Ascertain® is a 5th Generation Platform with Revenue Assurance and Cost Management tools that combine to address the cash flow optimization needs of communications service providers.  With these tools you can provide rating accuracy, reconcile customer data, analyze and reconcile event records, prove completeness of processing and monitor trends and volumes.

The product suite has revenue assurance and cost management tools, which combine to address the cash flow optimization needs of communications service providers.  With these tools you can:

• Reconcile customer subscription data, be it subscriber, information, network inventory or financial;
  
• Monitor data inconsistencies between systems involved in service delivery and billing;
  
• Conduct end-to-end audit trails of voice, data, video and  media transactions  at an aggregate level;
  
• Analyze and reconcile event records;
  
• Prove completeness of processing;
  
• Reconcile inter-carrier and partner invoices, and
  
• Monitor trends and volumes.
  

Ascertain is built on an open industry standard architecture, which enables wide-ranging user configuration and operating facilities.

The front end is web-based for easy access and is accessible through any standard HTML Browser.  The back end is built on Java to allow portability across the widest range of hardware platforms and an Oracle database for audit trails, storing configuration and transactional data, job tracking and security information.

Ascertain is highly flexible and scalable and has been successfully implemented in the following market  sectors:

Core Framework

The Ascertain® core framework is developed using current open standards including JDBC, J2EE, XML, SOAP and RMI, and comprises:

• Configurator – for setting up parameters, business rules and reference data in a user-friendly way.
  
• Data Extraction Routines – covering both the collection of data from an operator’s core processing systems and the decoding of different formats.
  
• Job Server – for the scheduling of all activities with support for conditional runs and retries on failure.
  
• Dashboard – standard components for building new reports and screens, which can easily be customized to reflect the requirements of different users.

The Ascertain^® Framework comprises three main layers – Integration Adapters,  Business Rules and Visualization.

The Integration Adaptor Layer collects and imports data from a wide range of systems, including high volume CDR/EDR records, standard format data such as text files or comma separated value files, as well as other file types such as excel or binary. Direct connection to switches and network elements is possible as well as sourcing the data from a staging area.

The Business Logic Layer is provided by the four Ascertain Product applications, which address specific RA requirements.

The Visualization Layer displays the information output, including dashboards and reports with detailed drill-downs.  Information can be presented visually through graphical or tabular views, in an OLAP table for more advanced analysis or sent automatically to user groups for immediate notification and action via the Report Deployment module.

Framework Support includes the Job Server and the Configuration Engine, which are seamlessly integrated as part of the Ascertain® framework.

The Ascertain^® Framework delivers the core functionality to all Ascertain^® applications.  Combinations of applications can be deployed in the same instance to deliver our clients the most robust solutions.