Service providers will never recover one-half of one percent of their lost revenue, but if the other half of a percent is significant, which it usually is, they may want to shore up the integrity of their revenue streams.
The TM Forum has concluded a new Revenue Assurance Benchmark Study that it says provides “tangible proof” that service providers incur an average of one-percent revenue leakage with a maximum recovery of 50 percent.
Fourteen service providers across five continents participated in this benchmark study. The forum said the numbers can only get more precise as more providers join the study, which looks at revenue losses caused by convergence and a lack of visibility across the value chain, among other causes.
“This study demonstrates how important managing the integrity of revenue streams is to service providers," said Martin Creaner, president and chief technology office at the TM Forum. "If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. And this report is a breakthrough in the measurement of actual revenue leakage. Every service provider needs to be aware of this and join into the next round of measurement.”
Tonia Graham, program manager for the TM Forum Business Benchmarking Program, said of the surprising results: "For multibillion dollar organizations, that adds up to substantial losses."
The study also identified that preventive measures were effective at lowering revenue leakage. Validating a large swatch of a service provider’s data records, for example, reduced leakage significantly.
Calling it a considerable breakthrough in the field of revenue assurance measurement, Gadi Solotorevsky, chief scientist at cVidya and leader of the Revenue Assurance Modelling team within TM forum, said the findings are the first benchmark of actual leakage and recovered amounts relating to information from live operations. “These findings provide a clearer view of the correlation between, for example, identified revenue leakage and recovery of leaked revenue, " he said.
Service providers interested in participating in this ongoing work can becoming a member of the TM Forum and join the Business Benchmarking Program. The report is available on a subscription basis.
