Mediation Revenue Assurance

Mediation

Mediation is the hub of all revenue related data produced by the Telco. It is therefore the starting point all revenue assurance operations. CDRs are processed and forwarded to the billing, interconnect, roaming, fraud, data warehouse and other critical operational systems. Each of these systems specifies which records to format, filter or forward. As operational requirements change, the changes in the mediation system are often not implemented in a formal manner. This results in a loss of integrity as to what exactly the mediation system should be doing, making auditing of its functions impossible.

Each of the destination systems submits an extensive and complex set of requirements to the mediation operational team specifying which records to format, filter or forward.

Mediation System

A mediation system is a record processing engine. Its core function is:

Accept the input of CDR’s in different formats, from various types of switches or logs and different systems according to the various timing and business rules set by those systems
Convert this diverse set of inputs into a steady , reliable stream of data for the systems it feeds. This includes billing, interconnect, roaming, fraud, data warehouse and other critical operational systems.

Common Leakages In Mediation Systems

The most common areas of leakage that can occur on a mediation platform include:

Failure to correctly filter records
Failure to balance CDR batches [in=out]
Failure to have an error bucket where filtered CDR are moved to
Incorrect configuration of network parameters on Mediation systems
Incorrect application of policies
Incorrect formatting of call detail records to forward
Duplicate records
Dropped records

Mediation Operations

Mediation performs the following tasks:

Format - the CDRs into a readable form for downstream systems
Filter - remove CDRs that are not needed by downstream systems
Error - remove and mark CDRs that are in error for future review
Suspend - put into a suspense file all records that may be able to be processed later
Consolidate - assemble the different pieces of a call into a single transaction record

Key Mediation Assurance Activities

Key Mediation Assurance activities include:

Validate that the mediation system is functioning the way it is supposed to
Validate the requirements recorded in the mediation system are complete and correct
Validate the reference tables being used by the mediation system are correct, accurate and up to date
Mediation Requirements Review and Validation Case Study
Mediation Reference Table Reconciliation Case Study
Mediation Integrity Verification Case Study

Remedy

By simply formalizing the process of updating mediation requirements, significant leakage can be recovered. This project is both low cost and non-invasive on systems support staff. This is thus often the first project in mediation assurance programs.

RA Project

Review all formal target system specifications being used by the mediation group as control documentation
Establish interviews with each target systems operational support groups
Interview each of these groups to gain a formal, comprehensive understanding of what is expected out of the mediation system - document outcomes
Compare the results of the interviews with the formal specifications being utilized by the mediation group, and resolve any inconsistencies.

Rules, Values and Conversions

There are two ways that mediation systems keep track of all of the different rules, conversions and conditions that it has to keep track of:

Hard coded business rules - review the code, or run tests and samples to see how it perform
Parameter tables - obtain copies of each of the reference tables and run programs that compare their contents against the "master tables" that hold the officially correct values.

Mediation System Operations

Once the mediation requirements and reference table information are verified, the final level of assurance is to verify the mediation system operations. This involves:

Spot check verification of specific phone calls, customer activities or switch activities
Systematic verification of classes of records based upon different categorization criteria
Generation of random sample based checks in order to assure the overall integrity of mediation system operations
Comprehensive validation of the overall population of CDRs processed for a given period of time
Creation of CDR Data Warehouses that make it possible to perform extensive checks into system integrity on demand
Establishment of automated integrity check systems

NEXT: Billing Revenue Assurance