Data from 14 Service Providers reveal that revenue losses and customer experience issues can be resolved with preventive measures

Convergence and lack of visibility across an ever-expanding value chain are causing growing revenue losses for service providers, as evidenced in a one-of-a-kind benchmark study conducted by The TM Forum. The newly released Revenue Assurance Benchmark Study yields valuable insights into current revenue assurance performance.

“This study demonstrates how important managing the integrity of revenue streams is to Service Providers,” says Martin Creaner, TM Forum’s President and CTO. “If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it, and this report is a breakthrough in the measurement of actual revenue leakage. Every service provider needs to be aware of this and join into the next round of measurement.”

The most surprising breakthrough was the tangible proof that Service Providers incur an average of one-percent revenue leakage with a maximum recovery of 50 percent. “For multi-billion dollar organizations, that adds up to substantial losses,” says Tonia Graham, program manager for the TM Forum Business Benchmarking Program.

All is not gray, as data collected from the 14 Service Providers spanning five continents indicated that prevention really works. For example, Service Providers that validated a large a percent of their data records saw significantly lower revenue leakage.

The efficacy of preventive measures came out in many metrics in the study. The relationship was especially evident in the percent of data validated and the percent of customers reconciled.

“This study is a considerable breakthrough in the field of Revenue Assurance measurement. The findings are the first benchmark of actual leakage and recovered amounts relating to information from live Operations,” says Dr. Gadi Solotorevsky, cVidya’s chief scientist, the leader of the Revenue Assurance Modeling team within TM forum. ”

These findings provide a clearer view of the correlation between, for example, identified revenue leakage and recovery of leaked revenue, ” said Solotorevsky.

“The Study’s findings provide concrete evidence that preventive measures taken by Service Providers saved them millions, if not billions in revenues,” summarized Martin Creaner.

This is the first of several studies exploring aspects of the revenue assurance operations within Service Providers’ organizations. To participate in this work and draw insights and strategies from the conclusions, Service Providers may join the action by becoming a Member of TM Forum and joining the Business Benchmarking Program. Please write Tonia Graham at tgraham@tmforum.org to do so.

For a copy of the study at a fee, please visit their webpage: http://www.tmforum.org/benchmarking or contact Tonia Graham at tgraham@tmforum.org

About the TM Forum

With over 700 member companies in 75 countries, the TM Forum is the world’s leading trade consortium focused on enabling digital services. Serving the information, communications and entertainment industries, the Forum provides leadership, strategic guidance and practical solutions to improve the way that services are created, delivered and charged. Members include the majority of the world’s service providers, network operators, software suppliers, equipment suppliers and systems integrators.

The Forum currently facilitates over 80 technical projects and provides extensive training, conferencing and information services to its members. Through its initiatives to help providers move to low cost, high quality ‘lean’ processes, the Forum helps its members automate business processes and work seamlessly across various parts of the service delivery chain. The organization provides industry benchmarks, guidebooks, process and software frameworks and downloadable software standards. These give service providers the direction and specific roadmaps to achieve much greater business efficiency and operational flexibility.

For more information regarding the TM Forum, related programs such as the Prosspero initiative and its Management World conferences, please visit their website: http://www.tmforum.org

About cVidya

cVidya Networks is a global leader and innovative provider of Telecom Revenue Assurance Data Integrity and Dealer Management products. The firm’s suite of comprehensive Revenue Assurance solutions assists fixed, mobile, and triple-play communication service providers (CSPs) to continuously improve their bottom line results.

cVidya’s innovative and flexible product, MoneyMap®, provides a unified platform for implementing Process Aware Revenue Assurance solutions, Data Integrity, Risk Management and Rating & Billing Verification within legacy and new service environment, over all types of networks, OSS and BSS. MoneyMap®’s solutions and cVidya’s highly skilled professional services teams have a proven track record of achieving rapid ROI with major operators, including British Telecom, Swisscom, Cable & Wireless, Telecom Italia, Colt and others. They have offices in EMEA, APAC and South America and North America.

cVidya was awarded Billing World Award 2008 in the category of best Revenue Assurance and Management project. They received the Red Herring 100 Europe Award for 2006.

For more information, please visit their website: http://www.cVidya.com