IN REVENUE ASSURANCE - WeDo Technologies

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www.wedotechnologies.com 2


QUESTION 

“Fraud management and revenue 

assurance are merging. 

Both depend on pattern recognition and use 

the same tools as a foundation, such as 

business intelligence (BI) and extraction, 

transformation and loading (ETL). Both use 

common dashboards to combine this 

information.” 

in Competitive Landscape: Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management for 

Communications Service Providers; ID Number: G00209271; 2010/Dec/17 

• FROM YOUR RESEARCH WHAT CAN 

YOU SHARE WITH US ABOUT THIS 

TREND 

• WHICH ARE THE IMPACTS FOR THE 

CSPs 


RA and FM ARE MERGING, TRENDS 

• Most CSPs continue to operate with a smorgasbord of internal 

and external business support system (BSS), operations 

support system (OSS), CRM and enterprise solutions that 

open the doors to revenue loss and fraudulent use. 

• The urgency to manage inefficiencies becomes clear if one 

adds to that 

– Ever-expanding array of third-party IT and content services 

– The reluctance of many CSPs to convert their entire front and back 

office stacks to the latest and most efficient technologies. 

• RA and FM have in common that they try to fix deliberate (FM) 

or unintentional (RA) revenue loss. Both share the same data 

sources and require a similar infrastructure for business 

process orchestration, case and alarm management, and key 

performance indicator (KPI) management. 


RA and FM ARE MERGING 

IMPLICATIONS FOR CSPs 

• Until recently, most CSPs had separate organizations that 

handled RA and FM. 

– FM entered mature mainstream many years ago, and every CSP 

now has an FM system. It has to address new challenges such as 

being more real-time and proactive, increasing automation, detecting 

new fraud patterns, and handling new data sources. 

– RA only gained prominence as a separate discipline in the mid- 

2000s. It provides data quality and process improvement methods 

that improve profits, revenue and cash flows without influencing 

demand. 

– RA has since entered early mainstream with its own industry 

associations (for example the Global Revenue Assurance 

Professional Association [GRAPA], and the TM Forum's Revenue 

Management Initiative), maturity models, blogs, printed books and 

independent academic research (see "Hype Cycle for 

Communications Service Provider Operations, 2010"). 


GARTNER HYPE CYCLE FOR COMMUNICATIONS 

SERVICE PROVIDER OPERATIONS, 2010 



QUESTION 

FROM YOUR RESEARCH 

WHICH WILL BE THE KEY PAIN POINTS 

FOR CSP’S RA AND FM TEAMS IN THE 

NEXT COUPLE OF YEARS 


DISCONTINUITIES AND DISRUPTIONS 

• Free content and applications will 

impact legacy business model. 

• CSP brand will be challenged by 

others such as apps/content 

providers and device makers. 

• Non-voice sessions for P2P 

communications will rise impacting 

legacy voice business. 

• CSP business becomes more 

software-centric. 

• Digitization of content and 

information allows CSPs to be 

disruptors themselves to other 

industries. 

1980s to 

early 1990s 

1990s 

2000 - 2006 

2007 - 2010 

Beyond 2010 

Little competition or monopoly 

Liberalization and deregulation; Competition based on 

network quality and coverage; Limited price competition 

Intense price competition: bundling, subsidies and 

promotions; Early signs of increasing competition from 

nontraditional competitors 

Network commoditization; Old basis of competition and 

sources of competitive advantage eroding rapidly 

Near future: focus on customer experience, value-added 

services, business transformation; Longer term : 

• Reappraise strategic analyses and projections frequently. 

• Identify implicit assumptions and hidden biases. 

• Ensure unconventional/dissenting viewpoints are heard.

Operational 

focus 

Future oriented 

focus 

WHAT ARE THE 10 TOP CSP TRENDS 

• The top 10 trends revolve around 

elements of customer experience, topline 

growth and bottom-line 

improvements. 

• Customer experience is No.1 for its 

strategic importance. More holistic 

and structured approaches to CE are 

anticipated. 

• Emerging trends include cloud 

computing and the strategic use of 

social networking/media. 

• Current hot trends include 

ecosystems/platform play and 

participation in adjacent markets. 

10. Operational efficiency 

& process improvements 

2. BI and analytics 

3. New pricing models 

1. Customer experience 

initiatives 

6. CDN 

investment 

5. New markets/services 

2011-2012: Current 

top focus areas 

Currently 

gaining attention 

4. Platform/ecosystem player 

7. Cloud computing 

services 

8. New business models 

Established 

momentum 

• CSPs must focus on BI and analytics. 

• New organizational models are needed to meet future challenges. 

Beyond 2012: May become 

top focus areas 

9. Embrace 

social media/network 

Growing 

momentum

EBIT, 2013 (%) 

NEW REVENUE OPPORTUNITIES FOR CSPs, 

2013 

50 

• There are no killer 

applications. 

Online gaming 

$6,024m 

Mobile payment 

$2,077m 

• Many of the non-traditional 

services either have low EBIT or 

relatively small global revenues. 

40 

SMS/MMS & 

other mobile data 

$347,352m 

Internet advertising 

$99,800m 

IPTV advertising 

$800m 

• Traditional telecom services 

still represent a large portion of 

revenues and cannot be ignored 

– treat as cash-cow to finance 

new initiatives 

Enterprise voice 

$120,977m 

Mobile voice 

$650,344m 

30 

Enterprise data 

$121,987m 

Consumer Internet 

access 

$40,748m 

Consumer fixed b/band 

$134,914m 

Enterprise Internet 

services 

$68,719m 

Mobile games 

$7,600m 

Mobile music 

$6,500m 

IPTV & VoD 

$23,000m 

Mobile TV 

$17,575m 

Mobile advertising 

$13,481m 

Consumer location-based services 

$12,663m 

Consumer voice 

$171,304m 

Network IT services 

$188,461m 

Online music 

$3,806m 

Cloud computing 

$150,100m 

-20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 

CAGR 2009-2013 (%) 

• Develop capability to launch multiple non-traditional services quickly and cost efficiently. 

• Focus on customer preferences and trends via business intelligence and analytics.


QUESTION 

“CSPs should explore how they can use their 

existing RA and FM tools for related 

disciplines such as BI or risk management.” 

“RA will expand into adjacent areas such as 

CEM, churn management, data mining, 

margin management, risk management, and 

so on” 



• WHICH ARE THE BUSINESS PROCESSES 

THAT WILL BE OF GREATER INTEREST FOR 

THE CSP’S 

• WHAT ARE THE BEST WAYS FOR THE CSP 

TO INCREASE THE ROI OF THEIR RA/FM 

TOOL(S) 


RA AND FM WON’T GO AWAY 

BUT RA WILL CHANGE ITS SKIN 

1. Expansion into "business performance 

management" 

– Expansion into adjacent areas such as CEM, churn management, 

data mining, margin management, risk management, etc. 

– Competition from established suppliers of business performance 

management, business process management, business 

intelligence, analytics, and so on. 

2. Expansion into other industry verticals 

– Media and entertainment, finance, utilities, retail. 

– Competition from suppliers that specialize in these verticals. 

– Beware of the ―Not Invented Here Syndrome.‖ 

12

GARTNER CIO SURVEY 2011 

BUSINESS STRATEGIES 

13


NEW INFRASTRUCTURE 

14


NEW TECHNOLOGIES 

15

HOW TO GET THE BEST OUT OF YOUR FRAUD 

MANAGEMENT AND REVENUE ASSURANCE SOLUTION 

• CSPs should explore how they can use their existing RA 

and FM tools for related disciplines such as BI or risk 

management. 

– But, avoid making RA the jack-of-all trades. 

– Start small and expand after initial successes. 

– If you have multiple subsidiaries, look for an RA aggregator. 

– Balance RA with other corporate initiatives. 

– Don’t consider leakage as a cost of doing business. 

• CSP should choose a supplier that can grow with them in 

terms of platform flexibility and professional services. 

– Ask for a 4-5 year product roadmap. 

– Many solutions portfolios are ad-hoc and roadmaps tend to be 

erratic and project-driven. 



QUESTION 

“FM and RA represent services-heavy 

business processes and productized software 

solutions at the same time. Suppliers 

address this dilemma by providing either a 

flexible platform or a solution with a 

dedicated road map, but hardly ever can 

they provide both simultaneously.” 



• CAN YOU PLEASE DETAIL A LITTLE 

MORE THIS KEY FINDING 

• WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS FOR 

VENDORS AND WHICH ARE THE MAIN 

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF 

EACH OF THE OPTIONS 


BUSINESS PROCESS VS. PRODUCT 

• Business Processes — As processes, FM and RA cut across multiple horizontal 

and vertical layers of CSPs' back and front offices. RA is one of the five major 

"assurance" processes as defined below. It often blends into these assurance 

processes as it draws on data owned by these processes. 

– Revenue Assurance — Data quality and process improvement methods that improve profits, 

revenue and cash flows without influencing demand. 

– Customer Assurance — Monitors customer experience. Performance data or alarms must be 

meaningful to specific customer groups or individuals. Processes include order entry, order 

management, churn management, quality of service management, and so on. 

– Business Assurance — Optimizes business outcomes. Processes include cash management, 

financial analysis, margin management, and so on. 

– Service Assurance/Quality Assurance — Provides CSPs with insights into individual services 

inside the service transport layer, and how these services are performing. Processes include 

service problem management, service configuration and activation, and so on. 

– Network Assurance — Ensures proper operation of the network. Processes include resource 

provisioning, resource data management, and so on. 

• Productized Solutions — Dealer commissions management, trade and 

settlement, partner settlement, risk management, compliance management, and 

others. 


ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES 

• Platform: CSPs can easily customize according to their 

own requirements. 

– Advantage: Wider reach within CSP organizations. 

– Disadvantage: Hard to market to CSPs looking for specific 

solutions. 

• Product: Adds new modules as required by their 

customers. 

– Advantage: Repeatability; makes marketing and sales efforts 

more impactful. 

– Disadvantage: It requires high R&D investment and a dedicated 

road map. 


WHERE IS THE NEXT GOOGLE/ 

FACEBOOK/GROUPON OF RA 

• Standalone vendors are small 

• Growth comes mainly through acquisitions 

• Large vendors leverage incumbent position 

• Often lack follow-through and roadmap 

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2006-2007 2007-2008 2008-2009 2009-2001 

cVidya 6 14 24 28 60 133% 71% 18% 111% 

NEC/NetCracker - - 50 67 58 - - 33% -14% 

WeDo 37 46 53 52 58 24% 17% -3% 11% 

Subex 38 45 43 47 52 18% -3% 9% 9% 

HP 10 12 30 42 44 19% 156% 39% 5% 

IBM 33 36 40 40 43 7% 10% 1% 7% 

Alcatel-Lucent 29 31 36 38 42 6% 16% 7% 10% 

Connectiva 10 18 29 32 35 85% 57% 10% 9% 

CGI 17 20 41 30 35 21% 101% -26% 14% 

Ericsson - - 15 30 34 - - 104% 12% 

20

COMPARE REVENUE ASSURANCE TO THE 

HEYDAY OF IP BILLING A DECADE AGO 

Hyper-growth tends to be driven by software not services. 

1993-94 1994-95 1995-96 1996-97 1997-98 1998-99 1999-2000 

Amdocs - 38% 27% 37% 39% 55% 78% 

Convergys - - 25% 14% 7% 17% 19% 

Daleen - 107% -41% -94% 3253% 296% 111% 

DSET - 97% 66% 48% 51% 52% 5% 

InfoVista - - - - 787% 161% 269% 

Intec - - - - - 54% 140% 

LHS 209% 30% 111% 85% 55% 61% - 

Lightbridge - - 243% 27% 21% 20% -5% 

MetaSolv - 112% 128% 128% 269% 71% 89% 

Micromuse - 1168% 212% 106% 204% 105% 113% 

MIND CTI - - - 121% 104% 101% 90% 

Portal - - 23% 171% 87% 183% 286% 

Saville 116% 51% 78% 99% 57% - - 

Subex - - - - - 46% 167% 

TMNG - - 137% 17% 59% 57% 54% 

TTI Telecom - - - - 57% 62% 39% 

21


QUESTION 

From your research 

WHICH PERCENTAGE OF THE TELECOM 

MARKET (FIXED, MOBILE, CABLE, ISPs) 

STILL USES IN-HOUSE TOOLS OR NO 

TOOLS AT ALL 

-IN REVENUE ASSURANCE 

“Market Penetration: 20% to 50% of target 

audience; Maturity: Early mainstream” 

in Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Communications Service Provider Operations, 2010; 

ID Number: G00201633; 2010/July/29 

-IN FRAUD MANAGEMENT 

www.wedotechnologies.com 22 

From the experience in observing other 

products’ life-cycles (like billing, rating, 

mediation, ERPs, CRMs) 

WHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR A CSP TO 

DECIDE TO MOVE FROM AN IN-HOUSE 

TOOL TO A COMMERCIAL TOOL

IN-HOUSE VS. EXTERNAL SOLUTIONS 


WHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR A CSP TO DECIDE TO MOVE 

FROM AN IN-HOUSE TOOL TO A COMMERCIAL TOOL 

• In-house solutions are about to break down 

• High overhead – product development, maintenance 

• Lack of in-house expertise, especially for IP and content 

• Reliable COTS solutions in the market 

• Positive prior experience with a supplier 

• Viable suppliers 

• Some CSPs will never use commercial tools …. 



END USER QUOTES 


END-USER QUOTES, PART 1 

Quote 1 – RA Linked to Billing and Mediation: 

―Could I please request an analyst call and/or data on the field of revenue 

assurance/protection and billing mediation software suppliers. [Name] has 

particular interest in suppliers [Name], [Name] and [Name] in these areas, 

and wishes to broaden its understanding of the market for this type of 

functionality with global capability.‖ 

26


Quote 2 – RA Linked to Mediation, Billing, Order Management, Invoicing: 

• We are evaluating below products for Revenue Assurance project … 

– Can you give some statistics on where these product-vendor combinations are used for 

Revenue Assurance Projects through the world And what are the failure and success rates 

Can you give us some statistics on operators’ satisfaction results about the RA implementation 

with above products 

• We have foreseen implementing the product in following processes basis: Order to Activation, Order 

to Bill, Usage to Bill 

– What is the general approach on implementing RA products Is it based on systems (first CRM 

later billing etc..) or processes (like the ones we’re suggesting above) And which one do you 

suggest we should apply If you’re suggesting process approach what do you think we shall 

start the implementation first 

• On average, how long does the RA implementation last for an operator which has 20 million 

subscribers and 5 billion CDR per month 

• Which of the RA products(named on question 1) we are evaluating is more flexible Which one is 

more easy to configure Can you give some insights about the weakness and strength of the 

products 

• Is there any RA implementation where the RA application (which are evaluating) is directly 

connecting a network element (switches, DSLAMS, etc.) to collect the data (CDRs) And do you 

think this is an beneficial approach and shall be implemented 

• Where does the most revenue leakage is seen on a fixed operator’s processes Can you give such 

statistics summarizing the revenue leakage rates on processes (flow) based for a fixed line 

operator 

• What is the marketshare for Revenue Assurance of the [name], [name] and Wedo for last 2 years 

27


Quote 3 – Separate FM: 

• Situation: Nowadays [name] does not have a fraud system for GSM 

• Requirement: 

– Help to identify the platforms for fraud that exists for GSM as well as which are the main 

considerations that have to be taken into consideration to evaluate it. 

– If there is an RFP for it would be great. 

• New information: 

– Now [name] has an application called [name] to detect the frauds 

– They want to know which other alternative tools to it are in the market, stressing in the fact that 

they have to have specialization for the part of cloning and that are for GSM. 

Quote 4 – Separate RA and FM: 

―1- Based on document: ―Revenue and Market Share Revenue Assurance and Fraud 

Management, North America, 2006-2007", split between the fraud management 

software provider and revenue assurance providers. 

2 - financial health of the companies 

3 - note on any acquisitions 

4 - list with company references who have already implemented the system. 

5- checklist of different points for carriers to look at when sending a RFP‖ 

28


Quote 5 – Combined RA and FM: 

• The selection process of a Fraud Management System 

and of a Revenue Insurance System has started at 

[name]. The requested systems must cover cordless 3G 

technology, and also in a more or less short term the 

VoIP, VoD, Video and TV Streaming, and the usage of 

Internet, as well as the subscription fraud. 

• We would like to discuss with a Gartner analyst the 

following: 

– the fraud techniques linked to the 3G technology and to the other 

convergent multimedia technologies. 

– the technologies that allow detecting them and to manage them. 

– the suppliers of Fraud Management Systems and the suppliers of 

Revenue Insurance Systems, and those who do both. 

– the aboves’ market share in: North America, Europe and Asia 

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