Q1 2008
The ATS Network & Billing Update is published by Advanced Technologies & Services, Inc. (www.atso.com), a revenue and service assurance solutions provider. This free newsletter is a guide to telecommunications OSS, billing, and revenue assurance news and other telecom industry analysis. To unsubscribe, contribute an article, or for offbeat news, please scroll to the end. Feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends and co-workers!
In this issue:
ATS Set to Speak at Billing & OSS World Conference on April 29th
OffBeat News: Doctor Claims Sending Lots of Sms's is a Mental Disorder
Revenue Assurance 2.0
By: Randy
Guthrie, President, ATS
In our 4th quarter Newsletter, Peter Mueller talked about the changing role of Revenue Assurance. He took us through a brief history of Revenue Assurance highlighting the accomplishments that have made revenue assurance a respected and very necessary function in modern telecommunications companies.
As he pointed out in his article titled “Where Else Can Revenue Assurance Go?” revenue assurance managers will continue to be on the lookout for the low hanging fruit that has brought so much money to the bottom line but there are new frontiers to be explored. At ATS, our clients have already started asking, “What’s next?”
This is a reasonable question to ask and given the fact that so much revenue and cost savings have already been claimed, one might wonder where the next operational holes are to be found. Operations managers have been very diligent in coming up with root cause fixes to some of the leakage conditions that have been uncovered over the past several years. Because of this, revenue assurance managers are going to have to look harder and deeper to find the big bucks that have been recovered in the past.
Assuming that the low hanging fruit is already picked and assuming that Revenue Assurance 1.0 programs buttoned up many of the root cause problems that cause the leakage in the first place, what is next?
Revenue assurance has matured into a holistic approach to managing the varied functions that make up the operations of a telecom company. While our quest to find leakage has brought us into most operational units in the telecom enterprise, there is still one important area that needs attention. ATS clients are sending a clear message that the most important issues in telecom today are centered on Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Growth through customer acquisition is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, which means that customer retention must be at the heart of each telecom company’s strategic plans.
One of the biggest threats to the top line and the bottom line is customer defection. Short contracts, number portability, and attractive service promotions make customer loyalty very precarious. Because of these realities, we at ATS believe that revenue assurance 2.0 must incorporate tools and programs that will reduce churn and help build customer loyalty.
We also believe that we are in the midst of a convergence of traditional revenue assurance and CRM which continues to evolve along with revenue assurance. Many believe that CRM will soon morph into something more aptly referred to as CPM (Customer Profit Management).
CRM originally gained popularity by providing Telco managers with a holistic view of the customer. Using customer data garnered from billing, network, and operations systems, CRM gave telecom managers great tools to better manage customer relationships.
The next stage in CRM evolution included customer retention models. CRM systems provided tools to segment the customer base, and some CRM systems offered predictive models designed to target customers with product and service offerings that were tailored for their needs.
CRM, now in their release 2.0, is rapidly moving toward CPM. Next generation CPM solutions will bring better customer profitability metrics that will help manage the customer relationship. The best CPM systems will integrate financials with key performance indicators to ensure maximum profitability for each customer.
If revenue assurance is going to continue to be a relevant function in a rapidly changing telecom environment, revenue assurance managers will have to come up with more reliable predictive analysis tools to head off customer defections. We already have a leg up on this problem because for the past several months we have been creating a golden repository of data that has helped to minimize cost and maximize revenue for one of our customers. This repository includes organizational, financial and operational data such as billing and switch records. The data that we have been collecting and using for the past several years represents what could arguably be the best customer database in any industry. Now it’s time to use the same data to create predictive customer retention models and metrics to reduce churn.
Reducing churn will require that revenue assurance managers take advantage of the best data warehousing and data mining techniques available. Combined with the golden repository of data that revenue assurance managers have already collected, data warehousing and data mining tools will provide near real time input to customer contact personnel who will be able to target specific messages to customers who might be at risk of defecting.
Are marketing managers ready to accept help from revenue assurance groups? After all, who knows more than sales and marketing managers what drives customer behavior? With churn rates ranging from 3-20% and given the enormous impact that churn has on a company’s market valuation, Chief Marketing Officers welcome all the help they can get.
Due to the creative and attractive offers being made to customers, it is a given that all customers are at risk of changing carriers. Because of this reality, there has never been a better time for revenue assurance to reinvent itself by jumping into what has already become the next frontier.
ATS’ SimCall, introduced in 1996, was one of the first scaleable revenue assurance software tools and over the past 12 years it has become an industry standard for assuring revenue at the switch. In 1999, ATS introduced Amadeus, a tool designed to dissect CDR records and help in inter-carrier billing assurance. Now in 2008, ATS is proud to announce the introduction of our first revenue assurance 2.0 software suite - Market WatchTM. Market Watch is a hybrid tool built on tried and true revenue assurance, CRM, data warehousing, and data mining tools. Its sophisticated predictive algorithms help to identify customers who are likely to defect to competitors. The Market Watch tracking and analysis modules help telecom contact personnel to proactively target at risk customers with highly targeted service offerings designed to head off churn.
ATS is committed to staying at the forefront of the converging Revenue Assurance and CRM/CPM disciplines and we will keep you apprised of new developments in Revenue Assurance 2.0.
For more information about how ATS can help your company move into the next generation of Revenue Assurance, contact Ryan Guthrie at ryanguthrie@atso.com.
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ATS Set to Speak at Billing & OSS World Conference on April 29th
ATS has been asked to speak at the Billing & OSS World Conference about how to build a Revenue Assurance Operations Center. The Billing & OSS World conference continues to be one of the premier events in the telecommunications industry. ATS will be speaking on the first day of the show during the morning educational sessions along with Jeff Cotrupe of MarketPower LLC. ATS will be discussing their view of Revenue Assurance 2.0 as referenced in the previous article. The session summary is as follows:
Building a Revenue Operations Center
Much like a network operations
center (NOC) enables an operator to monitor the status of the network
and services, a Revenue Operations Center (ROC) enables an operator to
monitor network operations and correlate their impacts on revenue, costs
and financial statements. A ROC is the convergence of assurance
functions – from revenue assurance to inventory accuracy to data
integrity. This presentation will describe the fundamental requirements
for a ROC and provide examples of revenue-management techniques that
have been adopted by operators.
Click Here for more information about the event.
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Universal Service Fund Needs FCC Attention this
Year, Policy Analysts Say
Courtesy of
Heartland Institute
Now that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has issued its three notices of proposed rulemakings regarding potential reform of the bloated and poorly targeted Universal Service funds (collectively, USF), analysts are pointing out once again that the agency should make USF reform a top priority this year.
The United States has a competitive marketplace with multiple choices of communications services using different technological platforms, they say, and the universal service regime needs a pretty radical overhaul.
This would mean changing the program to direct USF funds mostly to support consumers who demonstrate they need financial help, instead of the current policy of giving the money largely to communications providers who may use the support in ways that do not necessarily benefit under-served consumers or serve them in the most cost-effective, efficient ways.
Unfortunately, serious USF reform is not likely in the near future. This makes it even more important for FCC to seize the opportunity this year to make some meaningful, even if modest, progress towards reforming the regime.
Click Here for the full story
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OffBeat
News:
Doctor Claims Sending Lots of Sms's is a Mental Disorder
Courtesy of
Cellular News
People who send large quantities of SMS messages could be suffering from a mental disorder more usually associated with internet addiction - writes a doctor in the latest issue of the American Journal Of Psychiatry. He wrote that people who are denied access to the internet or mobile phones displayed feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression.
Jerald Block said that "internet addiction" is a "common disorder" that deserved inclusion in a manual of mental disorders used by health professionals. He also argued that excessive - as he put it - sending of SMS's or computer gaming should be put into the same category as an internet disorder.
Click Here for the full story.
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