siemens

8.6 About TeleManagement Forum

TeleManagement Forum is an international consortium of communications service providers and their suppliers. Its mission is to help service providers and network operators automate their business processes in a cost- and time-effective way. Specifically, the work of the TM Forum includes:

Establishing operational guidance on the shape of business processes.

Agreeing on information that needs to flow from one process activity to another.

Identifying a realistic systems environment to support the interconnection of operational support systems.



Enabling the development of a market and real products for integrating and automating telecom operations processes.

The members of TM Forum include service providers, network operators and suppliers of equipment and software to the communications industry. With that combination of buyers and suppliers of operational support systems, TM Forum is able to achieve results in a pragmatic way that leads to product offerings (from member companies) as well as paper specifications.

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