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Author: Harmeet Singh

  • The case for Business Assurance in 5G

    The case for Business Assurance in 5G

    5G is a reality now, and Communication Service Providers (CSP) are launching products on their 5G networks.

    5G is considered a revolution for the enterprise business world because of its characteristics like network slicing, multi-access edge computing (MEC), aggregators, dedicated high upload and download bandwidth, low latency, and more.

     But for those of us in the business assurance community, what does 5G mean? How will it be different when we consider 2G/3G/4G controls?

    5G: Creating new connections

    When I saw the movie ‘I, Robot’, there were scenes of several robots working together and performing specific tasks to support the human race. It was difficult to believe that we could be close to that kind of reality. Those robots are like today’s connected devices: connected and controlled from a centralized location, and trained with AI/ML models.”

    Connecting this story in ‘I, Robot’ with today, we can expect a similar customer experience with 5G connectivity working alongside AI and robotics. Although the movie script showed some negative effects, we assume that these issues will get be assured in the 5G world by our peer communities of Information Security Groups.

    Coming back to the topic of how 5G differs for our business assurance community over the current controls, here’s what I see. There will be reusability of the traditional revenue assurance controls like subscription assurance, product catalog validation, and QoS validation. The current customer and revenue use cases of business assurance like Customer 360-degree, revenue analytics, product profitability, margin assurance, etc., will continue to be relevant.

    But in terms of the Framework of Business Assurance in 5G, we will need a few more controls to ensure healthy relationships between CSPs and their partners/suppliers. These will be important for all parties to work together and provide a great experience for the end customer.

    New BA controls in the 5G world

    Below is an image of the foundation of the CSP business model:

    The Case for Business Assurance in 5G

    In the 5G world of enterprise business, there are thousands of partners (seen on the left of CSP) involved in supporting CSPs to provide services to all lines of business (seen on the right of the CSP). These services include immersive entertainment, sports broadcasting, smart cities, connected cars, 5G drones, etc. A healthy relationship with partners is key to ongoing success.

    BA’s role in supporting 5G growth

    To this end, here are a few use cases where business assurance plays an important role in delivering the best customer experience:

    • Service assurance – This includes everything from partner contracts to configuration validation and monitoring the quality of the service provided (QoS breaches) to the customer
    • Partner profitability – This is an extension of margin assurance and involves scoring and analyzing individual supplier performance.
    • Supplier analytics – This is a comparison of supplier performance and an analysis of supplier risk and their sustainability.
    • Spend analytics – This includes analytics on the spend on a product, which is tightly coupled with vendor spend. It also extends to forecasting the spend for any product launch against the expected margins.
    • Contract risk management – This involves expiry alerts and identifying clauses, obligations, and risks
    • Dispute analytics – This involves using AI/ML to predict disputes on the billing, write-offs, bad debts and usage charges date sets
    • Just in time (JIT) and just in case (JIC) analytics – This includes managing inventory based on analyzing historical data and current datasets, and forecasting capacity. This capability has been essential for a lot of CSPs since the Covid-19 pandemic. Many CSPs are refocusing from JIT to JIC to avoid loss of opportunity.

    The more we analyze how CSPs and their partners interact, the better business assurance teams are able to institute controls that protect to ensure those relationships. Ultimately, healthy and profitable business interactions will be necessary for both CSPs and partners to provide a best-in-class experience to customers.

    Business Assurance in 5G and beyond

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  • Six ways to mitigate Enterprise Business Risks in Telecom

    Six ways to mitigate Enterprise Business Risks in Telecom

    The telecommunication industry is not just about providing voice, data, and SMS services to individual consumers but also includes an enterprise segment. One could say that the enterprise business line is more like a wholesale business or B2B of telecom involving interconnect billing and roaming agreements.

    But again, wholesale is only a subset.

    Take the example of BT that, in 2018, delivered a global SD-WAN solution for a water treatment and chemicals manufacturer that improved network visibility, connectivity, and security as part of the manufacturer’s digital transformation program. Indeed, these services were offered through BT’s enterprise business model. Clearly, the breadth of the telecom B2B segment extends into numerous areas like network services, software-defined network platforms(like Ethernet and SD-WAN), content delivery networks, the internet, multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), connected data centers, ATM connectivity, access service, and private lines, to name a few.

    Then, the idea of risk is very different here as revenue is not based solely on transactions. In the enterprise business revenue model, managed contracts are signed between service providers and enterprise customers and often include bulk usage-based or connection-based plans.

    Having worked with telecom clients across the globe on numerous risk detection solutions, we have put together a list outlining how operators can secure themselves from risk within the enterprise business segment.

    1. Automate contract management 

    For each enterprise partner and customer, telcos have voluminous master and delivery contracts that often reside in physical formats, i.e., in hard copies, making validation and mapping to NSS/OSS/BSS a lengthy, error-prone, and manual process. While digitization of contracts has brought in some efficiency, operators should consider investing in automated contract management solutions that dilute risk through smart features that validate invoices, pre-empt disputes, track contract performance, and more.

    2. Focus on customer experience

    Customer experience teams for B2B telecom must be highly skilled and adept at coordinating with internal teams to ensure timely accounting, seamless network availability, and enhanced online customer journeys. This CX personnel require best-in-class tools that alert them on severities, updates on resolution time, and proactively inform clients about service disruption or degradation. Ensuring a good customer experience is vital since attrition translates to a penalty of millions of dollars.

    3. Streamline invoicing and accounting workflows 

    Invoicing is a complex affair for telcos due to the multi-partner nature of business. Invoices that are received from partners must, in turn, be raised to customers. Some may even need last-mile delivery in countries depending on the nature of the partnership. Each invoice must be validated and matched with the respective contract, and then the cost updated in the general ledger. From invoice validation to accounting, this entire process continues to be a significant pain point for telcos and a source of vulnerability.

    4. Consistent quality of service

    Quality of service is imperative to the customer experience. Distinct from service availability, quality of service must always be above the committed levels. It calls for regular network monitoring, big data analytics, automated reporting, and threat predictions, which, in turn, entail always-on access to data stores, call detailed records, network logs, network usage, etc.

    5. Robust cybersecurity and anti-fraud protocol

    Telecom enterprise business should provide threat management, intruder detection, real-time alerts in a round-the-clock manner or as part of managed services. These provisions are imperative to deter cyber-crime like DDoS attacks and fraud. Protocols like SIP, diameter, and deep packet inspection are handy here, provided they are used in a manner that adheres to standard regulations.

    6. Asset optimization and capacity planning

    Optimizing asset utilization is one way to combat stagnating telecom revenues. Adopting end-to-end monitoring solutions of ever-expanding enterprise networks can ensure that the asset register is continuously updated on the status of reserve assets. This also prevents loss of revenue from an inability to provision new ports due to outdated information of unused ports/assets. Such a 360-degree asset view also optimizes capacity planning, directly reducing cost.

    A solid risk mitigation strategy that addresses the above vulnerabilities can make a huge difference in safeguarding operators from reputational losses and penalties associated with fraud and breaches. Chiefly though, it helps deliver a great customer experience that ultimately improves revenue.

    Webinar: Business Assurance in 5G: 5 controls you cannot do without

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  • Why SIM Box Fraud is Still Rampant in Africa

    Why SIM Box Fraud is Still Rampant in Africa

    Africa owes much of its recent economic growth to the use of telecommunications services. However, over the past few years, telcos in the region have been hit by several telecom frauds, most notably SIM Box fraud, also known as the interconnect bypass fraud. The unfortunate reality across the region is that SIM Box fraud continuous to be one of the major frauds affecting the dynamic telecom market in Africa. Despite the best efforts taken by telcos to curb this issue, the impact from this fraud is huge in terms of the loss in revenues to telcos and taxes to the regulatory.

    Let us look at a couple of recent instances,  to put this scenario into context. Recently, the Ugandan Communications Commission (UCC), in collaboration with the local police, conducted an anti-telecom fraud operation that resulted in the seizure of over 1,500 SIM cards and 4 SIM Boxes.  In another incident, the National Communications Authority (NCA), the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), KelniGVG, and the Ghana Police Service retrieved 11 SIM Box equipment, each capable of using 352 SIM cards simultaneously from Tema, Ghana. Suspected criminals caused a massive loss of about $2mn per month.

    The African market is at a period where telcos are struggling to find a solution towards shrinking margins while being tasked to address the ever-increasing customer demands by investing in new technologies. During such a time the threat posed by SIM Box fraud will impede the growth of mobile telephony across the continent, which will further hamper the region’s journey towards digital transformation.

    Why SIM Box Fraudsters still Target Africa? 

    • As per the industry reports, the African mobile market in the region will reach several important milestones over the next five years: half a billion mobile subscribers in 2021, 1 billion mobile connections in 2024, and 50% subscriber penetration by 2025. Smartphone adoption will continue to rise rapidly in the region, reaching 50% of total connections by the end of 2020, as cheaper devices have become available. Fraudsters operating SIM Boxes are taking advantage of the scenario to bypass the formal call termination systems that fetch higher tariffs to telcos.  The calls routed through the IP networks are terminated using local SIM gateways, thus compromising the formal interconnection networks and bringing heavy losses to the telcos who have invested in building the networks. Traditionally, African countries are known to have higher interconnection tariffs compared to other regions, which further explains why such frauds are prevailing in Africa.
    • The SIM Box can have SIM cards of different operators installed, so a single SIM Box can operate with several GSM gateways. The availability of SIM cards at cheaper/zero price and the lack of law enforcement over the sale of prepaid SIM cards have also favored the growth of SIM Box fraud, further. Technological advancements have also contributed to the rise in interconnection frauds. The growing sophistication around SIM Box technologies has made fraud detection difficult, which traditional methodologies are no longer able to address. For instance, there are smart devices which mimic human behavior (HBS: Human Behavior SIM Box) which makes it challenging to detect using legacy technologies.
    • Traditional approaches such as CDR and TCG analysis are also proving to be ineffective in combatting this menace. The Call Data Record (CDR) analysis mainly focuses on threshold-based detection which the fraudsters evade by staying below the threshold and this leads to an increase in the high false positives associated with it. Test Call Generator (TCG) analysis, on the other hand, lags in terms of coverage and predictability aspects.

    Can AI/ML be the solution to address this long-standing menace?

    To conclude, the recent developments around SIM Box fraud have further aggravated the challenges faced by African telcos. With little scope for regulatory remediation and traditional approaches becoming ineffective in dealing with modern SIM Box strategies, the best way forward to prevent these attacks is by incorporating advanced technologies such as AI/ML.

    This would help telcos detect SIM Box frauds quickly, as early as within 10 minutes of usage. Moreover, AI/ML can help in identifying the various hidden complex patterns which otherwise would go undetected through traditional rule-based approaches. These advanced technologies can also enable telcos to monitor the changing behavior of the SIM Box without the need for manual intervention.

    These technologies represent a key weapon in the telecom regulators’ arsenal in their fight against fraud. This also becomes a vital step towards constructing sustainable and safe telecom ecosystems and would help Telcos in devising an advanced fraud detection approach to address this crisis.

    To find out how you can take the next step towards fighting SIM Box fraud

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  • How CFOs in Telecommunications can increase their productivity and lead the change

    How CFOs in Telecommunications can increase their productivity and lead the change

    On reading articles about new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) appointments, we often see directorial boards or CEOs remark that they needed “a strategic finance officer” or someone who can “partner with key stakeholders to define strategy.”

    With data and risk falling under the prerogative of CFOs, these executives are emerging as key value drivers within organizations. A study conducted by TCS in September 2019 found that the top 5 areas where CFOs want to invest their energies are:

    • Technology-enabled business model evolution/transformation
    • Capital allocation for digital transformation initiatives
    • New product and service development
    • Non-traditional risk management
    • Enterprise-wide analytics, data and talent governance

    Comparing this with an earlier study on CFO goals in the telecommunications industry, it seems like not much has changed in the past 4 years. In 2015, the strategic goals of CFOs in the telecommunications industry were listed as:

    • Gain deeper insights into customer needs as well as P&L drivers
    • Reduce costs from manual business processes
    • Accelerate speed through innovative business models
    • Achieve operational excellence with timely quality business information
    • Use technology to improve service delivery and profitability

    In reality though, as a Deloitte survey reveals, CFOs spend 60% of their time on traditional finance operations including managing revenue, accounting, internal audits, and compliance.

    Clearly, transitioning from an operational controller to a leader who drives strategic vision within the enterprise calls for wide-scale alignment between people, processes, and technology.

    Here are some ways I believe CFOs can reduce operational bandwidth and shift their focus to leadership tasks:

    1. Improve data governance

    Revenue and cost reporting are critical in all organizations, and these depend largely on the existing data sets within the enterprise. Every CXO must trust their own data, which requires strong data governance. This could include unifying data within large data lakes, cleansing data, and making it easily and securely consumable in reports. Based on one of their own surveys, the Japan Association for Chief Financial Officers (JACFO) argue that there is a strong link between profitability and structure within CFO organizations. CFOs who participate actively – whether by analyzing return on investments (ROI) or product profitability and making decisions on retiring non-performing products – contribute to increasing the top line.

    2. Create a comprehensive risk catalog

    CFOs need a well-defined risk catalog for their revenue models, which must also be non-traditional, to adapt to dynamic trends. This can include auditing irregularities, inaccurate rating and billing, and measuring risk around digital transformation. Such a catalog should capture risk comprehensively and define plans for mitigation, business continuity, and continuous improvement.

    3. Infuse support across the organization

    As CFO roles evolve from revenue reporting to financial planning and analysis, (predictive as well as prescriptive), they are shifting from enabling revenue assurance to delivering business assurance. Thus, financial officers find themselves reaching into areas like customer experience, marketing, sales, and network profitability. It is no longer enough to simply update costs at high level, rather they need to track revenue and distribute the indirect and direct cost to the end consumer to define the customer’s profitability or margin. For example, access to ARPU data will help CFOs better validate customers. Tapping into revenue from a user receiving many incoming calls may generate more margin than, say, a customer making high value recharges or paying high rental but without any usage.

    4. Use technology and automation

    The adoption maturity of AI/ML technologies among CSPs remains patchy. For instance, while there is deep penetration of AI in revenue forecasting, some CFOs still grapple with Excel sheets and lack basic automation like reading invoices, performing credit and debit checks, etc. The absence of workflow automation can deeply impact productivity, especially in situations like the current COVD-19 pandemic when remote working and email communication can cause poor versioning, data duplication, etc., leading to higher inefficiencies.

    Despite having the right talent and vision, CFOs may continue to struggle to progress beyond stewardship roles as long as they lack the right tools and technologies.

    Subex’s consulting and advisory services can help CFOs align people, process and technology through strong capabilities around data governance, risk mitigation, cross-functional transparency, and more.

    Looking to transform your finance organization into an agile and strategic one?

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