Are you assuring your mediation systems well enough? How can you tell? GRAPA benchmarks help members learn how to:

• How other carriers manage their mediation
• Who typically is responsible for the checking of mediation activity
• How often alarms are generated
• What typical levels of filtration, suspension, error and consolidation are utilized
• How compliance and reporting to top management is handled

How does benchmarking work?

• Log onto the GRAPA Benchmark Page Click Here to take the Mediation Benchmark
• Answer the questions
• When the benchmark is completed, you will get a copy of the report summarizing the answers provided by participants.

Which controls are most commonly employed?

• CDR Serial Number Verification
• TTFile Serial Number Verification
• CDR Count
• Minutes In / Minutes Out
• FSEC Compliance and Activity Levels

Background:

Mediation systems play a key role in the management of revenues for the vast majority of telco’s. Not only are traditional postpaid voice, interconnect and roaming revenues processed through the use of mediations systems, but more and more these same systems are being called upon to assist with the assurance on non-voice, value added services, content, data , GPRS and other revenue streams. Even more critically, many telco’s find that they need mediation systems to assist with the assurance of prepaid revenues as well.

The assurance of mediation systems is a cornerstone of revenue assurance practices for most telco’s and understanding how different organizations assure them, and how their environments are configured can be of incredible value to the revenue assurance professional.

Objectives:

The objective of this benchmark study is to collect a representative sample of standard practices, architectures and configurations in order to assist revenue assurance professionals with an understanding of what standard practices are in the industry, and how they can most effectively adapt their approaches to maximize revenue assurance and minimize the cost of performing that activity.

This survey is made up of 5 major sections:

• Architecture, software and support environment
• Operational Support Environment
• Forensics Support
• Controls Management Policies

Click Here to take the Mediation Benchmark

New technology is the lifeblood of the telco. It is estimated that major improvements and technological innovations are invented daily at labs and sites around the world. Clearly, if the revenue assurance professional is going to be effective, they need to be aware of how all of these different technologies work. In this series we will attempt to provide the membership with insights into the concepts, vocabulary and issues associated with assuring a wide range of different technologies.

We will be looking at new technologies like 3G and WIMAX, and not so new ones like ADSL, Cable, Satellite and Microwave. Our objective is to help the membership increase their working knowledge of these areas, encourage others to get involved and get excited about the opportunities that these new technologies represent.

Our format for these areas will be as follows:

1.    Background – what is it? Why was it invented? What does it offer?
2.    Architecture and Terminology – Basically, how does it work?
3.    Revenue Assurance Issues – what are the major risks that this technology represents and what can you do about it?

Our goal is not to make the reader an expert in the technology, but to help ease them into the area by familiarizing them with the concepts, terminology and issues associated with them.

…Continued – A 3 G Primer…

When it comes to revenue assurance there are a number of areas of concern.

We need to be aware of our organizational positioning and the way that we integrate revenue assurance into the overall operational framework of our companies. We need to worry about the technology, the systems, the organizations and the environmental factors that make up our environment, and that make revenue assurance easy or hard. We need to understand that in the final analysis, what most people want to know is: how exactly is it done? What are the standard practices that people follow in order to do revenue assurance in this area? How do I know if I am doing too much, too little or just the right amount? This is where Standard Practices come in.

The GRAPA standard practices library attempts to pull together a complete inventory of the various methods that people use to assure particular areas. After collecting the information through benchmark studies and interviews we pull together the best approximation possible of a Standard Practices portfolio. This portfolio provides GRAPA members with an understanding of key areas to watch, and what the standard approaches are to assuring them.

In this series, we will share with you the different perspectives that the membership has on the standard, best and worst practices reported. Our objective in this case is to let everyone know what our current knowledge of standard practices is, and to give everyone a chance to “weigh in” about whether the practices:

1.    Make sense – Is this framework logical.
2.    Are realistic – Are these practices realistic and applicable in their cases.
3.    Are comprehensive – Have we missed anything important that you are aware of.
4.    Are followed – are they actually followed by your organization?

Our practices track will couple an online benchmark survey encouraging all members to let us know how they practice assurance in the area under review, postings to blogs, with commentary, feedback and insights provided by our panelists and townhall (live webinar) and recorded (YouTube) presentations which will help illustrate the points.

We hope that you find this series informative and helpful.

The standard format for the lead article will be:
1.    Background: A definition of the area, the functionalities and issues surrounding the area.
2.    Context: A review of the current operational environment typical for the area.
3.    Controls Inventory: An inventory of the standard controls most commonly found associated with the area.
4.    Range of Practices: A review of some best, worst and standard practices experienced by the contributor.
Please feel free to review, comment upon and make use of what we hope will be a very informative and useful series.

Continued – Standard, Best and Worst Practices in Mediation Systems Management