Revenue Assurance & Management 2010
Phoenix, Arizona -- March 16-17, 2010
TeleStrategies’ annual Revenue Assurance & Management presents the tools, technologies and know-how for telecommunications professionals to develop a best in class revenue assurance, fraud and cost assurance practice.
Now in its 11th year, the program attracts over 200 industry experts and covers all aspects of the revenue assurance discipline, including: switch to bill, inventory reconciliation, configuration management, billing verification, cost management, fraud, interconnect, content settlement, partner management, and more. Further, all services are considered -- voice, Internet, 3g/4g, mobile data, applications, content, video, cloud services, VPN and managed services – you name it.
Whether your company provides consumer, enterprise, wholesale or resale services – this program will improve your margins. You will find costly revenue leakage points, eliminate configuration errors, learn to implement cost control infrastructure and discover innovative ways to audit all elements of your operation. And, most importantly, you will learn how to measure the bottom-line impact of your RA practices, and communicate your results.
Our "2 for the price of 1" pricing starts at $1,195. There is no better value.
I hope to see you in Phoenix next March!
Sincerely,
Dr. Matthew Lucas, Revenue Assurance Program Director
REVENUE ASSURANCE & MANAGEMENt 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
7:30
Registration open
8:00
Exhibits open and continental breakfast
8:45 - 9:00
Conference opening remarks
Dr. Matthew Lucas, Vice President, TeleStrategies and Conference Chair
9:00 - 10:15
Beyond the Leaky Bucket – Using RA Infrastructure to Drive Business Performance
Today’s revenue assurance tools and platforms have proven to recover revenue, improve business operations and deliver impressive impact to the bottom line. This is especially true today, where IP-based infrastructure, evolving partnerships, M&A and rapidly changing business models create on-going disruption to IT and operations groups. But, is this just the beginning for RA? This panel will bring the best minds in the industry together to look at the ongoing role and impact of RA. Topics addressed will include margin analysis, marketing support, business intelligence, cost assurance, revenue analytics, and a range of other topics that show what’s next – and possible – for RA.
Molly Akers, Director of Revenue Assurance, T-Mobile
David Lee, Vice President Finance, British Telecom
Kathy Romano, Executive Director - Revenue Assurance and Billing, Verizon
Saad Saade, Head of Revenue Assurance - Finance Division, Bell Canada
Atilla Tinic, Vice President of Billing, RA and Corporate Systems, tw telecom
10:15-10:45
Morning Break
session a
10:45 - 11:25
Building a Governance Platform on top of RA
Like most organizations, T-Mobile’s RA efforts have been primarily focused on system integrity audits, risk assessments and monitoring certain services. But, in the bigger picture, what’s needed is integration of these processes into a comprehensive "corporate governance" platform that incorporates scorecarding, monitoring, influence and other assurance processes into every part of the business. Although a work in progress at T-Mobile, this presentation will look at what RA teams can do to increase assurance visibility into governance, ownership and other critical accountability activities in the organization by building on what has been traditionally delivered by a "corporate RA team."
Molly Akers, Director of Revenue Assurance, T-Mobile
session b
10:45 - 11:25
Taking Revenue Assurance to the Next Level (with Business Assurance)
Most companies have placed controls on switch-to-bill relationships. But those controls don’t address the bigger and more fundamental issue of margin control since they don’t manage direct costs and other revenue sources. This session addresses what CSP’s can do regarding margin assurance; how critical business processes like dealers incentives management, collections, customer care and others need to be addressed; and how the RA role needs to be reshaped to meet the challenge of business assurance.
Hans Eismann, Director Client Services, WeDo Technologies
session a
11:30 - 12:15
Integrating Cost Assurance with RA: A Perfect Marriage?
While there are certainly perfect storms in business disciplines, can there also be perfect marriages? Integrating revenue and cost assurance holds tremendous potential. You can leverage IT investments, obtain new views into the business, improve ways to monitor external business relationships, better understand margins and more. This presentation will cover the synergies between RA and cost assurance, look at the potential “offspring” of the marriage and also cover the challenges and integration factors that should be considered .
John Brooks, Vice President, Vice President, Subex
Kathy Romano, Executive Director - Revenue Assurance and Billing, Verizon Services Operations
session b
11:30 - 12:15
Putting an End to Traffic Pumpers and other Fraudulent Traffic - A Qwest Case Study
Traffic pumpers have increased termination fees for some carriers by as much as 5,000% in the past two years, in turn killing the margins of most unlimited use and bundled voice plans. This session talks about how Qwest won a seminal decision in its recent court battle against illegal traffic pumpers in Iowa. But the need for vigilance never ends. The speakers will present how you can protect yourself from traffic pumpers, fraudsters and revenue loss from thousands of other unbillable call records. Learn how the revenue management and customer analytics technologies deployed at Qwest saved the carrier millions of dollars, and continues to do so.
John Devolites, General Manager and Vice President, TEOCO
Derek Canfield, Executive Director, Usage Audit and Analysis, TEOCO
12:15 - 1:30
TeleStrategies' Sponsored Lunch
session a
1:30 - 2:15
Preventive Revenue Assurance: Implementing an enterprise wide RA solution at Bell Canada
In the midst of economic turmoil with market focus on reducing costs and increasing bottom line profitability, Bell Canada will share the vision, approach and practical experiences that are in the midst of being implemented to address these challenges and enable the paradigm shift from reactive to preventive revenue assurance at Bell. The presentation will shed light on the practical view in defining the RA roadmap; including successful methods used in issuing an RFP, selecting cVidya and IBM as technology and SI partners, and managing a successful implementation.
Saad Saade, Head of Revenue Assurance - Finance Division, Bell Canada
Eran Wagner, President North American Operations, cVidya
session b
1:30 - 2:15
Revenue Assurance with Active Anti-Fraud & Billing Testing
Interconnect-based services inevitably carry certain risks of fraud and failure simply because they are usually outside the Operator’s direct control. For fraud and assurance management practitioners, active testing is really the only way to minimize these risks, and ultimately ensure a satisfying end customers’ experience. The session will present active testing methods that reveal fraudulent activities and revenue leakage, as well as identify early charging, fake reporting and SIM box usage. The session will also look at how to generate CDR and audit records for all types of events that can be used to validate charging and successfully process usage data.
Patrick Tang, Product Marketing Director, Keynote SIGOS
session a
2:20 - 3:00
The Continuous Evolution of the RA Capability
Looking to evolve and expand its RA capabilities, tw telecom took a fresh look at the levels of technical, analytic, operational and governance capabilities needed to address the risks of today and tomorrow. Based on that exercise, tw telecom established a productive working model to ensure that it could maximize bottom-lines gains. This presentation talks about that journey and the important early steps that created significant financial benefits, and our efforts to continue to build and expand this capability.
Atilla Tinic, Vice President of Billing, RA and Corporate Systems, tw telecom
Stephen Allor, Vice President of Worldwide Sales, Martin Dawes Analytics
session b
2:20 - 3:00
Lowering Your Network Partner Costs Through Traffic Revenue Management
Because invoice reconciliation no longer delivers the cost savings it used to, innovative operators are turning to traffic analytics, least cost routing and interconnect facilities planning to achieve 10% to 25% reductions in their network partner costs. After a quick overview of cost management market trends, the panel will discuss how wireless carriers are lowering costs by synching up engineering, finance, and strategy – and how cable, content, wireline and other telecom providers can learn from this experience to see similar results.
Dan Baker, Research Director, Technology Research Institute (TRI)
Brian Biernat, Director of Engineering, nTelos
Brian Silvestri, CEO, Connectiv Solutions
3:00 - 3:30
Afternoon Break
session a
3:30 - 4:15
Recovering Revenue through Effective Network Invoice Validation
Telecom operators often see significant losses incurred during the recharge of costs from suppliers to distributors. These are most due to inaccurate commercial inventory systems as well as control deficiencies within intercompany billing. This session will look at how this $9B operating unit transformed its billing operations into a self-billing model -- generating invoices for a significant portion of telcom costs on the supplier's behalf – and achieved a 15% increase in revenue realization. The methodology behind this transformation, lessons learned from the billing overhaul and the benefits realized will also be discussed.
David Lee, Vice President Finance, British Telecom Global Services
Eric Nelson, Chief Development Officer, Synaptitude Consulting
session b
3:30 - 4:15
Revenue Optimization: Extending RA Beyond Prevention to Increase ARPU and AMPU
RA systems have evolved into a goldmine of data. But, how do you leverage that into actionable marketing information and decision-support data? This presentation will look at how operators of all types (mobile, fixed, Internet, media) can use RA data as a foundation for implementing analytic applications that deliver up-sell / cross-sell across multiple customer-touch points, enhance marketing initiatives, increase the effectiveness of business intelligence systems and ultimately drive not only revenue per user, but margins as well.
Adam Maghrouri, Vice President, Connectiva Systems
session a
4:20 - 5:00
Building Margin Assurance out of Revenue Assurance
In mid-2007, Global Crossing decided it was time to move beyond traditional revenue assurance and focus on margin protection. This discussion-oriented presentation will look at Global Crossings’ margin assurance efforts, and future plans, around billing audits for unbilled services, monitoring customer usage margins (and raising rates where appropriate), enforcing contractual obligations by customers (early term liability, monthly rate increases, minimum usage guarantee commitments), building margin reporting at the customer level to help determine customer profitability as well as address the challenge of getting executive buy-in to fund growth in tough economic times.
Matthew Capozzi, Sr. Director Margin Assurance, Global Crossing
5:00 - 6:00
Networking & Reception
REVENUE ASSURANCE & MANAGEMENt 2010
Day 2 - Wednesday, March 17, 2010
8:00 - 9:00
Registration open
Contenential Breakfast
Exhibits open
9:00 - 9:45
Session A
Is your Revenue Assurance keeping pace with your Real-time Charging?
Online, on-demand and on-the-go -- today’s communications customers expect personalized offerings, ubiquitous access and broad choices. The unprecedented rate of new service introduction, innovation and real-time charging complexity poses very difficult RA challenges. The presenter will cover how to keep your RA practices in sync with real-time charging strategy, ensuring you realize all revenue generated from today’s most advanced charging and service models.
Eduardo Dantas, HP Revenue Intelligence Solutions Expert, Communications & Media Solutions, Hewlett-Packard
9:00 - 9:45
Session B
RA for IP-Based Services -- Tapping into the Network’s Intelligence
Dramatic increases in the volume of data communications and pressures to better monetize the IP-based network resources mean that RA professionals require a range of tools and methods to extract network information. However, most of those tools don’t exist today. This talk will cover a new breed of technology called Network Intelligence (or NI) that can be deployed to identify, extract and analyze information as it travels over IP networks in real time. Like business intelligence software which extracts business application data for analysis, NI extracts data in transit on IP networks - capturing granular details and providing context for more intelligent services, and support traditional RA processes. The increased visibility gained from NI can improve fraud detection and QoS as well as enhance billing accuracy.
Thibaut Bechetoille, CEO, QOSMOS
9:45 - 10:00
Morning Break
10:00 - 10:45
Session a
Rolling up your sleeves to test your switch
Are your switches recording correctly? What about for your more complicated soft switches, features and services? Are the records what your billing system(s) expect? Your switch recordings matter - even if you are billing flat rate for your calls and services. The speaker will present time-proven, detailed procedures and best for testing switch recording, testing and CDR verification.
Glenn Ross, Director of Revenue Recovery Services, The Board Room
10:00 - 10:45
Session B
Six critical steps for successful RA implementation in the new media marketplace
If ever revenue assurance was important, now is the time! Mobile data is devouring bandwidth, operators are wholesaling 3rd party products, consumers are demanding more control over their usage accounts and new marketplaces are emerging. This leaves tough challenges for operators who need to optimize cash flow, protect revenues and reduce costs. This session will present a clear understanding of what a holistic RA approach means for two-sided operator business models, and walk you through the six critical steps for successful revenue assurance implementation in the new media marketplace.
Dr. Ronald Angner, Sr. Vice President and Principal, TMNG Global
10:45 - 11:00
Morning Break
11:00 - 11:45
session a
Whole Record Analytics - Taking RA to the Next Level
To find every last dollar, RA teams need an end-to-end, detailed analysis of each and every event and revenue-related record. To make it work, though, large operators may need to correlate billions of records a day, from hundreds of data streams including CDRs, billing, invoices, and SS7/SIP data. This session will present case studies from various landline, mobile and cable operators, and show how they have used the “whole-record, 360° approach” to reclaim revenue that would otherwise have never been found, as well as provide meaningful, accurate measurements of business operations, customer behavior, and product performance – including profitability.
Dena Bishop, Director Business Development, Products and Solutions, Ventraq
11:00 - 11:45
session b
Using Subscriber Data Management Systems to Identify Revenue Leakage and Fraud
Subscriber data management systems are seeing widespread interest among operators globally. Much of this interest is driven by marketing and advertising initiatives that require comprehensive and easy-to-access information about subscribers in order to plan and execute targeted advertising and promotional campaigns. The challenge in justifying these investments is that there’s no hard evidence to illustrate the success of targeted promotions or addressable advertising as return, and there are certain privacy/legal risks related to housing personally identifiable information for marketing purposes. But, it can be done. Learn how Openet helped one operator deploy a convergent subscriber data management system to identify several hundred million in revenue leakage and fraud, address privacy risks and incorporate RA controls.
Kelly Anderson, MVO Solutions Management Director, Openet
11:45
Program Closes