Some got their start in fraud management, some in invoice reconciliation. Some began life in CABS and some by managing credit risk or some other niche that could uncover a bit of lost revenue. But little by little vendors in market segments that came to be known as revenue assurance and cost management began to branch out and merge. It was risky. For some it was costly. Then the recession hit. And the industry got a wake-up call.
Today, revenue assurance has assumed the role as the umbrella term for a range of solutions and has become one of the few segments in the telecom software arena enjoying healthy growth. However, a term suggested last year by Analysys Mason analyst Larry Goldman seems increasingly more appropriate given the way this segment has evolved. He calls it “business optimization.”
In Goldman’s book, business optimization includes revenue assurance, fraud prevention, cost management, credit risk management, data retention and business intelligence. And rather than remain the niche players they were, companies in this space seem to want to do it all.
“Companies are putting more pieces together so the distinct area of revenue assurance is growing and changing,” Goldman said.
That’s due in part to a change in mindset by some service providers. “We see carriers who haven’t worried about revenue assurance in the past, such as those in emerging markets, now very interested,” Goldman said.
He said service providers tend to get more serious about revenue assurance when they are making significant changes in the business, forming a new operation or getting into a new line of business. “New things are happening so rapidly now that you are always introducing things into the system that can cause revenue assurance problems,” Goldman said. “That leads you to need systems that are running all the time and trying to detect differences between usage and billing.”
