Analyzing the Need for Telecom Companies to Employ Revenue Assurance Services

Any enterprise or business, for it to grow and become profitable, must assess how much revenue it is generating and what its expenses are. For that, a reliable and accurate way of measuring and calculating the revenue is extremely necessary as it helps the company to understand the things it is doing right and the things it needs to work upon. Revenue assurance performs this very function; it helps enterprises to assess the revenue streams of the company and accurately capture and monitor the revenue in order to give a clear picture to the company’s management team. Though the term ‘revenue assurance’ has a wide connotation to include all types of companies, in contemporary parlance, it is used in the case of large telecommunication companies and financial technology companies.

What is Revenue Assurance and What is its Need?

Revenue assurance, in its most basic form, uses data-driven and data-quality processes to gauge the nature and sustainability of profits, the source of revenue, the volume and quality of cash flows, and methods to improve the revenue. However, it should be noted that, while performing all these functions, revenue assurance services do not concern themselves with increasing or influencing the demand for the product for which it is calculating the revenue models.

In the early 1900s, when running businesses and enterprises was a straightforward task, there was a lesser demand for revenue assurance services. This was because, generally, there was a single revenue source and hence assessing the nature and quality of revenue was much easier. However, the demand for income assurance services has increased manifold and the scope of the      has expanded considerably in the past few decades. This is mainly on account of complex revenue streams that need to be assessed due to strategic alliances between different companies and complicated pricing strategies. This is all the more true in case of telecommunication operating companies and financial technology firms which have extremely diverse range of revenue sources ranging from sponsored service revenues, prorated service revenues, associated services revenues, etc. In such a scenario, employing revenue assurance services becomes imperative to evaluate the sustainability of each revenue source, conduct audits to check for any discrepancies, and suggest ways to maximize the revenues without compromising on the quality of the product or the service.

Another important function of income assurance services is to look for revenue leakages and plug holes in the businesses, if any. For example, many-a-times in the case of telecom services, the telecom operators fail to cover a specific product or service and leaves it unbilled. This causes a massive loss of revenue for the company which the company doesn’t even know about. Managing and auditing company’s revenue streams to check for any leakages generally comes under extended revenue assurance services whose primary objective is to maximize the revenue each source, service, and product is generating for the company.

In the past few years, the scope of income assurance services has been expanded to include services like reconciliation, data classification, rating and re-rating services, and synchronization. Thus, top rated income assurance services available in the market today help the telecom company, not only to maximize their profits but also to arrange, manage, and rearrange their data so as to make income assurance easier.

The Future of Revenue Assurance Services

Just like many other industries, artificial intelligence is expected to disrupt the revenue assurance market in the coming period. Moreover, experts have opined that with the advent of 5G technology, revenue leakages are bound to increase for the telecom operating companies which makes it even harder for revenue assurance services to do their job. Hence, many propound the idea that a more systematic, structured, and automated response is necessary to counter the impending problems associated with the introduction of 5G services. Artificial intelligence and machine learning is, thus, expected to become crucial in the next few years for increasing the quality of income assurance and maximizing the profit share.

About the Author(s)

Princy A. J

Princy holds a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from the prestigious Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. University at Chennai, India. After a successful academic record, she pursued her passion for writing. A thorough professional and enthusiastic writer, she enjoys writing on various categories and advancements in the global industries. She plays an instrumental role in writing about current updates, news, blogs, and trends.