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The future of Revenue Assurance – ‘Expert opinion’

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]One of the most evolving functions in the telco BSS side of things is Revenue Assurance. Over the years, it has molded itself into many forms catering to changing business needs, new offerings and market dynamics. However, now seems to be a time that is different from anything we have seen earlier, as the influence of ‘Digital’ on telcos is immense. The possibilities for telcos in the digital world are infinite, and so are the risks – providing immense scope for the evolution of traditional functions like Revenue Assurance. So, we went about asking some of the highly regarded RA experts in the industry what they think is the future of the Revenue Assurance function is, and here is what they said (listed in alphabetical order)

“The Telecom industry has cut across economic barriers and has created a media that surpasses limitations placed on the economy of a nation by its physical infrastructure. The Telecom revolution has hit all countries across the globe from first world to third world. As markets mature and subscribers grow in numbers, new operators set up operations to tap the markets, existing operators face pressures to maintain their customer base, ARPU and ultimately their margins.
The advent of competition has brought about a need to maintain the top lines of the companies, which can be achieved by effective strategy and efficient operations which has very well visible digital Impact. One of the key components for maintaining revenues and profitability is through operational efficiency by continuous deployment of is Revenue Assurance controls across Revenue streams.”

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Amit Agrawal, Du – EITC

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“RA solutions continue to address different threats as new services are deployed, however IoT usage patterns means need automated customization for each deployment is needed, requiring and understanding of each application.
Real-time monitoring shifts RA solutions into operational systems providing fraud management capabilities, helping to mitigate risks and build trust for customers.
CSPs tempted to reduce investments should consider it like continuing vaccinations even when a disease is eradicated”

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Justin van der Lande, Analysys Mason

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“I believe as Revenue Assurance is gradually evolving towards Business Assurance and telecom industry is transforming towards the digital arena, the role of business assurance will increasingly focus on adding value in business decision making owing to its enhanced analytical capabilities & commercial ingenuity using artificial intelligence, robotics and next-generation business assurance solutions. This will shift the emphasis from revenue saving to value maximization, operational efficiency and reduction in residual losses through proactive controls & processes.”

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Mustafa Ali, Batelco

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“Automation, Digitalization, Process Optimization, everything evolves with customer needs and business risks. In essence, RA should be an agile process with no manual activity: you always need to have the right indicators, suitable and comprehensive, scalable and quickly. In my opinion, a large part of RA should be integrated and taken into account at the time of the construction of the equipment managing offers and revenue streams.
Solution providers and manufacturers should combine their know-how to integrate upstream and perfect this dimension of control.”

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Ndeye Coumba, Sonatel

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“Business transformation is taking place faster and the sources of income generation change in the same way. Traditional revenues are being replaced by new digital businesses, which are supported by processes with technologies that require evolving with more efficient control models, capable of processing a lot of information in real time.
Revenue from new digital businesses and carrier billing has been rising in the order of 25% per year and from the revenue assurance area we have the challenge of transforming ourselves to detect unknown errors that are not evident today. The idea is to take advantage of big data always safeguarding the relevance of information security and privacy, to strengthen and give intelligence to our controls, anticipating risks and avoiding potential leaks, not only with the view of income, but in an integral way that allows us to ensure the business margin in an increasingly competitive market.”

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Nelson Sepúlveda B., Telefónica / Movistar Chile

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“In the era of 5G, CSPs are looking at their revenue assurance functions to monetise zeta-bytes of structured & unstructured data to detect patterns, outliers, and learning behaviours. The proliferation of products and the emergence of and API based economy have pushed RA/FM professionals have to find new ways to keep pace with the industry. AI/ML algorithms will assist RA/FM experts to relieve some of the workload and will allow them to take data driven decisions. Data scientists will play a role in creating, adapting and executing models that will detect new issues, reduce the number of false positives, increase the coverage, and improve accuracy. In the future years, Revenue Assurance will play an even more crucial role to protect the bottom line and create enough opportunities to enhance the top line.”

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Nikhil Sehgal, Colt

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“Digital innovations clearly place consequential challenges on Telcos who must reinvest in and reinvent themselves for incremental revenues in a competitive arena. Therefore, the future of revenue assurance rests in focus beyond controlling leakages within acceptable limits, to focusing value enhancements from statistically discernible causes of performance departures for tracking and improving stated objectives. With the best end-to-end visibility of the revenue value chain, under-funding assurance places a liability on the future.”

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Ope Faniran, 9Mobile

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“Considering the evolution of business dynamics, the scale at which Revenue Assurance is maturing is incredible with more focus on cost optimization, capex management, and knife-edge driven preventive measures thereby climbing up the ladder to be owner of Business Assurance. Growth demands RA to become BA with getting rid of ROI instead to play pivotal role in mitigating risks and minimizing leakages to bring in more value to the company.”

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Sai Devata, Viva Kuwait

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“As the industry goes digital the challenges for revenue assurance will change but basics will remain. As Revenue Assurance professionals, we need to understand the new risk landscape: cybersecurity and eco-system weaknesses will bring new risks. Digital solutions will also provide new opportunities to assure revenues and transactions. We need to embrace digital and ensure business processes are born digital with Revenue Assurance embedded in them leveraging on new technology as we do so.”

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Sarah Hakeem, Millicom

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“The Customer being the nucleus of the business, the future of Revenue Assurance is definitely to assure a superior customer journey and experience. Besides business growth, QoS, profitability, and enhancing the culture of risk management, as telcos continue to evolve into Digital Service Providers, RA will further step up to play a decisive role in assuring security of its services, data privacy, regulatory compliance and data governance.”

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Straus Dias, Ooredoo Qatar

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“With the ever-evolving and increasingly complex business models governing telecommunications, driven by competition to provide subscribers with an expanding array of devices (from phones and accessories to branding merchandise) and services (from voice and data to media and entertainment), legacy views of Revenue Assurance will have decreasing financial value. Revenue Assurance organizations will be forced to consider costs for performing margin assurance, while also understanding business opportunities and risks in a broader Business Assurance role.”

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Taruna Rajan, T-Mobile

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So, those were the views of some of the top RA practitioners in the industry. What are your thoughts on the subject? Let us know in the comments section.

If you want your thoughts to be featured in the next ‘Experts opinion’ article, write to us here.

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September 30, 2019
Choosing the Right Converged Partner Management Solution

What is a Converged Partner Management Solution?

Converged partner management is a unified solution which caters to the entire gamut of partner needs of a telecom operator. The platform addresses the needs of both traditional and digital partners by spreading across different domains and helps to handle the complex relationships between the suppliers and vendors of the telecom operator.

Why you need a Converged Partner Management Solution

Over the last decade, digitalization has transformed the communication service provider (CSP) landscape. It has created a need to achieve market differentiation in response to the evolving customer profiles and prevail over emerging challenges from disruptive services. Telco revenues from legacy voice and SMS are on the decline and there is high CAPEX associated with network innovation. Telcos can turn this around by evolving as Digital Service Providers (DSPs). But the biggest challenge in this transformation is to bring both traditional and new digital partners together to create an integrated industry specific solution. But the success rate of these partnerships and integrations is very low as it comes with multiple challenges. Inefficient partner onboarding process, tariff management for multiple plans, billing and invoice reconciliation while taking OPEX into consideration. Based on a research 70% of partnerships fail due to trust and clarity of business relationships. There is a need of sustainable partnerships which can create value for everyone in the ecosystem.

In this scenario, a converged partner management approach proves beneficial from both business and service perspectives. From the business perspective, a converged platform will help to visualize the partners’ business. It will consolidate partners into a single contractual binding and bundle the offerings, settlements, and payments across the entire domains. A converged partner management solution packs features that give CSPs freedom to experiment with NGN service offerings such as content management without having to worry about the scalability of its billing function. The solution enables telecom operators to have all their business partnerships in one single place and makes it easier to access information and make efficient business decisions. This is especially important as different partners insist different models in measuring the business impact and ROI.

How to Choose the Right Converged Partner Management Solution

Selecting a partner management solution to manage your partnerships efficiently is not an easy decision. The solution should complement the operations of the service provider and offers features and functionalities that remove operational errors and smoothen the partner management process.

Below are the key features you should look for in a Converged Partner Management Solution

Partner Self Onboarding: The partner onboarding platform can support self-boarding, manual onboarding and in some cases, a mix of both. The self-boarding platform will play a significant role in the digital era, giving the DSP the ability to perform most of the onboarding activities by automating the process like partner scoring on configurable KPIs and other partner details.

Partner Scoring- Pre-Onboarding & Post Onboarding: Partner scoring can assist an operator to take pre and post onboarding decisions based on business KPIs, and this can be combined with standard agreed contracts to make the complete process automated.

Defining the Partner Business: Defining the businesses of both traditional and digital partners is a complex process especially in the context of service offerings, revenue sharing and service agility. The business for traditional partners such as interconnect revolved around exchange of voice, SMS and usage of other services so the contract includes bilateral deals for settling the traffic and event rates. On the other hand, contract with digital partners like OTT players, content providers, VAS companies, MSOs, integrators, app developers, IoT and M2M service providers involves complex revenue sharing model as the settlement may be based on usage of resources, impressions/ clicks on the website, readings from metered equipment, among others. A converged partner management solution will help telcos to implement revenue sharing models that can be fixed, shared or a hybrid depending on the nature of the partner business.

End-to-End Billing and Settlement: Helps the business to define rules and apply them to the events acquired to generate the final revenue figure to both the DSP and the partner. The system achieves this through accurate rating and charging, real-time updates, and on-time bill and statement generation.

ETL (extract, transform, load) to Track and Process Events: The ETL tool is required to process different types of events from various sources and transform them to respective entities by extracting the relevant information. Considering the dynamic and open nature of the DSP ecosystem, the ETL tool should be flexible enough to handle the frequent onboarding of new partners and build mediation capability supporting ingestion and normalization of data from multiple partners in different formats.

Partner Communication and Self-Care: A converged platform should enable a consolidated communication portal to manage all the operational aspects of the business including contractual updates, bills, settlements, credit debit notes, trouble ticketing, and dispute management. The portal should also be integrated to the backend systems to orchestrate each operational aspect towards the respective system for action and resolution. Finally, it should feature open APIs that enable quick integration with third-party systems.

Visibility of Partner Business: Real-time visibility ensures transparency across the businesses. Through real-time analytics of reports, alerts and notifications, the converged platform can enhance the visibility and reporting across different channels.

Are You Ready?

New age partnerships require transparency and trust between the partners to create a robust ecosystem. A Converged Telecom Partner Management solution will help telcos to manage these new age partnerships efficiently and enable them to drive new business models. This will also reduce the time to market for new offers and packages and allow telcos and partners to acquire new customers and add new revenue streams.

Are you ready for a converged partner management solution to succeed in the new age digital ecosystem?

Download the Webinar recording!

September 26, 2019
Videos still loading? They don’t need to anymore
Video continues to exert its sway as the most popular digital medium, quickly becoming the new storytelling norm, over text and still images. However, the consumption of high-quality video through mobile devices – which happens to be the most popular viewing option – is dependent on advanced technologies such as 4G, which is the prevailing streaming mobile technology for today, and the years to come. With 5G on the horizon, the technology holds promise for lightning-fast data speed which will leverage on the foundation built by 4G.

The sheer volume of online video content has witnessed an exponential increase in the last few years and is only expected to skyrocket in the near future. Consider these statistics:
- 82% of total IP traffic (both business and consumer) will be video by 2022[1]
- Consumer Video-on-Demand (VoD) traffic will nearly double by 2022[2]
- Mobile video will increase nine-fold between 2017 and 2022, accounting for 79% of total mobile data traffic by 2022 end[3]
It’s a no-brainer that video is now the norm and the coming years will only witness burgeoning consumer demand for high-quality video content consumed on mobile devices, including in 4K and 8K formats (in soon-to-be-released mobile devices). Growing demand for seamless and consistent viewing experiences across multiple devices and platforms will lead to an increase in the need for advanced mobile technologies supporting higher speeds, seamless connectivity, and sufficient capacity.

Industry sentiment is that 5G will be the powering factor for true seamless, high-definition video delivery. However, I believe that 4G, provided it is smartly planned and managed, will be able to deliver as required. This comes with a caveat that CSPs need to overcome challenges that have emerged from their current network investment planning processes.

Challenges Faced by CSPs in Offering Quality Video Content over Mobile Devices

Though technological advancements in live video streaming continue to proliferate, content providers are faced with certain critical challenges when it comes to providing seamless experiences to consumers. Some of the top challenges include:

Communication intensity growth: Communication intensity can be defined as: The ratio of the amount of time users spend on their devices, as compared to the absolute number of digital customers (unique subscribers, smartphones and devices). In today’s ecosystem, both metrics are increasing exponentially, and according to Ovum, communication intensity will grow by 63% over the next ten years. This trend is being fueled predominantly by video-related content.

The dramatic increase in demand has really challenged CSPs to maintain high benchmarks for customer experience while mobile subscribers consume copious amounts of streaming content.

Lack of ubiquitous 4G availability

As described above, 4G can offer more than the required bandwidth to have videos stream in real-time. However, speed is of little benefit if it isn’t accessible. There have been improvements made in terms of coverage, however ubiquitous 4G availability is still far away. This is a struggle which even the most developed nations deal with most of the time.

To elaborate further, when I say 4G availability, it means the proportion of time users with a 4G handset have a 4G connection. To put it into context, 4G availability of 80% of a tier 1 CSP means that on an average their subscribers are connected to 4G services 80% of the time.

So, what exactly happens during the remaining 20%? When subscribers lose their connection to a 4G network, their smartphone usually gets handed over to a legacy technology such as 3G to maintain service continuity. In such a scenario, continuing to stream a high definition video will likely be up to 4-5 times slower than 4G, resulting in an extremely poor video streaming experience.

Lack of intelligent future proof planning

4G technology, which can offer a truly superior mobile broadband experience, has witnessed an extraordinary surge in usage resulting in exponential data growth. If this growth is not managed intelligently then it will lead to network congestion, degrading end-user experience. For this reason, CSPs must understand their current state of the network in terms of end-to-end QoS, radio conditions, and capacity requirements. Based on this, CSPs can establish strong mechanisms to measure QoE from encrypted video content streamed into their network and leverage advanced analytics to establish actionable correlations between QoE, QoS, radio conditions and capacity. Only then can they be truly future-ready to meet the demands of consumers of video content and handle the forecasted exponential growth of video traffic seamlessly and efficiently.

Moreover, a powerful analytics solution enables CSPs to have a 360^o visibility into the network impact and consumer trends of video data growth to improve revenue and gain competitive advantage.

[1] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white-paper-c11-741490.html

[2] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white-paper-c11-741490.html

[3] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white-paper-c11-738429.html

To learn more about the factors that enable a seamless video streaming experience, Watch our on-demand webinar : “The essential ingredients to gain competitive advantage in the mobile video era”

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September 25, 2019
SIM SWAP FRAUD: Stepping into the fraudster’s shoes!

“Lose a credit card and the loss may be in thousands… Lose a SIM Card, the loss is irreparable”

Last week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey became the latest high-profile account to be targeted by SIM swappers. Dorsey’s account sent several tweets, including some with racial slurs and others that defended Nazi Germany. Luckily for him, his account was secured soon after, and the consequences weren’t catastrophic. However, there have been many instances where SIM swappers have left victims in a really troubled state – especially the ones targeted for monetary gains.

SIM swap is a type of phishing fraud that poses a serious threat to customer along with the telecom and the banking environments. The SIM SWAP fraudster in here obtains an individual’s banking details through vishing/smishing/phishing techniques or by purchasing these from organized crime networks. They then use this information, including personal details sourced via social media, to pose as the victim to the mobile network operator and fool them into cancelling and reactivating the victim’s mobile number to a SIM in their possession. As a result, all calls and texts to the victim’s number are routed to the fraudster’s phone, including one-time passwords for banking transactions. After receiving a one-time pin or password from a bank, the fraudster can then potentially access the customer’s bank account and transfer funds. The SIM SWAP fraud impacts not just the victim, financially but also the telecom operator and the bank, equally. As non-adherence to consumer interests and protection, in many countries, both the entities (the telco and the bank) are legally liable to compensate the victim for his/her financial losses. When the loss is in millions, the impact is very grave!

Have you ever taken a moment to pause and think from a fraudster’s perspective to counter the fraud? Well most blogs that you will find on the internet on SIM SWAP will tell you ways (in bulletin points) as how to protect your assets from the SIM SWAP fraud. However, I am quite sure that there will only be a handful of blogs that will tell you how a SIM SWAP fraudster thinks in-order to be able to protect your customers from such attacks.

Without much ado, let me take you through the 4 vicious stages involved in the SIM SWAP fraud attack which will help you understand your SIM SWAP fraudster better and stay ahead of them on any given day!

Stage 1 – “Cherry picking and stalking”

Fraudsters are always on the loom to pick on their fraudsters and the social media, has, in a great way helped them in getting away with their desired schemes. A SIM SWAP fraudster may look for a high-profile customer or a prosperous and wealthy business personnel who generally solicits with prospective clients over social media. The SIM SWAP fraudster here could impersonate one such client, send out a connection request and start to closely monitor the victim’s activities. The SIM SWAP fraudster can even hijack an account of the victim’s affiliate to initiate conversations/get more information about the victim. In events where the victim does not have enough digital footprints, SIM SWAP fraudsters have even taken the road of dumpster diving and shoulder surfing!

Stage 2 – “Impersonating the victim”

At this stage, the fraudster has got all the information he/she needed to pass through the authentication protocols required to get hold of the victim’s assets. Once he/she has managed to convince the bank and Telecom Operator of his/her false identity, he/she goes on to take-over the customer’s personal assets such as his/her sim card or his bank account.

Stage 3 – “Swindling at once”

Having gained total control over the victim’s assets, the SIM SWAP fraudster now tries to extract monetary benefits from the victim’s assets at a single go. Here the victim is totally cut-off from his/her mobile network even without knowing it. By the time the victim gets to know that there are transactions carried out on his/her account without their knowledge, the damage is done!

Stage 4 – “Covering it up”

After having caused enough damage to the victim, the SIM SWAP fraudster lets go of the victim’s assets and goes on to hunt for another victim. The SIM SWAP fraudster makes sure that he/she makes enough improvisations to his/her fraudulent schemes so as not to appear like a serial offender, thereby leaving the law keeping forces with very little clue of the fraudster’s whereabouts!

SIM SWAP fraud, unlike many other telecom/bank frauds requires a joint effort from the customer, the bank and the telco. However, catching hold of the SIM SWAP fraudster doesn’t require the brains of Sherlock Holmes! Vigilance and a little proactiveness on how a fraudster might possibly behave can help catch them at a very early stage. To counter the ill-effects of the fraud, top Telecom Service providers like AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and other are harping on customer authentication through the 2-Factor method even during telephonic conversations.

However, I personally believe that not much is being done to study transactional pattern anomalies to identify potential fraudsters in the network and its high time bank authorities joined hands with telcos in countering the fraud. E.g. the telcos can notify the banks of change in a customer’s IMEI/MAC address/addition or modification of accounts/transactional abnormalities and then the banks can monitor the customer’s transactions for that week, in priority! Masking methods can be used during exchange of information to protect consumer interests. Telcos and banks can be more proactive by creating a database for reference where any changes made to the consumer’s profiles can be stored and looked up for instances of abnormal transactions. As preventative measures, customers can be advised by both the telcos and the banks to take enough care while sharing very personal and integral information such as card details, social security number etc. on social media or the public internet. The SIM Swap fraud is known to cause serious collateral damage and reputational loss, however, a little care taken at the right point in time can work wonders!

To know more about how you can stay vigilant about SIM Swap fraud, view this video.

September 13, 2019
Leveraging partnerships to succeed in the digital ecosystem

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has dynamically altered the global communications landscape, creating both challenges and opportunities for communication service providers (CSPs). Consumers have become increasingly demanding with respect to consistent experiences across multiple devices, and CSPs are gradually transforming into providers of advanced digital services such as bundled broadband, mobile apps, and interactive customer-centric content. This transformation into a digital service provider (DSP) is not easy and CSPs are fraught with multiple process and software challenges during this shift.

Moving from Interconnect Partnerships to Strategic Partner Management

In an intensely competitive market, CSPs face immense pressure from over the top (OTT) content providers such as Google and Facebook who have direct consumer outreach. Provision of more customized, automation enabled services through large partner ecosystems is the norm. The increasing complexity of emerging markets coupled with initiatives such as smart cities will open big digit growth opportunities capable of being handled only by huge curated partner collaborations.

Earlier, telecom operators entered into interconnect partnerships with other telecom operators mostly to leverage mutual networks for voice and messaging services. However, the proliferation of smartphones and high-speed internet services has led to a burgeoning increase in the number of partners providing a diverse range of services, leading to a shift from conventional interconnect systems to complex partner management relationships.

The Partner Management Market Is on an Upward Swing

And rightly so, considering there are about 23 vendors offering a certain level of partner management functionality globally. According to analysts, the partner relationship management market (including software and services) is estimated to stand at US$ 850 Million today and is projected to increase to about US$ 1.65 Billion by 2023[1]. The entire ecosystem is expected to undergo certain strategic functional shifts, industry and geography notwithstanding. The coming years will witness new buyer personas across diverse channel types – and channel sales and marketing professionals will realize the importance of third-party influencers in reaching new buyers. The thrust will be on providers of partner management solutions to function as trusted partners – helping widen a brand’s outreach and influence the success journey in unimaginable ways.

The need for Converged Partner Management

The telecommunications wholesale market is growing rapidly with fierce competition and dwindling profit margins. Given the enormity of transactions and immense complexities surrounding a multi-party ecosystem, it is necessary to adopt effective partner management solution to ensure better service quality levels.

[1] https://go.forrester.com/blogs/partner-relationship-management-prm-comes-of-age/

To learn how telcos can leverage partnerships to gain competitive advantage

Watch the webinar now!

August 20, 2019
¿Por qué la inteligencia artificial impulsó la Gestión de fraude?
La Inteligencia Artificial (IA) no es nueva y ha existido durante décadas. Sin embargo, con el advenimiento del big data y la informática distribuida que está disponible hoy en día, es posible darse cuenta del verdadero potencial de la IA. Desde lo que comenzó como una historia interesante en películas de ciencia ficción hasta programas como Alpha-Go que ha estado venciendo a los humanos, la IA ha ido evolucionando. La Inteligencia Artificial también se ha ramificado en múltiples subcategorías, como aprendizaje automático o machine learning, aprendizaje profundo, aprendizaje de refuerzo, etc.

Una estrategia eficaz de gestión de fraudes (FM) incluye 3 pilares importantes: detectar, investigar y proteger. Creemos que la Inteligencia Artificial puede influir positivamente en los 3 pilares de la gestión del fraude, desde reducir los falsos positivos hasta ayudar a extraer el análisis de causa de raíz y crear una mejor experiencia del cliente en protección.

En esta publicación, me gustaría ver el pilar inicial de la estrategia de Gestión de Fraudes: “Detección” y ver la influencia de IA en este paso tan importante. Un enfoque tradicional para la detección de fraudes ha sido a través de motores de reglas que podrían ser:
- Condiciones en caso contrario
- Umbrales
- Expresiones
- Evaluación de patrones de datos
Estas son ampliamente conocidas como soluciones deterministas donde un evento desencadena una acción. Los mayores pros y contras de este enfoque es que se necesita la intervención humana para alimentar la lógica.

Por ejemplo: para una detección basada en el umbral, los humanos tienen que alimentar el motor de reglas para que el recuento de registros por encima de cierto umbral sea sospechoso.

Los siguientes diagramas muestran cómo se ve esto

Después de mirar el diagrama anterior, surge una pregunta importante, si este valor de umbral es una línea recta o puede doblarse según el comportamiento de los datos. Ahora hay formas para que el motor de reglas se comporte como se menciona en el diagrama,
por ejemplo, en lugar de tener una sola regla, tengamos varias reglas
- Por categoría de cliente
- Por destino
- Por edad de los clientes
Y multiplique eso con otras dimensiones en los datos que son
- Número de teléfono
- Número de la persona que llama
- Número llamado
- Código de país
Y multiplique eso con otro conjunto de medidas por dimensiones
- Cuenta
- Duración
- valor
Y arroje mil millones de volúmenes adicionales a los conjuntos de datos
Rápidamente los equipos de FM terminan con algo como esto

Pero lo que querían o soñaban era esto

Ahora no digo que los equipos de FM no estén lo suficientemente capacitados para volar, pero un equipo de fraude en un proveedor moderno de Servicios Digitales debería estar más enfocado en otros factores importantes.

Entonces, veamos cómo una clase muy evolucionada de Inteligencia Artificial conocida como Aprendizaje Automático (Machine Learning) observa esta declaración del problema. En lugar de que los humanos alimenten la información del dominio o los umbrales, los algoritmos de aprendizaje automático extraen datos de comportamientos fraudulentos históricos y crean modelos. Estos modelos se utilizan para evaluar conjuntos de datos de producción reales para evaluar si ciertas actividades son fraudulentas o no. Una ventaja es que estos modelos son muy buenos para ver los conjuntos de datos desde múltiples dimensiones y medidas al mismo tiempo y para determinar si el evento es fraude o no.
Este enfoque ayuda a lograr múltiples KPIs de equipos de gestión de fraude allí al aumentar la eficiencia.

Mayor precisión – debido a que la inteligencia artificial puede aprender y adaptarse a los escenarios de negocios más rápido, la inteligencia artificial puede aumentar significativamente la relación positiva verdadera

Reducción del tiempo de detección – qué tan rápido se puede detectar un evento de fraude

Autoaprendizaje – cómo, durante un período, los escenarios empresariales cambiantes y la estacionalidad en los datos se pueden adoptar para la detección de fraude

Inteligencia contra el fraude– cómo se pueden aprender y clasificar los comportamientos del cliente o de cualquier otra entidad para una mejor detección del fraude

Proactividad – capacidad de extraer patrones desconocidos que no se vieron en los datos anteriormente
La aplicación de Inteligencia Artificial tiene sus propios desafíos importantes y requiere un nuevo marco de pensamiento, sin embargo, al observar el Tsunami de Datos que ha afectado a los equipos de gestión de fraudes, parece que un enfoque profesional de IA solo ayudaría a los equipos de Gestión de Fraude a escalar aún más.
August 19, 2019
Inteligencia Artificial y Machine Learning: La clave para combatir el Fraude de Identidad

En un mundo cada vez más conectado digitalmente, el fraude de identidad es un problema creciente. Según la encuesta anual de fraude de la Asociación de Control de Fraude de Comunicaciones (CFCA), el fraude de identidad ocupó el primer lugar como el método de fraude número uno presente en todo el mundo y en empresas individuales. También aparece como el primero entre los diez métodos de fraude más importantes, el fraude de identidad en las telecomunicaciones durante el proceso de suscripción (fraude de suscripción) resultó en costos de $ 2.03 mil millones.

El robo de identidad, donde el uso de identidades fabricadas en el punto de venta permite el uso fraudulento de servicios de telecomunicaciones y / o perpetúa actividades fraudulentas posteriores, puede tener serias implicancias en la era actual. Con 4G altamente interconectado y el despliegue de redes 5G que permitirán no sólo servicios de valor agregado sino también servicios financieros como pagos móviles y banca se abre el acceso como nunca antes. El robo de identidad puede funcionar como un punto de entrada para innumerables tipos de fraude o incluso terrorismo. Con acceso a autorizaciones secundarias (verificación del código PIN), el fraude de suscripción se puede utilizar para cualquier tipo de actividades ilegales.

Esto ha facilitado la necesidad urgente de una respuesta proactiva y dinámica para fomentar la seguridad de la identidad digital.

Protección contra el fraude de identidad

La respuesta para combatir el fraude radica es detectar anomalías de datos en tiempo real. Por ejemplo, para abordar el fraude en las telecomunicaciones, el Instituto de Investigación Tecnológica (TRI) ha declarado que los servicios de verificación de identidad en el punto de venta en tiempo real son una ayuda invaluable para evitar que los estafadores exploten el robo de identidad. Históricamente, las reglas siempre han estado en el sistema, pero en un mundo cada vez más conectado, la cobertura efectiva contra el fraude sólo es posible con una combinación de reglas y tecnologías aplicadas de Inteligencia Artificial (IA) y Machine Learning (ML).

Con las tecnologías Inteligencia Artificial (IA) y Machine Learning (ML), las empresas pueden detectar anomalías de datos en tiempo real y tomar decisiones basadas en la información a medida que sucede, lo que les permite anticipar y tomar medidas proactivas. Por ejemplo, las técnicas de IA / ML pueden usar la tecnología de reconocimiento facial para identificar un alto riesgo al hacer comprobaciones en listas negras. Machine Learning puede aumentar los sistemas tradicionales basados en reglas para desarrollar y entrenar algoritmos para determinar las características del tráfico e identificar anomalías que podrían terminar siendo fraudes.

Además, las inmensas cantidades de datos no seguros que fluyen desde los dispositivos conectados a las redes del operador solo se pueden proteger con IA y ML. Las tecnologías de inteligencia artificial están equipadas con la capacidad de ampliar los esfuerzos y permitir la detección de fraudes a una escala masiva mediante el manejo de la gestión de millones de puntos de datos de clientes o redes.

Si está interesado en aprender cómo las técnicas de IA / ML pueden ayudarlo a combatir el fraude de identidad

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July 11, 2019
Agility or perfection? What’s the key to business success?

This blog was originally published on LinkedIn by Vinod Kumar.

Ask a group of people to choose between the words ‘agility’ and ‘perfection’ and it is most likely that the majority would choose ‘perfection.’ This is because most people,[1] including myself, have what I would like to call a ‘perfection mindset’. Perfection was the central focus in the early part of my career and I spent a considerable time and effort to ensure every small thing was done flawlessly. However, it also meant that I had to trade off on the amount of work that can be achieved during a period of time. On top of this it also added an overall sense of pressure. Just the thought of starting out on a project itself was difficult with a perfection mindset. What should be that perfect opening or perfect background? You can sit and think about it for days. This is when I made the conscious decision to retrain myself to make the move from a perfection to an agile mindset.

Asking the vital question

I must stress here that it is vital to remember that both agility and perfection are equally important. What is pertinent then is to answer the question of which mindset is more context relevant. Let me explain. Perfection has a lasting appeal. The Taj Mahal wouldn’t be one of the wonders of the world if every inch of it were not perfect. The same holds true for the many magnificent sculptures, paintings and monuments created with utmost perfection that they continue to delight and inspire everyone for generations. However, in the current world of limited attention, information overload and rapid change isn’t it better to be agile that perfect?

When the power went out for thirty-four minutes during the 2013 US Superbowl, Oreo seized the opportunity with a tweet that read “Power Out? No problem” accompanied with a picture of a starkly-lit image of an Oreo cookie along with the caption, “You can still dunk in the dark.”[2] Viewers loved Oreo’s quick and witty take on the situation and the tweet was retweeted 10,000 times in one hour—bringing the brand unprecedented levels of customer engagement. The brilliance of tweet lay in the agility of the brand to respond in the moment, and not in the perfection of the ad copy.

Whether it is a developing a tech product or solving a business problem the present environment will benefit more from an agile mindset than a perfection mindset. We see that even companies that refused to take on a more agile approach to innovation have failed. Erstwhile popular brands like Kodak, Xerox and Blockbuster all failed to innovate as fast as their changing environment.[3]

Why agile is the answer?

Customers in today’s environment are driven by rapidly evolving expectations, an increasing desire for personalization and demand for speed—making it vital to get products and solutions out to the market quickly. This calls for an agile mindset. Creating a product, deploying it in the market and iterating with continuous feedback is much better approach than developing a perfect product in a linear fashion that may never make the mark. Applying an agile mindset improves not just products and solutions, but can extend to transforming organizational value as well. A 2018 Forbes Insights study of more than 1,000 C-level executives worldwide, found 81 percent of respondents citing organizational agility as critical component in leading a successful organization.[4] Choosing agile over perfection is the logical imperative we need.

Do you agree that agility works better than perfection in the present environment? What changes would you consider as the necessary steps to adopt an agile mindset?

I would love to hear your views on what you would choose—agility or perfection.

[1] https://hbr.org/2018/01/perfectionism-is-increasing-and-thats-not-good-news

[2] https://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/07/10/marketing-moment-101-oreo-wins-super-bowl-dunk-dark-tweet

[3] https://valuer.ai/blog/50-examples-of-corporations-that-failed-to-innovate-and-missed-their-chance/?cli_action=1560516217.943

[4]https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/09/18/1572556/0/en/FOUR-IN-FIVE-EXECUTIVES-AGREE-AGILITY-IS-MOST-IMPORTANT-CHARACTERISTIC-OF-A-SUCCESSFUL-ORGANIZATION.html

July 9, 2019
Why Analytics Alone is Insufficient for Telcos Seeking Increase in Customer Experience and Profitability?

The past decade has seen the telecom industry embark upon a momentous growth path. The number of unique mobile subscriptions worldwide has almost doubled from 2.6 billion in 2009^[1] to 5.1 billion^[2] in 2019, thanks to the quick evolution from 2G to 3G, 4G, and now 5G, along with innovations in IoT, M2M, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing. While this growth phase has led to the industry accumulating humongous amounts of data, a majority of them have not reaped the benefits of monetizing the data at their disposal—similar to how Facebook, Google or the many others are successfully doing.

Data monetization is vital for Telcos to stay ahead

Telcos are advantaged by a unique position in the ICT value chain. For example, a simple event such as planning a holiday today involves using your smartphone for a variety of tasks—from booking flights and hotels to researching the best places to explore. All of these result in the generation of varied datasets, to which telcos have access to. However, a complicated ecosystem of challenges is preventing telcos from successful internal and external data monetization.

As Telcos continue to face increasing pressure in their top-line business, internal data monetization can bring them a strategic advantage in solving business problems. From the understanding of revenue trends such as the accurate pinpointing of developments in the voice or data business to gaining deep insight into customer likes and dislikes, data analytics can address several business issues. Similarly, external monetization opens opportunities for telcos in a range of industry verticals.

However, to stay relevant in the market, telcos will have to stay ahead on the trends, which can lead them to opportunities. Messaging (SMS), which was an exclusive offering of telcos has now been taken up by players like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Employing data analytics to analyze and predict trends is the only way to stay ahead.

Why analytics alone won’t help?

Several leading telcos have already realized the power that lies in data analytics as a key strategic pillar and continue to invest in advanced data technologies. However, the ROI for data analytics investments by telcos continues to stand unproven, especially on an incremental basis. The reason: Most telcos view data analytics as a technology asset, leaving open a wide gap between technology and business goals. This severe lack of coordination has resulted in analytics and data science being viewed as a technology solution rather than a business problem, causing business goals to suffer.

The answer lies in domain-driven analytics

For telcos seeking to stay competitive, domain-driven analytics is the answer. Spearheaded by deep domain knowledge and wide industry exposure a domain-driven analytics solution understands the requirements of telcos operating in specific regions or market conditions. Through the analysis of existing data sets, domain-driven analytics can transform current stats into future possibilities.

Take the successful use case of how a telco in a developing market used domain-driven analytics to increase revenue. The telco was using its existing business model of acquiring more customers to increase revenue. Using domain-driven analysis, however, it was found that the current ‘active base’ which was 8.5 days needed to be improved in order to increase revenue. The telco used the recommendations and conducted an integrated campaign which led to the increase of the ‘active base’ from 8.5 to 9.5 days and a boost in revenue by 25%.

With 25+ years of experience in driving data-driven business transformation for global telcos, Subex has garnered a lot of experience in applying domain-driven analytics for telecom.

[1] https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Global-Telecoms-The-Big-Picture-2019-Key-Industry-Statistics

[2] https://www.gsmaintelligence.com/

To find out more about how domain-driven analytics can impact your ROI, Increase Customer Experience and Profitability.

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July 1, 2019
Not just another “G”, how 5G is Already Disrupting the Communications Industry

In the early days of any transformative technology, there’s often an interesting mix of hype, anticipation and confusion. At risk of exposing my long tenure in telecom, I’ll ask if anyone else recalls ISDN? In a 1994 article in the Los Angeles Times, the author presciently said that ISDN “is the first thing that’s going to come along that begins to give people a taste of what the future will be like.” For those of us on the inside (I was at MCI at the time), ISDN stood for “I Still Don’t Know”!

Fast forward to 2019 and what’s different is not only the technical advances themselves, but the pace of disruptive change. And yes, there is still confusion. If you have an AT&T phone in the US, and have noticed a 5G E symbol, you know what I’m talking about. But hey, this is not a post about confusion (that would be too easy for me). I’d like to focus on 5G disruptions, but not the disruptions that you have likely heard about.

The “disruptions” that come to mind for many industry observers when it comes to 5G are faster speeds, significantly lower latencies, a dense communications matrix for IOT, mmBand spectrum, etc. Sure, there will be many headline benefits from 5G. What I find more intriguing about 5G is its role as a catalyst for change reaching far beyond the radio network. Let’s briefly explore some of these.

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The whole world is starting to look like a data center – Historically, operator networks are full of dedicated telecom equipment rack-mounted in central offices, wire centers, and customer points-of-presence. This contrasts with Web scale companies like Amazon, FB and Google who operate their networks from vast data centers full of commoditized hardware. There will come a time soon when the two worlds merge, and 5G is helping to accelerate this. A couple of key influences are 5G edge clouds and the emerging popularity of cloud-native applications. These are prompting operators to rethink their networks and where they locate compute, storage and network equipment to enable the super low latencies of 5G. Under the auspices of ONF, there is an project called CORD (Central Office Re-architected as a Data center) and the sub-project M-CORD which are loci for 5G virtualization and cloud-based initiatives like vRAN and vEPC.

“Where ever you are on your 5G journey, Subex is an essential partner to help you plan, operate, secure and optimize your network. Our solutions will grow with you and guide you into the more open and automated future network.”

Open everything – Speaking of open source, 5G and open source software are tightly intertwined. I recently attended the Linux Foundation Open Networking Summit and many of the sessions were devoted to community projects focused on establishing 5G infrastructure and enabling 5G use cases. At the recent Big 5 Event in Denver, the first day was devoted to an open source track. 5G is the engine behind many early implementations of SDN and NFV. “Open” doesn’t just mean software—so called “white boxes” start as bare metal hardware with operator or community-sourced software & firmware that turn them into routers or CPE or even ROADMs! Why this trend? Operators are looking to community-driven innovation to accelerate delivery of advanced use cases, lower costs and avoid vendor lock-in.

Start with use cases – Well, that’s a novel concept! With 3G and 4G, there were clear expectations that simply enabling faster and more reliable mobile data would lead to various applications which leveraged that data. The industry has taken a different approach to 5G. At the Denver Big 5G Event, Ibrahim Gedeon, TELUS CTO, described 5G as “the first ‘G’ to be driven by use cases”. These include AR/VR for factories, industrial automation, massive IOT sensing, connected cars and telemedicine. 5G is creating a rich mobile communications fabric with various speed and latency requirements that align with the specific needs of each use case. Network slicing is another buzz-worthy aspect of 5G that allows operators to allocate portions of their networks to specific customers and use cases.

Break it apart, then put it back together – In industry parlance, this is called disaggregation and convergence. Step 1: Take key network functions like PCRF, HSS and MME and peel them from the monolithic platforms on which they are currently hosted. Step 2: Apply NFV to virtualize the functions into VNFs and make them portable. Step 3: Host the VNFs within converged platforms like COMAC, which is an ONF project that combines mobile, access and core networks under one umbrella. This is part of a broader industry trend to package many telco functions and infrastructure components into massive all-in-one platforms. Another good example, of course, is ONAP. For many of these initiatives, the race to enable 5G is a driving force.

I’ve only scratched the surface of network and software trends that are precipitating extraordinary change in the communications industry. The world is becoming more complex, not less. Each promising new innovation usually has unforeseen issues that can increase costs and pose operational challenges. Early NFV implementations offer such a cautionary tale. Where ever you are on your 5G journey, Subex is an essential partner to help you plan, operate, secure and optimize your network. Our solutions will grow with you and guide you into the more open and automated future network.

As for ISDN, I guess we do know now. It really did help usher in the modern data-driven era.

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June 24, 2019