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Authors: Shital Ghuge Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Jyoti Govekar Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Prasoon Agarwal Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
Abstract
Historically Revenue Assurance dealt only in analyzing the billions of daily usage transaction records generated and processed by a Service Providers network in order to retain every billable amount of revenue and ensure that no transactions are lost as they traversed each network node and system. In recent years, the scope of RA has expanded in leaps and bounds. Today, RA sector not only monitors each and every billable transaction to retain and cover the revenue, but also performs root cause analysis to identify the reasons for revenue leakage and provides strategic solution to the problems. In todays changing economic conditions and an evolving technological environment every Service Provider is focusing to improve margins. Thus Revenue Assurance function plays not only an important, rather critical role in Telecom business.
On the other hand, Business Analytics is one such practice which involves analyses of organization wide data elements using various statistical and quantitative techniques, explanatory and predictive models in order to draw inferences that help to solve business problems.
This white paper attempts to highlight that how Business Analytics can be used to execute and deliver Inventory Reconciliation for Revenue Assurance effectively for Telecom data products. It explains that how every aspect of business analytics techniques like, to integrate, to extract, to transform and analyze huge quantity of data for various business processes can be used with different phases of Inventory Reconciliation for Telecom data products. This will help the Telecom business operations to improve growth in Revenue by reducing Revenue leakage.
More so, this white paper focuses on how smaller players of Telecom with low budgets can divert their synergies in carrying out Revenue Assurance activities with Business Analytics team and their capabilities to operate with lower cost and gain higher Revenue thus improving the profit margin.
Table of Contents
REVENUE ASSURANCE - AN INTRODUCTION ................................................................... 3
Need for Revenue Assurance in Telecom Sector ........................................................4 Benefits of Revenue Assurance ...................................................................................5 Challenges faced in conducting Revenue Assurance ...................................................5
REVENUE ASSURANCE INVENTORY RECONCILIATION ..................................................... 6 BUSINESS ANALYTICS ............................................................................................... 7 APPLYING BUSINESS ANALYTICS TO INVENTORY RECONCILIATION........................................ 8
Advantages of using Business Analytics to conduct Inventory Reconciliation ............9
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ............................................................................................. 11 ABOUT TECH MAHINDRA ........................................................................................ 12 GLOSSARY ........................................................................................................... 13 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................ 13
Revenue Assurance can be defined as a practice that helps in identifying and preventing Revenue leakages thus enhancing cash flow by billing accurately and improving the effectiveness of cash collection process. According to various Revenue assurance researches conducted globally Revenue leakage in the Telco industry is 1% to 11% of gross Revenues annually (Source: Tele Management
Forum Solution Suite 3.6)
Assuming the global telecommunications market Revenue is US $ 1.3 Trillion we can estimate the
annual Revenue leakage of up to US $ 143 billion (Source: Connex Technologies)
Global Revenue Assurance survey for market
Market Size of RA in Telecom Domain
450 400
size of RA in Telecom domain estimates the below: RA market size for Telecom domain was US $ 235 million in the year 2009 This was expected to grow upto US $ 413 million by the year 2012 Market for Revenue Assurance would gradually
US $ Million
350
300 250 200 150
100
50 0 2009 2010 2011 2012 235 282 340 413
Source: Stratecast
These days Telcos follow a conceptualized RA model which covers all aspects of business operations right from sales to the collection of payments.
A mature RA methodology that can be used in any Telco can be explained in six different phases as shown in the below figure:
A holistic approach followed for performing these activities can help plug the Revenue leakages in major impacted areas of the business. An in-depth explanation of Inventory Reconciliation is explained in the coming sections.
All the above factors make revenue assurance a critical solution in Telecom business.
Technical complexity:
Accelerated growth in data, IP and real-time services due to dynamically evolving technologies, continuous demand for new services, complex processes and business systems infrastructure adds complexity in system configuration thus hindering exposure for RA.
Data availability
Revenue data is difficult to obtain- with too many sources of data and too many reports. Extracting the right data with no integrity and quality issues is a big challenge to start with. This leads to difficulty in quantifying Revenue losses.
People factor
Need of competent RA analysts and Subject matter experts with right skills and adequate knowledge to not only identify suspicious data but also perform quick investigation and suggest quick wins is an important but difficult task.
This RA activity can be useful for any telecom operator for short or long term opportunity, targeting to improve their inventory management. Also revenue losses caused due to mismanaged inventory is
recovered through the reconciliation activity. Below is a detailed Inventory reconciliation delivery model which can help any Telecom sector to carry out reconciliation activities:
Business Analytics
Business Analytics is a practice which helps Telcos to understand the structure, policies and operations of an organization and recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals. It mainly provides an analytics support to the business strategy in shaping business/investment proposals with market and operational metrics. Traditional Telcos are focused on improving financial parameters however they also need an insight about customers, suppliers, business operations and bottlenecks. Business Analytics especially helps Telcos in following ways: Helps to move ahead of ad-hoc reporting analysis and adopt a culture of analytics Assists in strategic initiatives through impact analysis, feasibility studies Provides granular view of the current performances and bottlenecks Helps in driving continual improvement programs Conducting Root cause analysis for complex problems Enhancing customer experience and profitability Reducing Revenue leakage and fraud leading to growth in Revenue Reducing costs and increasing efficiencies across Telco operations
Business Analytics methodology can be implemented in a Telecom industry through the below strategic delivery model:
Thus aligning the Inventory Reconciliation for Revenue Assurance to the Business Analytics model helps in carrying out the various activities in a strategic way, enabling fact based decision making at various levels. The outcome is conducting Revenue Assurance efficiently and delivering benefits to the organization.
Cost Assurance can also be performed by analyzing the variable cost that should be reconciled with the actual revenues. Hence, the profit margins can be assured by the Telcos; once both Revenue & Cost Assurance have been implemented effectively with proper control plans in place.
However, smaller Telecom players with a lesser budget can neither afford to hire the assistance of external Revenue Assurance consultants nor set up an independent team of Revenue Assurance experts. Hence setting up an in-house team of Business analyst can be the best savior to combat this situation. By implementing the Business Analytics approach this team can easily initiate and drive actions to address the Revenue leakage issues identified and start generating returns.
Investing to acquire different Business Intelligence tools for generating RA dashboard, Scorecard, Monitoring, Database audits, Performance reporting from external RA consultants can be useful but a costly affair. Instead, a simple automated tool based on Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access can be developed so that query based commands can drive automated data extraction and data analysis. This tool can be updated and upgraded depending on expansion of service and products in future.
In addition to applying business analytics approach to implement Revenue Assurance, there are different styles of RA approaches that TMF RA solution suite 3.6 describes i.e. Reactive, Active and Proactive. Reactive approach helps in detecting revenue leakages after their occurrence and then steps are taken to recover the losses once leakage is detected. Similarly Proactive approach helps in controlling or avoiding the leakages before they occur and effectively taking steps to change processes or systems before leakage occurs. On the other hand, Active approach is real time approach to address revenue leakage problems as they occur. So any steps to correct the revenue leakage before it causes any damage is designed and implemented.
According to TMF the three approaches are complementary. A good RA practice must always include Reactive controls, to identify leakages and create the case for the Active and Proactive controls.
Tele Management Forums RA Solution suite 3.6 suggests Maturity Model that provides any telecom industry, large or small, a common framework with a strategic approach for Revenue assurance. Five stages of the Maturity model, as shown below helps to identify areas of improvements in five business aspects namely Organization, People, Influence, Tools and Process.
Optimizing - Continuous improvement via feedback. Decentralized ownership, holistic control Managed - Leakage quantitatively understood and controlled Defined - Standardized approach developed. Designing-in control commences Repeatable - Basic project/process management. Repeatable tasks Initial Ad hoc, chaotic. Dependant on individual heroics
An in-house Business Analytics team and an internal BI tool will ensure that operational costs remain lower. Putting it together with the above strategic approach is a cost effective solution for a small player thus helping identify, remedy and prevent revenue leakages. This provides a perfect opportunity for them to achieve more (Revenue) with less (Cost).
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Dr. Shreekala Jaydeep, Tech Mahindra Ltd for motivating, encouraging and guiding us in writing this white paper. Her invaluable suggestions at each stage have helped us in successful completion of this white paper.
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Glossary
RA CAGR KPI E2E SQL SIPOC BA BI TMF Revenue Assurance Compound Annual Growth rate Key Performance Indicator End to End Structured Query Language Supplier Input Process Output Customer Business Analytics Business Intelligence Tele Management Forum
References
1. Revenue Assurance Solution Suite 3.6- Tele Management Forum (TMF) 2. http://www.telestrategies.com/ra11/index.htm - Different RA operators and their programs 3. Tech Mahindra Internal Revenue Assurance practices 4. http://www.xintec.com/ra-modules.aspx- RA solution for small telecom industries
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