ILEC ROUNDTABLE MEETS TO HASH OUT REVENUE ASSURANCE ISSUES

Telecommunications firms have fought for years for the right to expand their products and markets. Shortly, with the FCC's blessing, many will have their wish: IXCs offering local, ILECs offering long distance, both offering wireless, some bundling cable, Internet, power...the list goes on and on. In a reaffirmation of the age-old "be careful what you wish for" tenet, these new revenue sources bring with them less desirable consequences: the astounding complexity of end-to-end cross-market processes, and the increased potential for revenue leakage. What's a carrier to do? To answer that question, Arthur Andersen and Billing World sequestered representatives from seven different local exchange companies in a windowless room on Amelia Island, Florida to answer questions about revenue assurance functions. The following is a small sample of their answers to one of the most obvious questions. Namely, what exactly is revenue assurance? Look for a complete write-up on the candid and informative discussion in a future issue of Billing World. On behalf of the magazine and Arthur Andersen, many thanks to our roundtable participants! Q: What is revenue assurance? Dave Hallet, BellSouth Telecommunications: People talk about quality, but it's essentially ensuring that the processes work right, the controls are there and that we can really keep up with the business in a timely and accurate way. Oftentimes the billing operation has got to lead or sometimes push and drag the operations side of the marketing organizations into understanding that we've got to focus on revenue assurance from the start where the customer contact occurs and the process begins. Andrew Coulter, ALLTEL Telephone Services: Revenue assurance is the systems, processes and controls to ensure the accurate and timely billing and collection of revenues from our customers for all products and services provided. I think that's a very broad definition, but it touches all the way from service order processing to provisioning to service activation to collections and everything in between. Janna Shelton, Ameritech: There's a cultural shift and an increased awareness of [revenue assurance functions] that needs to occur. And it's starting to occur, beginning with the marriage of the system operations. Noreen Haffner, Southern New England Telecommunications: The words that come to mind immediately are coordinated, interdisciplinary, and end-to-end. I think this indicates a shift in our culture at SNET, for we now see [revenue assurance] as being a very important component of customer service. We need to render an accurate bill...it won't help us to tell the customer "Well, you know, this is a new plan," or "We haven't quite worked the kinds out yet and we can't get that kind of service order through the system." So, it also has to include the conception of a product from the beginning. If it's too hard to implement, you're never going to bill it correctly. Pat Walker, U S West Communications: We are calling it the early identification containment and correction of billing errors before they are customer effecting. It ensures the accuracy, validity, completeness of revenue transaction process, and ensure all revenues are identified, reported and understood in real time...for us, the big challenge is the real time part.