In a recent interview, Avi Basu, CEO of Indian RA vendor Connectiva, revealed some of his thoughts on how revenue assurance and service assurance complement each other:
One of the major challenges operators face as they evolve their networks to support Internet, VoIP and multimedia services is their inability to trace transactions end-to-end across the networks.
Complete, real-time visibility of the transactional data is essential for effective network management as well as service and revenue assurance.
You can read the interview with Avi Basu here.
Linking service assurance and revenue assurance makes sense from a technical perspective. The idea that service assurance will converge with revenue assurance is not new; a number of commentators have pointed out the potential data and systems synergies over the years, though delivery has lagged the principle. The idea is also echoed in Subex’s mirroring of the Network Operations Centre with a Revenue Operations Centre. However, the trend towards real-time processing of transactions has enhanced the business case for dual-role monitoring of transaction data for both revenue assurance and service assurance. But we should not forget the obstacle to alignment created by organizational and cultural divisions. If revenue assurance monitoring is performed by the Finance function of a communications provider, this will create challenges for connecting it to a technology and operations-led function responsible for service assurance. That said, quality of service is a vital element in understanding what drives revenues and customer satisfaction, especially as we move to all-IP networks. For excellent service and maximized profits, communications providers will need to grow revenue and service assurance out of their distinct silos and see the relationship between them in terms of the whole of the customer’s experience.
