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I-Master®: Revenue Assurance White PaperOpportunity OverviewThe widespread adoption of VoIP technology is facilitating the creation of a new class of basic and value added services, often delivered to historically underserved and credit challenged markets. These new VoIP-based services are being priced in nontraditional and creative ways to minimize service provider risk and maximize service uptake as well as service provider profitability. The Prepaid business model is rapidly replacing the traditional post paid business model as the basis for billing VoIP-based and traditional TDM-based connectivity and value-added services. How can you be sure your company is billing and collecting all the revenue it generates? Mergers and acquisitions, declining profit margins and a challenging competitive landscape are all pressure points that challenge telecom companies as they strive to improve and maintain the integrity of their revenue streams. Traditional postpaid business models do not always fit the target market, especially in emerging markets, many of which are just establishing basic voice service. Historically, prepaid business models were targeted at subscribers considered at risk of defaulting on payments. Services deployed using these business models were typically very basic usually consisting of basic voice service only. Average account balances were also smaller than typical residential subscribers, in some cases less than half. These business models also had a high customer churn rate because there was typically no commitment associated with the account beyond the initial purchase. The trend toward prepaid and postpaid billing convergence, or balance management, offers service providers the opportunity to market value-added services to prepaid subscribers, increasing overall average revenue per user (ARPU) and lowering churn. A flexible combination of prepaid, postpaid or postpaid limited credit billing models will be required for service providers to be competitive in today's highly competitive markets. Bundled Services and Integrated Billing Traditional voice carriers have a long history of offering postpaid subscriber services such as residential voice with good success. But, as competition increased from deregulation rates began to drop along with revenues. To combat this drop in rates carriers have had to find different avenues in order to not only maintain, but increase those revenues. As competition intensified, telecom operators have aggressively moved towards bundling services (see Table 1). 
Bundled services and integrated billing have grown beyond the telecommunications providers. Many cable operators and ISP's are now offering many of the same types of bundled offerings, including voice. These bundled offerings have better ARPU and have lower churn than the same services when sold individually. According to researchers, 40% of U.S. households are buying phone service as part of a bundle of heavily discounted broadband and television. Service providers must come to market with bundled and well-integrated services that enable them to retain their current customers, and compete with other service providers to attract new subscribers that want simplified, effective communications services. Verso - Addressing The ChallengeVerso Technologies provides a powerful and robust prepaid calling platform, I-Master, for deploying revenue generating telecom services. I-Master enables service providers to capture and increase new revenue streams in the forever changing and growing telecom market. Verso's I-Master will help telecom companies uncover missed opportunities at every stage along the revenue life cycle - from customer acquisition to customer retention. With a huge and steadily growing subscriber base, service providers are waking up and welcoming prepaid subscribers. A prepaid service model offers convenience for the low usage demographic, as well as those preferring an up-front payment method to control their communication expenses. I-Master Advantages Verso Technologies offers a unique and patented technology that will enable our customers to accelerate ROI by improving profit margins and lowering operational costs.
Verso has successfully capitalized on the convergence of voice and IP to integrate a bundle of premium, carrier-grade applications that offer the reliability and quality of the mature TDM based solutions, yet with flexibility beyond what can be attained within a TDM environment. These applications and accompanying infrastructure scale seamlessly and inexpensively when compared to their TDM counterpart. Reversing Declining Revenues with Enhanced Services Voice revenues are set to steadily decline as a percentage of ARPU over the next few years (see Table 2). On the other hand, data revenues are set to grow substantially during the same period. Service providers aim to increase stagnating and declining Voice ARPUs, and to decrease customer churn, by offering bundled services, integrated billing, as well as offering next generation services to prepaid customers. 
With the capability of bundling new services, I-Master can offer innovative discounting and promotions to help service providers attract and retain customers (see Table 3). It can enable postpaid subscribers the ability to trial new telecom services on a prepaid basis, while eliminating the risk of spending more than desired or having a monthly commitment. In the same instance, it will enable service providers to terminate service instantaneously and reduce lost revenue. 
I-Master's comprehensive IVR and web services notify subscribers when their balance is depleted and options are given to enable recharging on the fly. Integrated support for credit card processing allows customers to instantly purchase additional service. Service providers now possess the technology and the opportunity to generate and capture revenue streams that have never existed in the past. Prepaid Calling Cards Prepaid calling cards allow users to pay in advance for long distance. Revenues jumped from $12 million in 1992 to $4.1 billion in 2003 (see Table 4). While wholesale per minute calling cost fell sharply, leading to a drop in retail prices. The drop in rates helped boost calling card usage but hurt companies that had signed long contracts at higher wholesale rates. Companies that have survived the decline, maintain that low margins remain a concern in the industry. I-Master introduces new ways for service providers to enhance their margins, without stressing current revenue flow. 
I-Master's web access encryption ensures trouble free inventory management and customer account adjustments, such as balance transfer recharges. This feature allows customers to transfer balances from one account to another. Real time features such as this will increase customer loyalty by providing a more pleasant repurchasing experience, in turn reducing customer churn. Customer churn rates can be further reduced by offering incentive programs or rewards for purchasing minutes by certain dates or amounts and by making those purchases with credit cards or vouchers. All of this can be achieved through I-Master's enhanced IVR services. Solving the Challenge The I-Master solution supports large volumes of traffic requiring prepaid rating of complex services with management of balances in real-time while for voice, data and enhanced state of the art services. The real-time infrastructure software application offers the scalability to manage increasing volumes of network events with less hardware investments, and the responsiveness to process and rate prepaid events in real time. I-Master is designed for service providers and includes advanced fraud controls, carrier grade rating engine, scalable capacity and the ability to interoperate in a multi-vendor, multi-protocol environment. The core infrastructure of this powerful platform includes an Oracle database, running on a Sun Solaris operating system. I-Master may be deployed with an optional SIP interface for SIP-enabled networks with backward compatibility into H.323 networks with RADIUS support for other VoIP gateways. This uniquely positions I-Master as an attractive solution for virtually any VoIP network. Most impressively, I-Master is capable of supporting these various protocols simultaneously. This offers a service provider the ability to seamlessly incorporate evolving technologies into the existing service offering, while guaranteeing a high ROI and long life cycle as service provider's usage continues to grow and evolve. 
Carrier-Grade Rating Engine World-class carriers, as well as emerging VoIP networks, have successfully deployed the rating engine embodied in I-Master, which offers virtually an unlimited number of account rating variations. The most complex rating schemes are easily managed with the unique, intuitive interface. All currencies are supported and each authentication, rating and accounting process is accomplished in real-time. Full GMT time zone support enables multi-region and global deployment of IP services. Pre-rating and post-rating activity is accurate to four decimal places. Rating option variables include:
Fraud Controls To further protect your revenue streams from erosion due to fraudulent activity, many levels of fraud prevention and detection features are embedded within I-Master. Areas of fraud prevention include:
Revenue Assurance Model With its focus on the revenue assurance model, the I-Master suite guarantees recurring revenue through customer retention by providing a next generation platform which offers services that have never been widely available in the telecom market until today. This platform guarantees robust features and scalability to ensure future growth.
Prepaid Services - Prepaid Accounts are authenticated in real time to ensure the account balance never crosses the threshold of zero. Postpaid Limited Credit - I-Master supports two types of postpaid accounts, with credit limit or without. Accounts designated as having a credit limit will not be permitted to exceed the limit. I-Master supports traditional postpaid activity and includes the ability to set overdraft limits on an account or product. Call Detail Records (CDRs) are collected and stored for review or may be exported into many different report formats which allow total integration with most accounting and billing systems. Bundled Services Bundled services may be authenticated by I-Master as the gateway to other applications such as Internet access, messaging, conferencing and special IVR services. Each of these applications operates in synch with one another. For example, accounts may utilize any service offered from one account and access point. These are some of the more popular features:
The integration of these services enable the service provider to launch state-of-the-art revenue generating services that will create a new level of customer loyalty while maintaining the revenue assurance of a prepaid business model (see Table 6). 
Basic IVR Applications I-Master supports the basic IVR functionality required for single and two stage call flows. The IVR functionally can be embedded in gateways, softswitchs, and dedicated media servers. Verso also offers software based IVR services via the Class 4 and Class 5 softswitch solutions. Optional IVR Applications In addition to the single and two stage authentication call flows, other optional IVR applications are also supported. These applications can be deployed as stand-alone applications or they may be used as a sub menu or embedded application within the main call flow. Some of the more popular services include:
End-User Self Care I-Master includes a robust self-care module SDK (Software Development Kit), which reduces customer support resources and enhances the end-user experience. This revolutionary IP telephone solution for on-line self-care and e-billing easily incorporates into a service provider's website. This portal may be branded under multiple wholesalers and deployed in multiple cases enabling several wholesalers to sell and manage products for their customer base from a single system. The service portal makes traditional invoicing obsolete with its on-line subscription support, by providing payment/recharge, customer self-care and real-time account information. It also enables subscribers to manage and control their security access, authentication IDs, and to interact with their account online in real-time, thereby reducing the time and expense of providing customer support. Personalized Option Menu Service providers may choose to list all services available on the web portal and allow consumers to customize their services. This functionality adds tremendous value to the user's experience. Only services offered within a specific rate plan will be available for consumers to select. Some examples include: Basic Features
Optional Features
DNIS Call Controls I-Master recognizes DNIS information up to 12 digits. Given the fact that the DNIS information determines multiple aspects of the users experience and service, there are several relationships of DNIS to other information within I-Master. The information may be used in a variety of ways simultaneously and rating elements may be triggered through the use of DNIS. I-Master offers DNIS control with relationships such as:
Our ExperienceVerso Technologies is a world-class collection of some of the leading technology companies in their field. With our combined resources, we are able to offer the highest level of next generation communication solutions. Verso develops and markets next-generation converged packet-based solutions to service providers, and through service providers and systems integrators, to enterprises. These solutions are helping carrier, enterprise, and government networks leverage their legacy technology investments to lower costs and reduce bandwidth constraints, without sacrificing QoS. While at the same time help new and emerging telecom entities compete in the new world of communication through prepaid services. ConclusionPrepaid services are increasingly becoming the focal point for operators worldwide. To differentiate themselves from the competition, service providers need to implement the foremost technical solution to support multiple services to attract more customers, thereby increasing revenues. There are clear advantages to Verso's platform for implementing prepaid solutions across networks, with I-Master providing real-time call control and authentication on a larger, but manageable scale. With increasing competition however, the need to implement the right solution on the most cost-effective and appropriate platform is critical. For these very reasons, and for creating the leading prepaid solution in the market, Verso's I-Master is the first choice in worldwide prepaid solution implementations. |
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