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A Comparative Study of
Revenue Assurance vs. Data Warehousing
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The telecom industry has a very dynamic landscape, which is constantly evolving at a furious pace. As a natural result of a
margin driven revenue model, operators are constantly upgrading the services which are available to the end-customer.
The result is that the core telecom network has become exponentially more complex, with various different systems
interfacing with each other. The amount of underlying data that the analyst needs to crunch, to ensure operational and
system efficiencies, has burgeoned beyond human capabilities. This paper analyzes the key differentiators between
employing a Data Warehousing application as opposed to a Revenue Assurance solution, to ease the analyst’s workload as
well as being an effective tool towards identification, investigation, representation and correction of revenue leakages.
Data Warehousing - The process of transforming data into information and making it available to the user in a timely
enough manner to assist the user make business decisions Revenue Assurance Data quality and process improvement
methods that improve profit, revenues and cash flow without influencing demand. Holistic revenue assurance optimizes
business processes, the usage of existing assets, and ensures the integrity of data. From the functional definitions, it is clear
that there exists a large gap between data warehousing and revenue assurance. Data warehousing (DW) is predominantly
limited to the extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) of data, to be made available to a user in a timely manner with
business intelligence metrics. In the case of revenue assurance (RA), ETL is merely the first step. There are business
intelligence metrics built into the system at every stage of the Revenue Assurance workflow. In Revenue Assurance, it is
critical to be able to not only identify issues in the underlying network, but it is equally important to be able to:
The complexity of the revenue assurance process begins to unfold when we are able to identify the cross-linkages and
inter-play between not only downstream/upstream data flows, but seemingly disparate systems as well. As an example,
CDRs being rejected at the billing platform might not be an issue of the billing system. It might be because the subscriber
to be billed is not setup in the billing platform whereas he has been activated on the network.
For holistic revenue assurance, it is important to undertake a complete study of the operator’s network topology and map
it to his/her defined business flow. This includes a complete analysis of all call scenarios within the network with an
exhaustive analysis of service delivery options and various business rule validations at each network element.
In Revenue Assurance, it is critical to be able to not only identify issues in the underlying
network, but it is equally important to be able to: qualify the leakage, quantify the leakage,
and activate corrective measures to address the leakage, setup controls to ensure non
recurrence of issues that lead to the leakage
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a) The underlying data will be loaded into the database from multiple operational systems. As a result,
maintenance of Data Integrity becomes a very complicated task
b) If there are changes to the business flow, it would be required to make corresponding changes to the
pre-defined dimensions. This process is quite complex and requires significant time and effort. This has to
be re-done over and over again, for any business flow changes in the future.
Normalized Approach:
The transactional data, as it enters the data store, is stored following the Codd Normalization rule to an extent. The issue
for the end users here is that:
a) Cross-referencing data from different sources into meaningful information becomes a cumbersome task.
b) It becomes difficult to mine the data without an in-depth understanding of both the sources of data as well as
the structure of the data warehouse.
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From the above diagram, we can effectively state that Revenue Assurance is an ongoing, intensive activity which requires
well-defined processes. This allows the Revenue Assurance department to effectively analyze and translate large amounts
of data into meaningful indicators of revenue leakage as well as revenue optimization opportunities.
Towards this end, the analyst should be empowered to activate automated monitoring mechanisms. Based on prior
analysis of the underlying network, these mechanisms would effectively highlight or alert the possibility of revenue
leakage in any business stream. The automation process efficiently and accurately processes the immense amounts of
data, which need to be analyzed. Since new services/products are introduced frequently, it requires a highly flexible
system which can monitor the underlying data on the analyst’s terms.
Over and above this, any system that addresses revenue leakages should be capable of recording the occurrence and
capturing the information related to the rectification of the same. This would eventually become an automated check or
key performance indicator to prevent the recurrence of the issue within the network.
From the diagram, we can effectively state that Revenue Assurance is an ongoing, intensive
activity which requires well defined processes.
This allows the Revenue Assurance department to effectively analyze and translate large
amounts of data into meaningful indicators of revenue leakage as well as revenue
optimization opportunities.
For effective Revenue Assurance, the system must be capable of performing the following activities:
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Many of the above functionalities require customized solutions which cater directly to the requirement. For Revenue
Assurance, it is necessary to validate the Data entering the system before any reconciliation is performed. This constitutes
a few of the critical check points at the first level.
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As discussed in the above points, since Revenue Assurance is a function in itself, the system should be able to track the
efficiency of the concerned Revenue Assurance team. Not only does the system need to be very flexible to accommodate
audits as per the requirements of an analyst, it should also be able to capture the findings and translate it across multiple
teams as an actionable work-item. Furthermore, the module needs to be able to help managers have clear visibility of
problem areas without having to perform deep-dives.
From the perspective of an Revenue Assurance department, it is very important to be able to assign costs to leakages so
that the savings of the Revenue Assurance team can be quantified.
A big advantage that Revenue Assurance has over the Data Warehousing is that the atomicity of the data is maintained
exactly as it is present in the real world, i.e. XDRs are stored as XDRs. All necessary profiling/dimensioning is then done on
top of this data. This is very helpful for the analyst as it does not introduce undue complexity into the data mining
approach to be followed.
To the analyst, the structure is transparent and seems to be an exact mirror of the underlying core network. The gambit of
a Revenue Assurance system far outpaces the capability of a mere data warehousing application. In the case of more
complex requirements, (e.g. calculation of prepaid credit depletion with Closing balance calculation vs. Subscriber usage),
the data warehousing application would be ill-equipped to handle such online near-real time calculations.
The primary function of the data warehouse would be to derive business intelligence based on the underlying data, but
unlike the Revenue Assurance system, it would not be able to effect changes and data transformations required, (e.g.
re-rating of billed records), which are required from the perspective of a Revenue Assurance department.
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ETL Capability
Re -rating capability
Workow Management
Quantication of leakages
Leakage Correction
Usage Reconciliation *
Settlement Reconciliation *
Subscription Reconciliation *
Activation Checks
Sy stemic Flexibility
* Note: Most data warehousing applications provide a first level of reconciliation. But as the scope of this document includes
end-to-end revenue assurance, in the comparison column, comprehensive reconciliation capabilities are referred to, including but
not limited to, exception programming, KPI monitoring, business filtration and segregation, transference integrity etc.
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Subex Limited. 2017. All rights reserved. Although every endeavour has been made to ensure that the information contained within this document is up to date and accurate, Subex Limited cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracy or error in the information contained within this document. 09062016.
About Subex
Subex Ltd. is a leading telecom analytics solutions provider, enabling a digital future for global telcos.
Founded in 1992, Subex has spent over 25 years in enabling 3/4th of the largest 50 CSPs globally achieve
competitive advantage. By leveraging data which is gathered across networks, customers, and systems
coupled with its domain knowledge and the capabilities of its core solutions, Subex helps CSPs to drive new
business models, enhance customer experience and optimise enterprises.
Subex leverages its award-winning analytics solutions in areas such as Revenue Assurance, Fraud Man-
agement, Asset Assurance and Partner Management, and complements them through its newer solutions
such as IoT Security. Subex also offers scalable Managed Services and Business Consulting services.
Pipeline Innovation Award 2017 for Global Telecoms Business Winner of Telecoms
Innovation in Managed Services and Innovation Award Awarded Global Carriers Award 2015 - 'Advances Awarded Best Global
Security & Assurance category 2017,2016, 2015, 2014, 2012, 2011 Awards 2015 in B/OSS' category Product/Services
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