Revenue Assurance spans across OSS and BSS because it requires a holistic view of the operator’s environment to encompass both OSS systems such as network management and BSS systems such as the billing and CRM systems. We saw a real need to create an industry standard and model for the way operators deal with RA. It was our service provider members that encourage us to take on the challenge and they have stepped up to support the technical work the Revenue Assurance team is doing.” Martin Creaner, TM Forum President & CTO
Convergent Services are a complicated and often costly business. Between delivering the service and collecting the cash, there are literally hundreds of problems that can arise, and many of them may be far from obvious. That's the reason many Service Providers end up provisioning unasked-for service features that consequently go unbilled. Something as simple as misplacing a decimal point can compromise the settlement process. The costs incurred from making mistakes can be frightening—not only monetarily, but in terms of customer loyalty and branding strength. Something like overcharging may lead to bad publicity, reputation damage, regulatory censure and customer churn.
The solution goes beyond just identifying the problem, as there is a need to identify the root cause, which is often buried deep among interconnected processes and systems that support modern OSS/BSS.
The TM Forum Revenue Assurance Program is taking a hands-on approach to addressing these issues. The team's purpose is the creation and maintenance of an extensible framework and methodology. This will enable the deployment of an effective Revenue Assurance processes across various activities, processes, systems and network technologies. As a means to that end, the Program strives to establish thought leadership around key revenue assurance issues like:
• Network provisioning;
• Mediation and CDR errors;
• Billing and interconnect inconsistencies;
• Data integrity;
• Corrupted files;
• Fragmented support systems;
• Manual or fuzzy business processes
Discussion Groups and Blogs
Revenue Assurance on TM Forum Community
Revenue Assurance Professionals on LinkedIn
Revenue Assurance Blog by Dr. Gadi Solotorevsky
talkRA Blog
The B/OSS Blog
Useful Links
Revenue Assurance Documents
Revenue Assurance Team Activities
Catalyst Projects
Case Studies
Revenue Management Initiative
TM Forum Training