It was the spring of 2020, during a national UK lockdown, when I decided to have a go at fixing the squeaky floorboards in my house. Can you guess where this is heading…? Yep, I put a screw right through the floorboard and into the hot water pipe. In the chaos that ensued, I did what most of us do in those situations, mumble a few choice words, and then eventually call an expert (the emergency plumber) who was able to fix the problem quickly. The consequences of this little incident were lost water, damaged property, and significant plumber fees.
So why am I telling you about my DIY escapades? Well, ‘revenue leakage’ is a term I’ve heard repeated a lot over my time in telecom by various revenue assurance teams and groups. It’s an apt phrase, because it enables you to easily visualise the loss of revenue, pouring down the drain (or into my kitchen as in my case). Perhaps you have also heard questions like these in your telecom career:
- Have we found any leakage this quarter?
- Do we have any tools in place that will prevent revenue leakage?
- What technology can we deploy to detect revenue leakage?
These important questions are often asked by C-level management or Revenue Assurance managers and rightly so. As telecom margins shrink and the rapid deployment of costly new technology (e.g. 5G) continues, every effort to retain revenue should be taken.
Effective Revenue Leakage Detection
Going back to the water analogy, here in the UK, In England and Wales in 2021, 1 trillion litres of water were lost via leaky pipes. Water companies can define this number this because they know how much water went into the pipe at the beginning and how much came out of the pipe at the other end. Telecom is a bit different though, the starting volume of customer usage is often unknown.
“…the starting volume of customer (telecom) usage is often unknown”
Based on our studies and testing over the years, we have found that the number one revenue leakage finding (in terms of $ value) is always missing records. We are refering here to instances where the telecom network has been used legitimately, but the network has not charged for the usage in a CDR (meaning 100% revenue loss). In order to find out exactly where these records are going missing, you need to have a tool that can test from a customer perspective (end-to-end). This is where TCG bursts into the room wearing a cape. The value of Roscom Test Call Generation lies is in its independence from the network and its ability to define the starting volume via sample, risk-based tests.
System Health Checks and Short-Term Services
Here at Roscom we are able to offer short, sharp, burst-like audit projects. These short-term services (STS) can be designed to suit your needs, for example:
- A system-wide health check – test your top tariffs and billing platforms to identify areas of leakage
- Change management or new product launch – focus on just one or two areas of your business that carries a high risk at the present time
- Areas of customer complaint – if a certain type of customer complaint is trending, using TCG to prove or disprove the issue can be one of the quickest ways to get to the bottom of the problem
Some of our customers prefer this more relaxed method to a managed service, and have these kind of STS projects annually. If you would like to know more about our way of working, please see the How To Buy page.
Don’t forget to request a copy of our 6-Year TCG revenue study too if you would like to know what other common issues TCG can look for in your network.
