The Future of RA

1. By Dr. Eman Kamel
Revenue Assurance General Manager
Telecom Egypt
Jan 2017
5th
annual global revenue assurance & risk management conference 2017

2.  What have been changes
 Challenges
 RA Focus area
 Fraud Focus Area
 Integration of RA system
 RA in Organization
 RA cross function
 Why RA not BA

6. Usage AssuranceUsage Assurance

8.  New Technologies
◦ LTE, 4G, IoT
 New services
◦ Live messaging
◦ Enhanced mobile video, music
◦ Mobile gaming
◦ Advertising
◦ M2M
◦ Mobile payment and banking
 New data universe
◦ The concept of CDR is changed to event or transaction for a service
◦ Huge amount of data
◦ Big data analytics
 New charging Model
◦ Revenue Sharing
◦ Content specific rates
◦ Flat rating for voice/data services

12. The new technologies provided new
services that is implemented by new
network elements.
The new services are mostly flat rate ,
where the billing depends on
subscription for a certain service with
certain limit.
 The subscription assurance will
dominate the RA operations.
Subscription data is reconciled across
CRM, HLR, and HSS.

14.  Billing keep shifting the emphasis from customers paying for usage to them paying for
access and for blocks of allowances.
 Bill controls are needed to prevent bill shock
 In the new business model if the customer refuse to pay the bill, Telco may need to
pay to the content provider, which represent extra loss.

15. 1 Key Areas to Address
• Vulnerability increase, because you are counting not only on
the operations of your partners/competitor.
• An error not only represent a lost revenue, it represent a lost
cash since you have to pay the other partner.
2 Complexities to Address
• Customer relation ship is sophisticated, driven by regulator,
interconnect customer can be a competitor.
• Pricing is completely complex “ route dependent, price of
route changes, PRS routes, transient routes ,etc…”
3 Goal to Reach
• Interconnect provisioning audit that validate the events
exchanged between the two partners.
• Monitor the difference between and interconnect charges to
assure you are making profit.
Usage
Generation
Usage
Generation Usage generationUsage generation
Usage
Processing
Usage
Processing Usage processingUsage processing
Usage RatingUsage Rating Usage RatingUsage Rating
Network
Usage
Inter
Connect
Invoice generationInvoice generation Invoice generationInvoice generation
Settlement
process
Settlement
process

16.  Manipulating the device or the account will be considered as identity theft.
 This can cause financial or reputation loss.

17.  Lack of standards for roaming with VoLTE
 Real time fraud detection needs NRTRDE applicability for LTE roaming

18. Typically the operator zero-rates the URLs it wants to provide for free.
Attackers may manipulate requests to make it appear as if they are visiting free sites.
This is called Free URL Bypass.

19.  The new technologies use new network elements with non standard
implementations.
 internal fraud can easily occur by manipulating any OSS/BSS element.

20. Revenue Assurance system will be integrated with different data sources in LTE, billing,
IMS.
Different revenue stream will define the required controls to be integrated with RAS.
Revenue Stream
subscription HSS CRM PCRF Billing
prepiad IN PCRF OCS CRM
interconnect PGW SWG PCRF OFCS
Data Sources

21.  Cloud services offered cloud RA solutions, with offered for outsourcing RA controls.
 Yet in house RA function still dominates in Telco.
 Mostly the RA function reports to CFO

22.  RA function mostly report to CFO, so it has higher involvement with finance
 switch to bill reconciliation focus on usage cdrs, that is why the RA function is
strongly involved with technical and operation units
 in new technologies the focus is moved to product and subscription assurance so
the RA function need to strength relationship with Marketing and customer care units.

23.  Will the RA moves from Risk Management to Quality or to Business Assurance?
 What is the scope defined for RA department in the organization?
It is usually minimizing leakage or delivering a better customer experience.
 What is the scope of business assurance in the organization?
It is usually Revenue Maximization.
 Collection assurance, customer and service profitability analysis, and usage-based
cost management, Network policy,….can they move to RA?
 Is there other teams doing the business assurance within the organization?
Will there be conflict in org structure/ job description with marketing, quality or collection
teams…

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