Testing

Tag: Revenue Assurance

  • The “Revenue” of Revenue Assurance

    The “Revenue” of Revenue Assurance

    What is the scope of Revenue Assurance? Honestly, this is a vendor / RA team/ consultant capability dependant age old myth, leading to the term being a misfit for the purpose. There are always things that one can debate on such as what is in scope and what is out of scope? However, if one takes the terms “revenue” and “assurance” at the face value what would be defined as the scope of work? It would simply mean any activity/event that has the ability to generate revenue should be monitored to ensure that the associated ‘revenue’ is generated; and if it is not, ensure steps are taken to fix it. Sounds fair? But then, this brings in another primary question: “What is “revenue”?

    Ask personnel from finance and they would give you the most appropriate and correct answer. Now if you ask the same question to an RA professional, the response would not be encouraging. It is not to say that such individuals don’t know anything- but it is a matter of knowledge w.r.t the financial context. Typically, the individuals working in the RA department have sound knowledge of KPIs, data analysis and such items that are monitored as part of RA activities.  However, often the large part of data analysis related to finding leakage is not translated in the correct/appropriate terms for business benefit.  The net effect of this at times, results in inappropriate KRAs for the RA department. I remember hearing somewhere, the KRA for the RA department for an operator was to detect x% more leakage from the previous year!  I don’t think that is a valid KRA.

    The solution therefore is to establish the following two things:

    1. KRA’s for the RA department need to be worked backwards: The KRA’s of the department need to be defined keeping in mind the core business objective of the operator.  In this aspect, one would have to determine, how to map the organization KRA’s to that of the RA department? This would definitely vary across operators. Example, if the organization’s focus is to improve profitability of services, one would have to determine the impact of the same in cases of leakage.  Hence, the KRA for RA department would have to be worked backwards to ensure that the efforts put in by the RA department are aimed at fixing leakages around activities that would improve profitability.
    1. Accounting of detected leakages in a manner that makes sense:  The “revenue” calculations should be used only for quantification and gauging the leakage potential and recovery. This may or may not be the most accurate revenue calculation because RA is not accountable for revenue generation. However, there are a few methods  which use the following of revenue calculation
      1. ARPU
      2. “best fit rating” of usage xDRs
      3. Effective rate of XDRs
      4. Effective rate of files

    NOTE: A revenue assurance department should ideally NOT even attempt to calculate Revenue per Stream/Service/Business Unit, ARPU, AMPU and other revenue figures. These should be obtained from the financial systems for quantification of the leakage detected and to understand the potential impact of leakage on the top line of the company.

    Besides “revenue” there are multiple other aspects of RA that should be addressed and answered much before the start of RA activities. In the next post I would try to address the following 5 questions that should be looked at, as the business aspect around RA:

    1. Who is responsible for RA?
    2. What should be viewed as the tactical task for the RA department?
    3. What is the ideal number of controls that should be worked on by the RA teams?
    4. What are the most important parameters to report on?
    5. Is Cost Management a part of RA activities?
  • Should the government be in the business of running a business? – Subex Limited

    Should the government be in the business of running a business? – Subex Limited

    Could privatization of Air India have saved this day? Should the government be running a business? Should it have left the business to people with the necessary skills and expertise? It is argued that privatization, which is a part of disinvestment process, results in better use of resources and efficient allocation. Around the world, many instances of businesses that have thrived after government relinquishing control are common place (there is also the other side that have not taken off well due to various other critical success factors not being met).Nevertheless, increasingly, governments are taking the role of regulators and not producers.

    Is it not a similar situation being observed in Telecom industry? From a situation where the Telco’s produced (or managed) everything themselves, they are shifting their focus to building brand equity, customer satisfaction and user experience. Thus, telco’s are deciding how their eco-system needs to shape and work to achieve their goals (regulators), while a partner is delivering the required results (producers). Some of the strategic outsourcing engagements in India (Bharti and IBM for example) are very good examples of a thriving partnership. What was common place for networks is now spreading its tentacles to B/OSS.

    Of course, many Telco’s are in a quandary on where to fit in functions like Revenue Assurance & Fraud Management – firstly, does it come under tactical operations or strategic business? One RA business head that I know of in the region has been tasked, by the CFO, with a specific KRA of increasing revenue by “x%” from the existing customer base in the current FY. Many more are likely to follow suit in the coming years (refer to KPMG Global RA survey 2012). The profile of RA/FM is changing – in addition to protecting revenues; they are involved in the areas of enhancement & managing revenues. Hence, the answer to the question above – RA/FM are both tactical (producing the desired results) and strategic (supporting the strategic initiatives of the organization).

    Now what would be the right strategy – should I outsource or not? There is no one answer that is right. The only right answer is “what suits you”, depending on the organizational social & cultural makeup, risk appetite and the scale of economic issues. When I meet my customers, we work with multiple options and eventually decide on the best fit. Here are a few possibilities that could be looked at:

    • Pilot program (minimal scope, few people, short duration etc) for the risk averse
    • Bonus / Gain share to ensure accountability from vendors
    • Part outsourcing the tactical part and retaining strategic initiatives (remember one main challenge is to retain resources for career progression reasons. This would be an opportunity to give them the much needed upward movement into a new area)

    No matter what the option chosen, it is important that it works for both the partners in meeting the common goals.

    And, I hope Air India takes off well again – they have better leg-room and delicious food compared to other airlines in the sector.

  • Would Product upgrade alone solve the problem?

    Would Product upgrade alone solve the problem?

    During one of my business travels recently, I met the Revenue Assurance & Fraud Management heads of few telco’s. There was one meeting in particular that struck me – let me call him Jack, the AVP of FM. Jack has been using a Fraud Management System(FMS) for close to 4 years & has certain business challenges to address. Jack was exploring the option of upgrading the FMS to tackle the challenges and needs.

    Jacks’ primary challenge was to build a business case justification for FM upgrade to show the elusive RoI. Apparently, there have been challenges of his team detecting fraud, and he was of the belief that an upgrade will help address the fraud in new generation of services (which the current system is not capable of) and thus contribute to the RoI.

    On probing further it was clear that he’s been under tremendous pressure from the higher-ups to showcase RoI, especially in the recent past due to tough macro-economic conditions. Some more questioning and discussions with his team members revealed that there have been (and are) many hurdles in performing their tasks –

    a)      IT issues pertaining to system availability, performance, processing & tuning

    b)      Knowledge issues in fine-tuning the rules and thresholds periodically

    c)      People issues in understanding the domain and carrying out effective and smart investigations

    While the operator is on a drive to introduce Next Generation services, more than 88% of the revenue still comes from traditional services – Voice, SMS/MMS, Roaming, Interconnect and GPRS. The top frauds also happen in these areas – https://www.cfca.org/fraudlosssurvey/

    It was a revelation for Jack when the data was put up for discussion. It was also evident that an upgrade alone is not going to solve his problem. The need of the hour was an overhaul of the entire eco-system (address the 88%), along with the upgrade (to address the remaining 12%).

    During the course of the discussion, I suggested a few best practices based on prior experience through the Managed Services engagements.

    a)      Conduct an assessment to baseline the performance of the current function, including a SWOT analysis and detailing a roadmap for growth

    b)      Basis assessment, build a business case for justification for skills/efficiency improvement and required technological upgrades

    c)      As next step, strengthen the foundation of fraud prevention by improving on people, process by leveraging on best practices and experience from vendors and partners if needed

    d)     Once the basics are addressed, mature to the next level by incorporating technological, process, procedures & skill upgrades

    I also quoted one such Subex Managed Services engagement in India, where the operator was on an older version of the Fraud Management when the engagement started and has seen more than 2 times RoI within a year, followed by an upgrade to latest version. This helped them in the following ways:

    a)      Optimize the resources as a first step and improve on fraud operations through skilled workforce, leveraging on existing technology and automation of repeatable tasks

    b)      This resulted in significant financial savings, lowered operational and workforce risks, improved knowledge and enhanced business agility

    c)      The highly scalable model for future growth also meant they were able to choose specific fraud related services and technological upgrades depending on its strategic objectives and business priorities

    Jack, being the positive person, was able to appreciate a new perspective on his challenges and is looking forward to a detailed assessment to build a case for strengthening the FM team.

    After this incident, I wonder are there more Jack’s out there with the right intention but not necessarily armed with the right tools?

  • Are you losing 90% of interconnect revenue due to Bypass Fraud ?

    Are you losing 90% of interconnect revenue due to Bypass Fraud ?

    Sim Box Fraud, Landing Fraud, Grey Routing, VOIP Bypass whatever you may want to call it – Bypass Fraud continues to hurt operators across the globe. As per CFCA, operators lost more than 2.88 Billion USD to Bypass fraud in 2011!!! Imagine operators could have sold 7 million Iphones and 3.5 Million Ipads with that much money.
    In the recent past we heard of 2 news involving Bypass fraud in Philippines and Ghana –
    • A huge bypass racket involving three Taiwanese nationals and a Filipino was unearthed at a condo at Makati City – Manila, Philippines. . Losses for operators ran up to millions of Pesos.
    • While in Ghana – where operators have lost millions of dollars to bypass fraud, the regulatory body has made it clear that if it discovers any illegally acquired SIM cards being used for SIM Box fraud, the respective telecom operators would be held responsible and made to pay for it
    Below infographic highlights the unique approach used by Subex to not only detect Bypass fraud but also detect the root cause and prevent it.

    To download pdf, click on the given link Bypass Fraud Infographic

    Sim-Box-Fraud

    Co-Authors – Ravish P, Nithin G & Ashwini S.

    Sources:   https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=224287
    https://allafrica.com/stories/201112010282.html
    https://www.fox979online.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=78:vodafone-and-police-bust-another-sim-box-fraud&catid=4:business-news&Itemid=4

    https://fixed-mobile-convergence.tmcnet.com/news/2012/01/03/6027997.htm

    https://archives.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=29347

    https://www.ossnewsreview.com/telecom-oss/the-berkman-center-defines-bypass-fraud/

    https://fixed-mobile-convergence.tmcnet.com/news/2012/01/03/6027997.htm

  • Zen and the art of Root Cause Analysis

    Zen and the art of Root Cause Analysis

    Our story begins with Farmer Joe who has a beautiful daughter Janet. Farmer Joe decides to bequeath the family decorative pin to Janet on her 20th birthday. Now Janet, in a fit of unbridled joy decides to run around a haystack holding the pin towards the heavens. Suddenly,in a scene far too clichéd to be coincidence, she trips and the pin falls into the haystack…

    Now begins the daunting task of “finding the pin in the haystack”. Janet is faced with a dilemma which would be quite familiar to RA analysts the world over – how do we find the pattern which highlights the root cause (or the pin, if you are a farmer’s daughter who goes by the name of Janet) within a world of millions of CDRs.

    Of course, the solution is to cut the haystack into smaller cubes and search smaller segments for the pin. Does this sound familiar to you, my RA analyst friend? It should – because this is the way we attempt to find the root cause today. When your system presents you with millions of CDRs (or, God forbid, meaningless summaries), we tend to break them into smaller sets which have seemingly similar patterns. Then begins the back-breaking task of finding the elusive pattern that indicates the root cause – an endeavor that involves quite a few cups of strong coffee, pointless mails and shattered dreams regarding deadlines and analyst efficiencies.

    But hey, this is how we do Root Cause Analysis the world over right? We would reduce our effort by managing the problem size right? Well, it gives me great pleasure to say that the winds of change are blowing. Today, I would like to introduce to you to a fundamental paradigm shift in Root Cause analysis which would effectively transform the way we do RA.

    Let’s imagine for a second that Janet decides to find the pin by placing a powerful magnet over the haystack. Consider how much time and effort she saves, as compared to breaking the large haystack into smaller stacks. Consider how sure this solution is, as compared to the possibility of not finding the pin even after breaking the haystack into smaller segments.

    Now imagine such a magnet for RA. A magnet that presents the analyst with all the hidden patterns in a problem set (discrepant CDRs). Imagine how this would change your day in terms of boosting analyst efficiency, achieving cost efficiencies as a department, being prepared to handle new and upcoming technologies and always staying one step ahead of the curve.

    That magnet has a name, and its name is “Zen”. Subex recently launched ROC Revenue Assurance 5, and along-with RevenuePad (which my colleague Moinak would write about), Zen is one of the fundamental pillars of this ground-breaking solution.

    Zen is an automated Root Cause Advisory engine which provides, for the first time ever, machine intelligence for pattern identification and presentment. What makes it revolutionary is that the engine is programmed to sniff out patterns with minimal involvement from the analyst. Give Zen two data sets, and it will tell you exactly why some CDRs in data set 1 are not present in data set 2. This also involves telling the analyst what percentage of the total data set can be linked to any particular pattern. Since pictures speak louder than words, here is a sample illustration:

    Zen is essentially a data analytics engine for ROC Revenue Assurance 5. Based on the discrepant sets identified as the result of an audit, Zen automatically fires up the pattern analytics engine. As Zen works on identifying the patterns, it also works on linking the patterns to specific CDRs (to ensure that an audit trail would be maintained). Finally, Zen presents the analyst with a comprehensive view of:

    • All identified patterns in the discrepant data set
    • Distribution of how many CDRs are linked to which pattern
    • Historic event indicators to further guide the analyst towards the root cause

    Zen is keyed towards two “Intelligent” actions:

    • Pattern Analytics
    • Analyst Feedback integration

    We refer to Patterns as “Areas” and the learning from past investigations as “Reasons”. Why do we need both, you ask? The answer is fairly simple – the same pattern (or Area) might have presented itself for very different “Reasons”. A simple example of Subscriber profile between HLR and Billing might clarify this point.

    An analyst, on performing the HLR vs Billing subscriber reconciliation, finds that 20 subscribers on the HLR are not present on the Billing platform. Now, in the absence of provisioning logs, he/she might surmise that this is a simple case of provisioning error and forward the information to the relevant teams.

    However, if the same discrepancy is seen next week for the same set of subscribers, it might be prudent to address the possibility of internal fraud as well. Here we see an example where the same pattern (20 subscribers are missing repeatedly in billing but are provisioned on the network) might be due to two distinct “Reasons” – Provisioning Error or Internal Fraud.

    Zen helps you tie it together. Reasons are incorporated into the Zen engine based on “Acknowledgments” received from various teams. This helps to ensure that “False Reasons” are minimized. In this manner, Zen becomes a repository of Analyst intelligence to address the world-over issue of Knowledge Management in RA.

    Zen is a virtual analyst who never sleeps, eats or goes on vacations. For sure he will never leave the team (taking his accumulated knowledge with him).

    In conclusion, I want all of us to take a moment to step into Janet’s shoes. The pin is in the haystack, and the stack is getting bigger and bigger all the time (due to burgeoning volumes and technology/product complexity). The timelines to find that pin are ever-shrinking, and cost reduction is the call of the hour globally.

    How is your team planning on finding that pin?