T h e Te l c o R e v e n u e A s s u r a n c e H a n d b o o k

Difficulties in Determining
Information Requirements
There are many reasons why it is difficult to specify the high-level
business information revenue assurance analysts need in terms of
the operational systems. The problems include:
1. Problems of scale and measurement – Different systems
use different units of measure. The network operations ar-
eas measures usage in Erlangs. The mediation system keeps
track of CDRs. Billing systems count minutes of usage. To
get a consistent measure across these systems, a significant
amount of translation and interpretation is required.
2. Problems of granularity of definition – There are many lev-
els at which to measure. Call duration can be in Erlangs,
hours, minutes, seconds or fractions of a second, and
rounding up and down will destroy any attempt to create a
consistent “balanced” set of numbers.
3. Problems of interpretation – Even asking for something as
simple as “number of minutes of usage” is an exercise in
mental gymnastics in the revenue assurance world. What
kind of minutes do you want to measure? There are billable
minutes, actual minutes, pulses translated into minutes, and
switched minutes. Indeed, many varying kinds of minutes
are associated with one phone call, and all are accurate.
4. Derivative values – The business questions must be made
more precise. Any simple straightforward business question
can potentially have dozens of technical answers, depend-
ing on how it is interpreted. The problem boils down to the
interpretation of derivative values. For example, if I want
to know all calls being made to a certain geographic loca-
tion, I will get a different answer depending on whether I
analyze:
i. Calls to B numbers in that area
ii. Calls routed through a particular POI that leads to that
location
iii. Calls to that location billed by my inter-carrier part-
ner

All of these will provide a different but equally valid answer to the
business question.

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