Coordination with IT is Pivotal to Driving Value from Telecom Revenue Assurance Audits

Feb. 25, 2011 - PRLog -- EFFORT OF THE POCONOS, PENNSYLVANIA – The greatest sin for the modern revenue assurance teams is to be one-dimensional. Expertise in revenue assurance, training in bill audits and forensics is necessary, but not enough. A thorough knowledge of B/OSS systems and coordination with other departments, such as billing, customer care, marketing and engineering is also very critical. Of particular importance is the relationship with IT/operations, the folks who often run the mediation, billing, ordering, and inventory systems that RA wraps controls around.

It’s well known that IT organizations are hard to deal with for RA professionals.  “At some telco organizations, dozens of little revenue assurance problems are overshadowed by one very big problem — the IT organization itself” says Rob Mattison, president of the Global Revenue Assurance Professionals Association. However, Mattison also acknowledges that at many places “IT and Revenue Assurance are very strong allies. And at these shops, revenue assurance and IT understand what their respective roles are.”

Here are some highlights from the interview on how IT and Revenue Assurance sometimes misunderstand each others’ role and how the team can tackle it:

•A frequent starting point for problems is when senior managers decide that IT should run systems. This is an easy mistake to make. Operational groups usually want to check on things, and make sure they work right.  But IT specializes in making sure that the engine is running, and often doesn’t know the revenue assurance process.

•Management, instead of correcting underlying operational shortfalls, commissions the revenue assurance group to set up yet more controls.  However, this actually doesn’t fix anything, only increases the operational cost of running the system.

•Often when IT is blamed for the revenue assurance problems, the fault lies with the revenue assurance team themselves. The team has failed to understand the nature of their jobs, and the nature of the solutions that will make the most sense for their organization.

Mattison adds, “If IT is causing problems, it’s because either you haven’t done your homework, or you haven’t taken the steps to do your job the right way in the first place.”

The complete article is available on the TRI website at:  http://raround.com/ra_clash.asp

About Technology Research Institute
Founded in 1994, Technology Research Institute (TRI) is a market research and consulting firm that specializes in the areas of telecom revenue assurance and OSS/BSS software and services. For further information, visit www.technology-research.com or Tel: +1 570-620-2320.

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Revenue Assurance Roundtable is a free, peer-to-peer community where RA experts share their knowledge to stay on the cutting edge of a telecom business. It is a service of market analyst firm, Technology Research Institute (TRI).