Solutions

CONTROL & REVENUE ASSURANCE CENTER (CRAC)
overview
Although Revenue Assurance has always been present in the Telecom parlance, it has recently been brought at the Forefront of the Regulatory Agencies and Governments.
In this context, STRATUM has designed and developed a truly integrated and high-definition Control & Revenue Assurance Center (CRAC) to primarily collect and record data from the source at the Operators, on a near real-time continuous basis, and then analyse their submitted reports on all communication services offered.
CRAC is functionally complete and is reading scalable enough to process large volumes of data (Call Data Records CDRs) from multiple sources, rapidly and accurately in real-time thus visibly improving time of analysis.
Additionally, our solution is flexible enough to easily integrate new internal and external data stream, hence providing complete visibility of the communication services offered by the local operators as well as of their revenue chain.
CRAC encompasses revenue assurance practices that overlap with regulatory demands and is built around 3 Disciplines.
disciplines
  • Controls Management: Audit & Monitoring
    The design, implementation. execution and monitoring of controls over the Operators' communication services offered.
  • Compliance Management: Regulatory Benchmarks/KPIs.
    The assessment of the Operators’ performance against specific regulations or industry standards/objectives/benchmarks/list of KPIs – as set by the Regulators or Ministries.
  • Containment Management: Revenue Leakage Detection.
    Making sure that the controls. tools and alerts integrated into the audit and control solution are being well executed. and managed to detect any cause/ source of revenue leakage, in favor of the Government/Regulatory Authorities/ Ministries.
benefits
  • Validation of the activities and revenue declarations by local operator, by activity.
  • Real-time full visibility over every Operator’s performance.
  • Reporting on QoS for Operators’ service.
  • Generation of performance reports of Operators against set regulatory benchmarks and KPIs.
  • Fraud detection on any network.
  • Generation of analytical reports to highlight areas for improvement.
modules
module #1: audit & controls
The Audit and Controls module of CRAC revolves around a very proficient and rigorous extraction and validation tool, where strict audit and controls procedures are being enforced, given the need to monitor the services spanning across different technologies and systems of the local Operators.
CRAC is capable of providing an integrated management view of the Operators’ network and services through:
  • Live and accurate monitoring of all the communication services provided by the local operators (direct observation), including but not limited to:
    • National On-Net Voice Calls.
    • National Off-Net Voice Calls.
    • International Incoming Voice Calls.
    • International Outgoing Voice Calls.
    • SMS
    • Data Packages
    • Mobile Money Payment.
  • CDR collection in real-time.
  • Accurate billing of fees and charges associated with the different communication services as provided by the local operators.
  • Recovery and storage of CDRs for billing and analysis purposes.
  • Real-time monitoring of all networks/systems.
module #2: shield
The escalating rate of technological development had resulted in new possibilities of fraud trends and fraud origins that we, at STRATUM, are aiming to prevent rather than detect.
Since fraudulent attempts and activities engender financial losses, the industry demands effective means to cut these financial leakages and source new means of diversifying revenue growth.
In this sense, STRATUM has developed SHIELD, a Fraud Management solution that holistically detects, identifies and prevents fraud across the different networks and systems.
SHIELD incorporates the latest detection technologies that are capable of evolving and quickly capturing the changing landscape of fraud management environment.
Compliant With the i3 Forum regulations and guidelines for antifraud, CRAC utilizes robust tools capable of:
  • Enabling fraud prevention;
  • Detecting fraud in real-time;
  • Providing complete fraud alerting through a comprehensive set of rules;
  • Employing preventive and proactive measures to avoid fraud losses;
  • Providing enhanced analytic capabilities;
  • Adapting and continuously incorporating new fraud scenarios.
module #3: QUALITY OF SERVICE (QOS) & QUALITY OF USER EXPERIENCE (QOE) MONITORING
CRAC performs reconciliation on KPIs generated from compilation of detailed records (CDRs) and helps Regulators, Ministries and Governments in decision-making.
CRAC allows us to drill down to a greater level of detail on statistical reporting, through its rich and fully customizable reporting engines.
  • CRAC is specially designed to provide:
    • Visibility and insights over the sector performance.
    • Assessment against regulatory standards and KPIs.
    • Highlights of areas for development and improvement.
  • In the context of QoS, CRAC is able to:
    • Assess and analyze each level of service against set KPIs.
    • Emphasize additional revenue opportunities from every service.
    • Verify that the bundles, packages and different offers of the mobile operators are exactly and accurately being delivered to subscribers.
In parallel, as QoE plays an important role in the whole communications ecosystem, CRAC allows an efficient monitoring and assessment of user experiences and offers tools to optimize them.
MODULE #4: REVENUE INTELLIGENCE/ BUILDING THE REVENUE OPPORTUNITY MAP
The substantial leakage of Government revenues and improper payments by local Operators is a persistent challenge for Governments within the Telecom sector and has been a universal phenomenon. In order to counter this threat, establishing adequate control mechanisms and reporting facilities to predict potential leakage sources and validate the Operators’ declarations, has become a critical requirement for Governments.
CRAC and SHIELD were converged by STRATUM to open new pathways to recapture revenue leakages and boost the Government’s revenues, by auditing, monitoring, crosschecking, and validating the Operators’ declarations of activities and figures.
As our solution relies on the revenue leakage detection discipline, CRAC performs a thorough evaluation of the Operators’ every domain to ensure there are no leakages at a process and/or technical level, and then finds, diagnoses and corrects the leakages in an efficient and rationalized manner.
CRAC creates a unique and immediate opportunity for Governments to mobilize for greater success in recovering their revenues and gives them the upper hand in proactively identifying future challenges vis-à-vis their fiscal space.
module #5: BIG DATA REPORTS
In today’s data intensive world of communications, the social media networks, connected devices, customer behaviors, government portals, call data records and billing information etc. produce a huge amount of data.
Since data flows on telecommunication backbone, Telecommunication industry becomes the significant contributor of “Big Data”.
As Big Data promises to promote growth and increase efficiency and profitability across the entire telecom value chain, STRATUM team has captured the analytics prospect and has transformed the challenge of dealing with flow of data volumes into the opportunity of revealing powerful insights, by wisely capturing and utilizing big data and big data analytics techniques, and analyzing them proficiently. Big Data reports, generated by STRATUM, divulge a very different and unconventional approach to business and sector development, and offer telecom operators as well as Regulators and Governmental agencies a real opportunity to gain a much more complete picture of their operations and their customers, and to further their innovation efforts, mainly through:
  • Optimizing routing and quality of service by analyzing network traffic in real time.
  • Analyzing call data records in real time to identify fraudulent behavior immediately.
  • Allowing call center reps to flexibly and profitably modify subscriber—calling plans immediately.
  • Tailoring marketing campaigns to individual customers using location-based and social networking technologies.
  • Using insights into customer behavior and usage to develop new products and services.