Home : Solutions

ANTS for Revenue Assurance Enables Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Compliance


Compliance is no longer an option. Stringent regulatory mandates with worldwide implications such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) are creating enormous compliance challenges for telecommunications operators. Analysts estimate that approximately US$4 billion will be spent on regulatory compliance in 2006.

Within SOX, operators must establish an effective, certified framework of controls (§302) on all their processes especially along their revenue generation chain to ensure its integrity and accuracy. SOX does not dictate how controls are implemented and reports generated (§404) however the use of automated procedures will significantly reduce cost and time of internal compliance activities while reducing external auditors' scope of work and auditor fees (§103).

Turn Your Compliance Challenge into a Competitive Advantage ANTS for Revenue Assurance enables a reduction in risk exposure and cost of compliance resulting in continuous, sustainable compliance and better business control. The solution provides an easy to use, powerful environment for the definition, execution and resulting evaluation of control procedures based on active testing. Through ANTS, operators can institute automated, recurring test plans to certify CDRs and rating verifications for the suite of services. In-depth testing scenarios can target specific services or steps in the revenue chain to extend controls coverage where weaknesses have been identified through risk analysis. Also, ad-hoc test plans and trouble shooting is available to facilitate auditors' assessments. Specific reports can be configured and periodically generated to provide required information.

Benefits
  • Verification of charging cases for all services and revenue streams including prepaid, postpaid, interconnection, and roaming
  • Streamlined, recurring control activities through powerful process automation features and continuous monitoring
  • Agility in defining controls criteria and procedures quickly with a user-friendly interface for test scenarios
  • Meets regulatory mandate requirements (SOX) on control framework adopted by accountants on a robust system architecture
  • Improved customer service and decrease in billing issues and associated costs.