What is Driving the Global Revenue Assurance Market? (Part 2 of 2)
by Dan Baker, Research Director, TRI (Guest Blogger)
Dan is the first in a series of guest bloggers GRAPA has chosen to feature due to their knowledge and experience in Revenue Assurance matters. Dan is Research Director and founder of Technology Research Institute (TRI), a market research and analyst firm focused on tracking BSS/OSS and telecom assurance software markets since 1994. Baker has authored dozens of multi-client and single-client research studies in areas that span the breadth of telecom back office systems, including wireless and wireline billing, OSS/provisioning, customer care/CRM, revenue assurance, service assurance and test, as well as telecom analytics.
This is the second in a series of guest blog posts by Dan, read the first part of this article: What’s Driving the Global Revenue Assurance Market? (Part 1 of 2)
The upshot of TRI’s research in our latest report, The Telecom Revenue Management, Mediation, and Analytics Software Market, is that revenue assurance is expanding and maturing as a discipline. We now look at revenue assurance as part of a broader telecom revenue management practice. This combines various assurance and analytic fields that, from an operational point of view, audit and maintain business health. In GRAPA terminology, this would mean the inclusion of fraud and risk management, margin and market assurance, as well as new product assurance within the definition of “Revenue Assurance.” The key functions of revenue management are the blue slices in the below graph.
Source: Technology Research Institute (TRI)
In the late 90′s or early 2000′s, revenue assurance often meant hiring a large accounting firm to come in and conduct a one-time revenue assurance audit. In those days, there were also very few dedicated revenue assurance professionals around. People were simply borrowed from finance, billing, and network ops to do periodic audits.
A decade later, telecoms have finally recognized the value of having continuous controls and dedicated staff to look after revenue assurance problems. And these days, when telecoms look outside for help in automating controls and tracking revenue assurance cases, they usually look to a software company first, and a services firm only second.
That is not to say the rise of the revenue management software business has been easy. It has not. There has been lots of turmoil along the way with numerous mergers and business failures. In fact, in the last few weeks two mergers were announced in the revenue management market. In Israel, cVidya will be acquiring ECTel, and in Canada, Pulse Voice was been bought by Enghouse.
People often equate revenue assurance software with OSS/BSS solutions such as billing, provisioning, or order management, but revenue assurance is quite a different beast.
Revenue assurance software is not operational software, but audit software. It picks up the mistakes and faulty processes of the operational systems. And for that reason it needs to be highly adaptive to the ever-changing mission (and problems areas) of operators.
Audit software can not sit on its laurels and collect annual maintenance revenues as easily as operational software. Audit software needs to constantly "earn its keep" by investigating and solving new problems. One year the hot issue might be broadband and DSL revenue assurance; the next year the hot issue is stopping video content piracy.
Anyway, it is nice to see that revenue assurance software has matured and really come into its own. By constantly adapting itself, it has succeeded in meeting the big challenges the telecom industry has asked it to help solve.
And what about the future of revenue assurance? At TRI we predict a bright one. With mobile data… smartphones… VoIP… advertising… content… video… the telecom industry isn’t getting any simpler. It’s getting more complex. It is this operational complexity that drives the need for better assurance software, smoother processes, and of course GRAPA certified professionals, to make sure it all works together well.
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Dan Baker is the Research Director of Technology Research Institute (TRI), a firm that has followed the BSS/OSS market since 1994. Highlights and a table of contents on TRI’s latest research report, The Telecom Revenue Management, Mediation, and Analytics Software Market, can be found by visiting www.technology-research.com/products/revenue.php.
GRAPA is looking for qualified and experienced revenue assurance professionals interested in submitting posts or articles on issues relating to the practice of revenue assurance. Send us a draft or proposal, along with a resume, and start a conversation with the entire GRAPA membership.
