Telecom Revenue Assurance Platform: where the operator loses money without noticing

What this solution is

Telecom Revenue Assurance Platform is an operating loop that continuously reconciles that the operator billed for everything the customer actually consumed and collected money for everything it billed.

In most operators revenue leakage is an invisible 1-3% of revenue. Not because it does not exist, but because there is no instrument to see it. Billing trusts the switch, the switch trusts the rater, the rater trusts the tariff plan. If somewhere in this chain there is a discrepancy — it settles as “normal margin of error”.

The platform breaks this chain of trust and replaces it with record-level reconciliation.

When the operator needs this solution

The financial controller or CFO cannot answer “how much are we under-collecting” with a number and proof.

There have been incidents: a tariff plan that charged differently from what the marketing communication said; an interconnect rate that changed without billing being updated; a dealer commission paid for activations that turned out to be fictitious.

Internal audit periodically finds discrepancies, but as one-off exercises rather than a continuous process.

Billing is old or multivendor, data migrations between systems left “tails” of discrepancies that nobody formally closed.

The regulator started requiring revenue assurance reporting (this is happening in several jurisdictions), and the operator has no automated process.

If 2-3 of these signs are present — the platform has commercial sense.

How it works

The platform consists of five connected loops.

Reconciliation engine. Reconciliation between sources: switch CDR — mediation — rating — billing — collection. At each junction, record comparison, discrepancy detection, classification by type (lost record, duplicate, incorrect rating, missed payment).

Tariff plan validator. Test passes of real tariff plans through the rating engine with reference calls. Verifying that what is being charged corresponds to what marketing declares and what is agreed with the regulator.

Interconnect leakage detection. Reconciliation of traffic between operators. If another operator under-counted incoming calls, or the interconnect rate in the system became outdated — it gets detected and raised as a dispute.

Dealer commission validation. Verifying that commission was paid only for activations that remained active under the contract conditions. Connected to Dealer Management Platform, but with a different focus — not the dealer’s quality, but the correctness of the payout.

Operating routine. Weekly review of the leakage panel: top 10 loss categories, trend, owner, closure status. Quarterly review at CFO/CIO level.

What working with SamaraliSoft includes

Revenue chain audit (4-6 weeks). Map of systems (switch, mediation, rating, billing, collection, GL), typical leakage points in the architecture of the specific operator, prioritisation of loops by expected effect.

Platform design (6-8 weeks). Reconciliation architecture, scope of tariff plans for validation, design of interconnect and dealer loops, operating routine.

Implementation by loop (3-9 months in parallel). Not “everything at once” but loop by loop, with measurable recovery on each. Tariff validator is usually first — it pays back fastest.

Integration into the financial cycle (1-2 months). Recovered revenue must land in the P&L and be visible to the CFO. Without this the work looks like a technical exercise.

Run mode (continuous). The platform is not a project but an ongoing process. The RA team has to be embedded in the operator’s financial cycle.

What the operator gets

Measurable results on a 12-month horizon:

Recovery of 0.5-2% of revenue in the first year. Afterwards the effect tapers because the system starts working in preventive mode (new tariffs are validated before launch).

Reduction of time spent on interconnect disputes — usually from months to weeks.

The CFO gets an audit trail across the revenue chain — every discrepancy classified, every one with an owner and closure deadline.

Regulatory reporting on revenue assurance is generated from the system rather than assembled manually.

Internal discipline rises — operations know that any change in rating goes through the validator.

When the solution is not needed

If operator revenue is small ($50-100M), recovery potential in absolute figures does not justify 12-18 months of work and the platform’s cost. RA is easier through periodic external audits.

If billing is new and modern cloud-native, many validation functions are already built in, and what is needed is more a thin layer on top than a full platform.

If the operator’s culture is not ready for public acknowledgement of leakage — the RA team will hit political resistance every time it finds a problem in someone’s domain.

If data is fragmented and quality is low (CDR are lost, mediation runs with delays), reconciliation will show false discrepancies, and trust in the platform will collapse faster than it proves value.

If the CFO is not ready to sponsor the initiative — RA without a financial owner turns into a technical project with unclear impact.

How to start

Request a Revenue Leakage Assessment — 4-6 weeks. Sample reconciliation across 2-3 loops (usually tariff and interconnect), leakage estimate in absolute figures, prioritisation of loops for the platform and a realistic 18-month roadmap.

Related

• /en/insights/telecom-revenue-assurance/ — revenue assurance as a discipline
• /en/insights/telecom-billing-modernization/ — billing modernisation
• /en/solutions/telecom-dealer-management-platform/ — dealer management
• /en/insights/telecom-interconnect-economics/ — interconnect economics