zain kuwait & raid - wedo technologies 2015... · project: ericsson charging system migration...

Zain Kuwait & RAIDAssurance In The Time of Transformation

Zaid K. Alothman

WeDo Worldwide User Group, 10th Edition

May 2015

Contents

1. Zain Kuwait Overview

2. The Transformation Challenge

3. The Implementation and Role of RAID

4. What’s Next? Lessons, More Challenges, and Future Plans

23/07/2015Zain Limited2

Overview of Zain

Zain Group Overview


Operating in 8 MENA countries

Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan,

Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Sudan,

and South Sudan

Workforce of over 7,000

employees

Providing a comprehensive range

of mobile services to over 46.1m

active customers, generating

USD $4.3 billion in consolidated

revenues(Customer Base as of 12th May 2015, Revenues As of Dec

31st, 2014)

Zain Kuwait Overview


Group’s flagship operation, established

in 1983

The first operator in the region

to launch nationwide:

• 2G GSM in 1994

• 3G UMTS in 2007

• 4G LTE in 2012

• 4G LTE-A in 2014

Customer base exceeding 2.9m with

6% growth in the last 12 months,

generating ARPUs of $36 USD

Leading customer market share of 35%

Efficient operation with EBITDA

margin of 50%

Kuwait Mobile Telecom Environment


221%Penetration Rate

3Mobile Operators

LTE-ANew standard access

technology

500 GBData Package Offerings

35%Of Revenue is Data

(Zain KW, Q1 2015)

80%Of Broadband is Mobile

2013Mobile Number

Portability Launched

2014Independent TRA Established

$2.6bnService Revenues

(2014)

The Transformation

Challenge

Limited Coverage and automation

• ETL of basic network subsystems

• No prepaid charging or VAS coverage

• Ad-hoc, no automated validations

Slow To Cope With Changes

• Turnaround time of 3-5 months for new streams

– e.g. LTE transactional information

• Once solution is provided, two to three UAT cycles until cleared for production

• Usual response was: “Launch now, RA to check later”

• Most products launched without RA verification and approval Losses, errors, and less than ideal customer experience

Revenue Assurance Before RAID


Performance

• Transactions recorded 2+ days after actual occurrence

• Data integrity doubted and verified several times before issue confirmed further delays

• Manual file checks, house-keeping, and database maintenance

The Challenges


Prepaid Charging System Replacement

Mediation System Replacement

Provisioning System Replacement

Order Management System ReplacementBilling System Replacement

CRM System Replacement

100+ New Consumer Products

Dunning System Replacement

Introduction of VoLTE

Network/VAS Subsystems UpgradesGMSC Migrations

Packet Core Migrations

International Voice Gateway Migration

30+ Corporate/B2B Product Launches

RA Usage Assurance Tool

RA Subscription Assurance Tool

RA Rating Validation Tool

No Customer Impact

No Revenue Loss

Expectations of new solution


Expanded controls and coverage for all revenue streams

Reduce steps of finding anomalies to a minimum

Traceability of issues and reporting of findings and process errors

Automation of routine checks requiring no/little intelligence

Move Revenue Assurance from reactive to proactive

Find issues within hours, not days/weeks

WeDo RAID

Implementation

Implementation Plan of WeDo RAID


Phase 1 - Usage Control

Full visibility over possible discrepancies of customer usage from 17

Zain network elements covering all critical Voice/Messaging/Data

services

“Switch to Bill” coverage

Project duration: 7 months - Completed in Apr 2014

Phase 2 - Platform Integrity

Guaranteeing customer profile consistency on 80 control points

across different Zain network platforms to reduce possible revenue

leakages

Project duration: 5 months - Completed in Nov 2014

Phase 3 – Rating Validation

Automated validation of usage charging via ‘virtual’ rating system to

reconcile with actual Zain postpaid and prepaid rating systems

Scoping ongoing - Planned for production by end of Q3 2015

RAID in the Technology Transformation


Data integrity during migrations

Project: Ericsson Charging System Migration

Capturing errors with data model transformation within the migration

window full data integrity maintained after migration

Usage Assurance of new network elements

Project: Ericsson EMA Provisioning, Nokia R4/SIP Migration,

Ericsson Charging System Migration

Inter-system validations ready before migrations

Issues found within hours post-launch minimal errors and losses

RAID as a Revenue Assurance Tool


Automation of Routine RA checks

• 97 daily checks are fully automated

• RA Analyst no longer needs to perform manual data gathering and

cross-system verification

• Focus on issue capture, reproduction, follow-up, workarounds and

permanent fixes

Automation of Financial Reconciliations

• Revenue share partner reports troubleshooting in minutes

• Discrepancies fell from 8% to <1% in 6 months from production

• Revenue, interconnect, and international gateway reconciliations

require no technical expertise

Quick Adaptation to Network Evolution

• WeDo Technologies’ experience with leading technology providers

Semi-Plug-n-Play integration

• Turnaround time to develop new loadings 3 weeks on average

RAID as a Revenue Assurance Tool


~$7.6m USD(2014 RA exposures)

Interconnect &

Roaming

VAS

Profile Integrity

Revenue Reporting

Rating/Billing

Infrastructure

Products

What’s Next?

Challenges and Lessons during Transformation


• The Frequency of Change

• Overlap, Overlap, Overlap

• SME availability

• Reference Data Accuracy

• RAID for Ad-hoc usage

queries

Challenges

• Agility is Paramount

• Get Enterprise-level Support

• Repeat Fine-tuning process till

perfect• 234 changes on RAID to date

• False positives < 0.5%

Lessons

QueryDB (QDB) Project

• Detailed records parsed by RAID transferred to QDB

• Designed to ensure flexibility in queries while ensuring single

reference data maintenance, and no performance impact to core

RAID functionality

RAID Project Enhancements :: QueryDB


Fetch CDRs

Apply loading rules

Output CSV QDB

What’s next for RAID?


Expand Automated Coverage

• Payment channels reconciliation (Billing vs Oracle Financials)

• Inventory reconciliations for handsets, devices, and SIM cards

• Integration with Test Call Generators for automated testing and call

verification

• Integration with VAS Content Management System for VAS partner

reference data updates

Complete RAID 7 Project

• Implement and complete Rating

Validation Module

• Integration with Product Catalog

Solution

RA Analyst Developer Training

• Perform changes in-house with

WeDo Support validation

• Accelerate adaptation time to

technology changes

Any Questions?

Zaid K. Alothman

[email protected]

zain kuwait & raid - wedo technologies 2015... · project: ericsson charging system migration...

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