My References on Revenue Assurance

Day Sixty Eight by Dustin Diaz (CC@Flickr.Com)

If you want to know which references that I use today, then I'll say GRAPATEL Standard of Revenue Assurance. There are several reasons why i use this references. The first thing, is about the structured approach that  GRAPATEL use in developing the standard. It created from the collaboration from expert and practitioners, which mean there is a shared knowledge in the Standard.

The second, the standard  is not institution-side or one-side approach, which mean that every stakeholder needs is negotiated during the standard development process. The other concept that i love to hear that there are a structured mechanism how to update the content of standard, which lead the standard to be more flexible for the change in industry.

The GRAPATEL standard is a very thin document, it is only 18 pages. It is easy to read, and I hope that the reader will find it is easy to understand and to implement in real world. That are the real challenges, how to make a standard work. The one of reasons is that every company have their own state of implementing Revenue Assurance. So it should be clearly decide how to adopt the standard into their environment.

The other things that i learn from the standard it self, that it can't stand alone. It will give you a good references but it need other reference to make it works in reality. I got the other two references, which are the practices and the body of knowledge. The practices is a collection of the activity that should be done to make revenue assurance work. The knowledge, of how activity of revenue assurance is done by the company, should be documented and well managed. So some improvements can be applied.

The same thing also for body of knowledge, where the knowledge that needed in doing revenue assurance is documented. Not only cover for technology aspect, but i should also cover about ethics issues, the management of human resource,  knowledge management and much more.

The three references create a better and stronger framework in doing revenue assurance in real activities. They complete each others.

What is the Benefits in Applying Revenue Assurance in Your Company

Gold Bars by Mark Herpel (CC@flickr.com)

In almost every situation, I usually start form the goal. If I do something, what is the goal to be achieve. The same question also come when I learn about Revenue Assurance. The answer is very interesting. So why don't we explore something about this question.

Let's back to our first perception, Revenue Assurance have two goals. First, to make sure that the money that generated as the result of the business activities should be received fully (completely) by the company. The second, that the customer receive the service/goods that being provide by the company as the money they paid.    The second goal, actually will be give a company back the actual corporate image. The stronger they show their integrity on their service the customer, it will lead to  better corporate image. All the goal will returned to the company itself.

Sometimes i see the core of revenue assurance as part of continues business improvement. On every opportunities, they try to do something to make their business activities better. They receive insights/alarms from the control that they put on business, and do something to fixed in order to make better business operation.

Okay, lets do some brainstorming here. First the benefit for the company who apply revenue assurance in their business activity will know how much potential revenue that they should get from their business. The information of potential revenue is a result of process of identifying current revenue leakage and current revenue.  The second, the new additional revenue and cost saving, if the do correction and prevention form the root cause of revenue leakage. By doing some recommended corrective/preventive action, the company can start received new additional revenue from their customer or some cost saving from paying over to their partner. This situation can be called "a new revenue without selling anything".

On the other side, with your integrity in generating accurate bill to your customer, they will be happy and feel secure for using the services. This will create value to the company in the view of their customer. Moreover the regulator will appreciate for what the company do, they comply with the regulation.

Theses are some benefit for implementing revenue assurance. It will be so exciting when we start talking about the inside of revenue assurance.

Where should I start? It's My Experience

Start By Norlando Pobre (CC@Flickr.com)

Don't reinvent the wheel, that was the first thought when i started to learn about revenue assurance. As usual, Google is the best place to search what you need to know. Hundreds links show up, and more link comes up as I click each available link.


The first things that I learn from this searching is unique. The term of "revenue assurance" is ambiguous. I realize that there two different meaning for "Revenue Assurance".  The first has context of farming. While the second, the thing that i was looking for, is related with Telco's Industry.


Moreover, we should make sure the institution or person who submit the material. As I know,  there so many stakeholder that involved in Revenue Assurance. You can named them like software vendor, consultant, education/training institution, experts, or non-profit organization. When you start to read articles / references that they submitted, you will find their interest on this subject.


The important thing that I look was the free resources, and i found GRAPATEL website. As my conclusion,  today, the website is a good place to start learning Revenue Assurance. People need to do registration before they can download free e-book of Revenue Assurance and standard of GRAPATEL on Revenue Assurance. Rob Mattinson is the founder of the organization.  I remember to ask a silly question, when i was asking about the references that he use in His e-book. He just simply said, there are no book that discuss about revenue assurance yet when the book is written. 


Another good reference to start is TM Forum. While they are just started later, they have a good references that we can use to get basic understanding about Revenue Assurace. TalkRA is also a good starting place to get update about revenue assurance.


Not the least, the  Google Scholar is still the best source to get update about Revenue Assurance in academics / professional environment. So, have a time to visit theses resource to help you start, as i did. Please have you time leave a comment if you want to share your experience, it is a pleasure for me to know it.

Today Challenges for Revenue Assurance

Chair in the Boat by Trey Ratcliff (CC@Flickr.com)

On previous my Blog Article "The Old School - Revenue Assurance",  I share about the very early perspective of revenue assurance. At that time, people in Billing Unit, play crucial role, where the billing process should be watched carefully in order to prevent the potential loss. At the same time, the available product and technology remain simple where telephony service and circuit-based switch technology were the common term.

When we talk about today. Technology already changed as the time goes. The variety of product can be found on the market. We notice the present of prepaid system. We know about mobile service, for both phone and  data-internet. Video service becomes common. Moreover the coming application and content service on Telco's industry which blurred into computer, internet and content industry.

On other side, the marketing strategy in order to win the competition  create so many gimmick programs. This also push more complex on administration, billing, and service provisioning. For example, on mobile phone service, people can have different discount price and even free services. It is also restricted by time-frame or duration since they registered, promotional become more personal.

As the impact of those change, delivering  revenue assurance into situation where it plays an important role. Billing unit is not the single unit that responsible for all process. People in Marketing Unit, Network Unit, Financial Unit, even Distributor Channel Management Unit and Supplier Unit now should be involved in revenue assurance activities.

The scope of revenue assurance also are bigger now. The process range from product development, marketing/sales, network provisioning, billing, collection, to accounting are  parts of revenue assurance. The system entity that involved also become wider, from network element to business support system need to be covered. It also cover the system that integrated with supplier and distributor that involved in the company.

At this point, we now realize that we need another level of revenue assurance that can manage all above issues. We need another level of thinking to solve a new level of challenges.

The Old School - Revenue Assurance

Phones by Rupert Ganzer (CC.@Flickr)

Once I have told by my collages about the difference between current revenue assurance  and the old times revenue assurance. They explain that currently there are two types of people in revenue assurance. The first type is people that live from the perspective of POTS (Public Old Telephony). The second one are people who work with current complex Telco industry, which already transform to internet and content service company. In this article,  we will discuss what is the "POTS" perspectives in revenue assurance function.


As we know, when we talk about POTS then we will think about the basic phone services. People use their home or office phone to call their families or collages. The domain of product is more simpler that current situation. It covers a simple phone call service and some basic features like call redirect, or call line identification (CLI) number. On the other hand, it also use post paid payment model where all transaction is post-processing at the end of month and send the bill to customer several day later.


Revenue Assurance, in an Old Times perspective,  is focused on convincing the validity process from Network Switching CDR (Call Data Record) transferring until the billing is generated. People who work in this area working in examining the quality of invoice generated from billing process is the same amount with the  one which generated from the Switching. Billing Rules, The CDR Completeness and the Result Billing become important artifacts in doing revenue assurance. Billing Unit has an important role for doing revenue assurance function.


With current situation where mobile phone service is already available, and data service, like SMS and internet become common  communication media. The new payment model  prepaid is accepted by customer. The contents service become more variety.  With the old perspective of revenue assurance,  it will not fit anymore. Revenue Assurance is aksed to cover end to end from product development to accounting. More over, revenue assurance should be done by whole organization, it is NO longer Billing Unit responsible.

Meet the Revenue Assurance

Paint the Town Red by Scott Ableman (CC.@Flickr)

Revenue Assurance becomes new term for several people, including for me about a year ago. Somehow I just got in the team member of revenue assurance in my company. At that time, I did know what is it, because almost never heard about this words. So it is okay, if this words is seem as a new words for you. I will talk more about this term in this article. 


After doing research on internet, i found several source related with revenue assurance. It looks that this words has two contexts, the first is related with revenue assurance in farming, and the second one related with Telco's industry.  What I talk here is about revenue assurance in the context of Telco's environment. In further we will see that revenue assurance has wider context related with its industry, since it also covers internet, mobile, and might be applied on other industry. So it should be carefully in reading a reference about revenue assurance, make sure that it talks the right context: farming or telco.


As my learning habits, I started to look standard because I believed that this revenue assurance practices (in 2010) must be already established since several year before. I found about two bodies that discuss about revenue assurance reference, one is GRAPATEL and TMForum . Both organization has their own states in promoting revenue assurance.


On the other side, i also found the software solution vendor like SUBEX, cVidya, and many other profesional consultation, like TALK RA. These software and service provider has their own perspectives related with revenue assurance. For me, those are goods, because it give complete view about revenue assurance. 

Learning Point from "Theft of Phone Deposit" Case

Family Portrait with Peanut Butter and Roller Coaster by David Blackwell. (CC.@Flickr)

Perhaps you've heard about the incident on "Theft of Deposit Telephone" that some time ago made an uproar in Indonesia. Customers who feel lost deposit their telephone operators started demand to  phone operators  to explain about  the incident. The suspect are the premium content services that provide sms-based information and other service to phone user. The situation became more critical after there are no common understanding among stakeholders. Even the government should step in and finally, lead to the closure of Premium SMS services. This situation creates  business uncertainty for content provider.


But on the other hand, there seems to be something that is not fair, where the incident such as this should already be known by the stakeholders. Customers that aware about this objection, they would have filed the complain some time ago. The operators also have received their customer complaint. As well as their business partners, the content providers, they also  have received information related to this. The interesting point is  why did this incident become increasingly large and apparently ignored by the service provider since it's first appearance.




On the Little Corner of Business Side


The next question, is about the compliance of business to the regulation. It is clear that Service Providers like telco's companies should make sure that their business is compliance with the rules, especially Customer Protection. Indonesia Law, under UU Perlindungan Konsumen Nomor 8 Tahun 1999 Tentang Perlindungan Konsumen Republik Indonesia, already regulate that every Indonesia customer has a right for their comfort, security, and safety in consuming goods and services in Indonesia.


In a company perspective, they have the same goal related with the quality of their product. They should make sure that their product has an excellent quality as well as their delivery product and financial administration. Management have aware that high quality of their product, e.g price, specification and process meet with their standard. Company should make sure that product is safe, and convenient to be consumed by their customer.


One of the management practices in  guaranteeing  their product meet it's specification is revenue assurance. It is a niche management practices which has two side of goals. The first goal is to make sure that the price, the bill  and the billing process that sent to customer comply with their customer contract.  On the other hand, this revenue assurance activity make sure that the financial aspect of product (revenue and cost of) is guaranteed to be completely received by the company.


How to do the activity of revenue assurance is the main goal of this blog, which is to share the knowledge of revenue assurance and endorsed the practices as part of  for business activities.