Revenue assurance

Revenue assurance (RA) is a niche business activity most commonly undertaken within businesses that provide telecommunication services. The activity is the use of data quality and process improvement methods that improve profits, revenues and cash flows without influencing demand. This was defined by a TM Forum working group based on research documented in its Revenue Assurance Technical Overview [1]. In many telecommunications service providers, revenue assurance is led by a dedicated revenue assurance department.

"Revenue assurance" is a broad umbrella term. It is used both to describe an activity performed within telecommunications service providers, and is a common name for a small business unit associated with that activity. Revenue assurance is a practical response to perceived or actual issues with operational under performance, most commonly relating to billing and collection of revenue. Some of the procedures associated with identifying, remedying or preventing errors may be undertaken by a dedicated Revenue Assurance department, though responsibility for revenue assurance is often diffuse and varies greatly with the organizational structure of the provider. Assuming a provider with a typical organizational split, responsibilities for revenue assurance primarily sit between the Finance and Technology directorates, however, revenue assurance initiatives are often started in a business unit or marketing group.

The relevance to Finance rests with the responsibility for financial control, audit and reporting, while the subject matter would be network and IS systems as implemented or operated by the Technology side of the business. Marketing groups and / or business units (e.g. wholesale or retail business lines) will often embark on revenue assurance projects in an effort to improve product line margins. Furthermore, marketing and business units are pivotal in providing input into the "should be" state of customer bills and products.

The sphere of influence described by revenue assurance varies greatly between telecommunications service providers, but is usually closely related to back office functions where small errors may have a disproportionately large impact on revenues or costs. The processing of transaction data in modern telecommunications providers exhibits many attributes akin to a complex system. However, there is significant disagreement about the ultimate aims and legitimate scope of revenue assurance teams. This is in part caused by:

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