Network operators and Mobile Virtual Network Operators are defending their profitability by introducing new markets and revenue streams based on content, technology, and service delivery agreements. Over landline, 2G, 3G, 4G, and LTE networks, a typical telecom operator has many partnerships for multimedia content, like Over-the-Top (OTT) services, Internet of Things (IoT), and so on. While these collaborations are encouraging future growth, revenue assurance has become a top priority for the telecom industry.
The implementation of a system or software solution that allows effective security of revenue for all services delivered is referred to as revenue assurance. Revenue assurance allows the telecom operators to review and plug lots of potential leakage points across the network and customer-facing systems, and to rectify data before it is transferred to the billing system, rather than addressing complications later.
Between 2020 to 2027, the global revenue assurance market size is projected to grow at a CAGR of 11.1%. Many telecom businesses lack a specialized revenue assurance solution. Even if they do, it is rarely tailored to the demands of the organization, resulting in sub-optimal performance. For some, revenue assurance is solely the responsibility of financial departments. Telecom business success relies on how revenue assurance fundamentals are used for the implementation of revenue assurance.
The Key Concern of Revenue Leakage
One of the key concerns for carriers around the world is revenue leakage. For telecom companies concerned about diminishing margins in the traditional voice business, it becomes crucial to secure their present revenue sources. Increasing revenue loss has sparked a debate about an innovative approach to protecting revenue.
Revenue leakage possibilities can be prevented if data is kept up to date within the operator's and partner’s systems. The data might be utilized to enable sharper control over network and service efficiency. This can be accomplished by connecting operator and partner systems with client plans, use, and invoicing systems in real-time.
Let’s take a look at different sources of revenue leakages:
- Poor sync of provisioning with a billing system
- Flawed formatting/content of records
- No real-time prepaid control on interconnect business
- Traffic settings and accuracy
- CDRs/EDRs error due to mediation rules
- Incorrect or non-optimal billing plan
- Wrong interconnect tariffs
- Non-monitoring of traffic/usage and interconnect reconciliation
- Fraud
- Partner and roaming contract discrepancy
The Proactive Revenue Assurance Solution to Achieve Greater Margins
The capacity of telecom operators to form collaborations with content, technology, and marketing vendors is improving. In exchange for enhanced consumer engagement, they are also trading autonomy over partner systems. These critical actions have a significant impact on revenue assurance. It's important to remember that the number of subscribers is increasing and that as networks get more feature-rich, so will their utilization.
Telecom operators will be in major difficulty if the speed and dimensions of innovation in billing management systems do not stay consistent with the upheaval in networks and services. To counter the effect, the traditional revenue assurance resources and processes must be replaced with robust, real-time revenue assurance systems.
Revenue assurance solution by Panamax help telecom businesses to find the revenue leakage and secure the revenue streams for optimum accuracy. Below are the key advantages of a Revenue Assurance Solution:
- Identify, measure and prevent the risk point for revenue leakage
- Prevents billing inconsistencies before they reach the customer bill and increase billing accuracy
- Improve customer experience
- Reduce the volume of revenue lost due to inefficient billing processes, redundant services, and fraud
The Revenue Assurance Solution also alleviates the below issues to tackle Revenue Leakage:
- Incorrect service parameter and charging definitions
- Inflated interconnect or settlement charges
- Inconsistent usage record streams
- Inappropriate reject or error handling
- Poor or missing data and interface definitions
- Provisioning and fulfillment errors
- Errors or misrepresentation in service/sales contracts
The Future of Revenue Assurance
Customer behavior was different in the 2G and 3G eras. They were ready to reach the operator's call center, visit their website, or send an SMS service request, then wait a few hours for the service to be activated/delivered. While switching on the service and invoicing, the operator used this time to assess system integrity and account balances, among other things.
With 5G on the horizon, revenue assurance will become more of a challenge while the time to enable services and stop leakage is no longer available. As a result, operators must start investing in comprehensive revenue assurance systems to better manage the ecosystems as well as the increase data volumes.
Contributing Writer: Naishil is a Content Writer at Panamax, Inc. with rich exposure in the field of Creative Content, Marketing Communications and Branding. With an academic background in Mass Communication and Journalism, he has made a career in content writing and has worked upon varied content pieces. In his leisure time he can be found reading about cricket, performing street photography and cooking some delicious food.
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