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Postpaid Assurance
Billing systems, and more
specifically postpaid telecommunications billing systems, are the
heart and soul of the typical telecommunications company. Indeed,
despite many decades of change and technological revolution, the
standard post paid billing system continues to be the hub of most
Telco's revenue generation activity.
Because billing systems have been
around
for such a long time, and since they are so critical to the
generation of revenues, most Telco's have an extremely well staffed,
well organized and well
understood billing revenue assurance capability.
In these cases, the job of the
revenue assurance analyst requires nothing more than the adroit
exploitation of the system, reports and capabilities that have
already been built into the billing system environment. In those
cases where the billing system has not reached these levels of
revenue assurance maturity, there is plenty of opportunity for
improvement.
The revenue assurance activities
associated with billing systems focus on two areas:
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CDR Pre-cycle Processing
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Cycle Processing
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Post Cycle
CDR pre-cycle processing
The first step involved in billing
operations is the pre-cycle handling of CDRs. CDRs are generated
by the network, collected and processed by mediation and forwarded
to the billing system. When these CDRs are received by the billing
system, they are then pre-processed. Preprocessing typically
involves:
 | Identification and formatting
of the CDRs (this formatting can include what is known as
pre-rating.. that is, placing an estimated value onto each call in
order to better keep track of how much revenue the customer owes
at any given point in time) |
| Placing of CDRs into the
appropriate cycle file (a cycle file is a file that holds all of
the CDRs for a given customer until the time comes to generate
their bill. Typically, large numbers of customers are grouped
together for billing on the same day, and each of those groups
represents a different "billing cycle".) |
| Suspension and Error processing
for those CDRs that are not ready to be placed into cycle files |
Cycle Processing (Bill
Generation)
On the pre-scheduled cycle run
date, the billing system will accept and sort all of the CDRs for
those customers due to be billed on that day, and put them through
the formal rating and billing process. The basic steps in the
process include:
| Rating of the CDRs for each
customer |
| Application of monthly fees to
each bill |
| Application of unpaid balances
and adjustments from earlier cycles |
Post Cycle Revenue Assurance
Typically, a series of checks and
audits is run against the
results of the billing cycle run, in order to be sure that
everything was done correctly before the bills are actually printed.
Many types of validation
checks are made, including "spot audits" of individual customer
bills, and "batch audits" of the totals generated by the cycle. The
formal
steps in post-cycle assurance can include:
| Extraction of a sampling of
customer invoices and the manual validation of their integity |
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Comprehensive "batch total" runs
and comparisons against historical results and against forecast
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Comprehensive audits of revenue
totals against network activity to assure that the appropriate
revenue realization levels are being met
Billing
Revenue Assurance Experiences and Approaches:
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Pre-Cycle Assurance
In order to
perform this kind of assurance the analyst must first have a
comprehensive understanding of exactly what processes the pre-cycle
billing system is supposed to perform, and then, figure out ways to
check on it.
For most telcos assurance in this
area is very much a duplication of the efforts for assurance on the
mediation system. Pre-cycle processing involves:
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Validating the integrity of CDRs
accepted
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Validating the integrity of the
batches of CDRs sent from mediation or other sources
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Checking that the formatting,
suspension and error-ing of records is being done correctly.
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The most common methods utilized to
assure these areas include:
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Sample audits of specific CDRs
(associated with different customers, events or conditions)
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Comprehensive balance audits of
complete "batches" of CDRs
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Comprehensive cycle audits of all of
the CDRs for a particular bill cycle
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Performing these audits requires the
analyst to gain access to stores of CDRs from several different
points along the billing pre-cycle CDR processing trail, and
performing comprehensive comparison and reconciliation of CDR
integrity and type counts.
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Billing Cycle integrity
Assurance
No Telco has a billing system that
works flawlessly, and every Telco has a team of people that drive
the billing cycle integrity.
The integrity of the billing cycle
run itself, typically involves the tracing of CDRs through the
entire cycle process. Diagnosis of problems in this area requires
that the analyst understand the intricacies of how the billing
system itself works. Audits of all of the different tables that
drive the different parts of the cycle run are the key activity.
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Post Cycle Assurance
Whereas an expert in the internal workings of the billing system is
critical for the diagnosis of the detailed integrity of a bill cycle
run, providing the overall post cycle assurance is an area where, by
definition, you want to operate without any of that input.
Post cycle revenue assurance has
to do with making sure that the values generated by the run itself,
and the treatments of individual customers are accurate.
Post cycle revenue assurance
typically include the following basic functions:
| Full cycle summary reports -
these are reports that summarize the full revenues generated by
the cycle and the comparison of those totals against historical
and forecasted totals. This is the ultimate, high level check of
cycle integrity. |
| Tally reports by category -
these are similar to the full cycle summary reports, but they do
the same kinds of comparisons against subsets of the billing cycle
info, based upon different selection criteria (geography, customer
type, call type etc.) |
| Individual customer sampling
validation - finally, a random sample of individual customer
records is taken, and they are manually validated against the
detailed CDRs across the CDR processing stream to assure
accuracy. |
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Revenue Assurance Library
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