Revenue leakage is often considered a hidden and uncontrolled cost of doing business in the communications industry. Reasons for revenue loss include, but are not limited to: network provisioning, mediation and CDR errors, billing and interconnect inconsistencies, loss of data and corrupted files, fragmented support systems, incoherent databases, and manual or ill defined business processes. According to various Revenue Assurance (RA) research reports, the degree of exposure lies in the range of 3% to 15% of the Communications Service Providers’ (CSP) gross revenue, depending on factors such as networks and services type, geography, carrier type, and Revenue Assurance maturity level.

RA is a well-known challenge in the Telecommunications sector, as the techniques and methodologies used to identify and fix revenue leakages or errors often result in unbilled or uncollected revenues. But the accelerated growth in the data, IP and real-time services market has introduced a layer of complexity not previously present in telephony. The dynamically evolving technologies, continuous demand for new services, and evolving value chains have created far more complicated operational and business systems infrastructure.

The above factors have led to the formation of more and more organizational units dedicated to complying with increasing regulatory and competitive pressure. CSPs continue to restructure according to new business targets and priorities. These structural changes and the response to market conditions suggest the benefits of the holistic RA process, which optimizes the business process and the usage of existing assets. RA also serves to improve data integrity, reduce costs, and maximize revenues.

Why TM Forum?

The TM Forum’s origins are deeply rooted in providing a collaborative forum that allows its members to work together to understand and develop solutions for the problems that the communications industry is facing today and will face in the future. Many members have developed strong alliances with service providers that have strongly and successfully influenced their product offerings.

Many of the projects, including the Revenue Assurance and Billing and Customer Experience initiatives, run under the TM Forum’s Collaborative Program. They have been focused on achieving high levels of process improvement and automation, with initiatives ranging from the development of common practices and guidebooks that help in the creation of common process and information models, as well as foster low-integration-cost APIs and interfaces. These solutions really do work, as evidenced by more than 150 case studies generated by our members. The TM Forum’s work in the area of revenue assurance and billing is unique within the industry and has established thought leading best practices that are now widely adopted throughout the industry.