life,
the universe
and revenue assurance
Thanks again to all of you who keep getting in touch, wanting to know what is happening. There is not much I can say right now, but there are some indications of forward motion.
I can also see something up ahead. It may be the light at the end of the tunnel. It may be a train coming in the opposite direction. I guess you will find out as soon as I do...
Thank you everybody. The response I received on Friday and over the weekend was overwhelming. I cannot express my gratitude for all the supportive calls, texts, emails and comments. It gave me the strength and confidence to republish my words after I momentarily faltered. The experience was unique in my lifetime. You encouraged me to believe that I was taking a stand for something worthwhile - even if it costs me money and causes resentment amongst possible business contacts - and it really meant a lot to me.
Before I go any further, let us get one thing straight. This blog is not supposed to be about me. It is supposed to be about revenue assurance. I intend to resume normal service soon. However, I imagine some of you are wanting to know the news about what happened to me when I went into BT this Monday. According to the logic of the phrase no news is good news, then it was all good news. Because absolutely nothing happened. It seems my blog did not stop the world from turning or cause the sky to fall on our heads. The whole day went by, and nobody actually spoke to me about it (at least, not in an official capacity).
That was rather an anti-climax. It is not like I was hoping to throw the Earth off its axis, but then, I was not the one who suggested it might be. On Friday I felt like the boy pointing out the emperor has no clothes. Today I feel like the boy who cried wolf. I had the whole weekend to anticipate the "policies" and "procedures" that were going to be thrown at me on Monday morning (the HR woman was unwilling to tell me exactly which policies or procedures applied, so I still do not know). None of them ever surfaced from the policies and procedures cabinet. What was I supposed to do? Storm out in a huff? Slap my resignation letter on the table and bellow a line from Shakespeare to signal my never-ending defiance? They would have laughed, or just been confused. So I did a normal day's work and came home instead. Perhaps tomorrow they will get around to the urgent task of explaining why they believe my blog must be censored in order to have peace in our time. Or perhaps it is holiday season and everybody will forget all about it.
All of which rather suggests that the original complaint about my blog was disproportionate. The longer they leave it to take action, the more ridiculous any action will seem. So now I intend to keep going back and see how long it takes. Of course, announcing your secret thoughts to the world, much like Machiavelli did in The Prince, rather gives the game away. But my guess is that, even though I am giving the game away, it will not help anyone in BT work out how to respond. If they do nothing, my point is made, because Geoff Hammond tried to silence me but was not entitled to do so. If they do something, they are going to have to show some rare ingenuity to show my actions have anything to do with BT's interests, never mind that they harm them. After all, my criticism is with Geoff Hammond in his capacity as newly-appointed chair of WRAF, not with his work at BT. So my argument is that this is not an internal BT matter, even though it involves a BT employee. Hammond is the one trying to make it an internal BT matter, and hence to pressurize me to stop saying things that I would have said no matter where I was working at the time. For now, I guess everything is back to normal, with me returning to taking a pop at various vendors, consultants, Papa Rob and all the usual suspects, until somebody from WRAF discovers the backbone to stand up for their new organization. When they do, I will take a pop at them again ;) And again, and again, until they make their governance accountable and transparent. You have my word about that.
Some of you may have noticed an interruption to service. Sorry for that. I had my priorities confused for a short while but I have since come to my senses. I have decided to fight, with every fibre of my being and every recourse available to me, to exercise my freedom of speech and not be cowed by intimidation. I hope some of you will back me in this fight, which may be painful and costly. The fight is about this post. Read it and judge it as you will. Whether you agree or disagree with me, I ask you to post comments and hence guide how organizations, and critics, behave in future.
At Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Abraham Lincoln said the following:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
In the American Civil War, and many wars since, good people sacrificed their lives for the ideal of liberty. Lincoln talked of government by the people, for the people. He talked of freedom. I hope his words were not in vain. To mix my quotes, the trials and tribulations of a small business niche do not amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. However, I can still feel strongly about freedom of speech. I can also feel strongly about a software company, endorsed by the employee of a customer, that has misappropriated the words of Lincoln in order to promote themselves. I find this to be a petty thing to do. This vendor's promotional tactics are backed by the employee of a customer. The vendor I refer to is cVidya and the employee is Geoff Hammond of BT.
Recently, I was tipped off about the creation of a new, and to my mind bogus, revenue assurance organization. It calls itself the "World Revenue Assurance Forum" (WRAF). On its website, WRAF said it was "of the operators, by the operators". It can be shown that the URL for the World Revenue Assurance Forum is owned by cVidya, a software company, not an operator. I believe the claim made on the website, of being "for the operators by the operators", is knowingly misleading. At date of writing, there was only one operator member, namely BT. BT is a customer of cVidya. BT was represented on the WRAF steering committee, to whatever extent that committee can truly be said to exist, by Geoff Hammond. According to the WRAF website, Hammond has been appointed to the role of "chairman of the WRAF steering committee". I publicly mocked Geoff Hammond for his backing of WRAF, an organization I described as "crackpot", on the basis that it appeared to be a blatant sales vehicle for cVidya. Even if it is not a sales vehicle, it is fair that any body of this type should accept public criticism. There being no public mechanism for debate with WRAF, I used an alternative - and much better known - mechanism for raising the public debate. That mechanism is this website, which is read by revenue assurance practitioners worldwide.
I have no personal need to attack WRAF. I would rather it did not exist if it takes the form suggested by its website. Unfortunately there are no decent industry bodies that effectively represent the interests of many of those people who work in RA. Partly out of self-interest, and partly out of frustration, I have used this blog as a way to raise points which cannot be raised any other way. Evidently a lot of money has been spent constructing the WRAF website, but oddly enough, at date of writing, the site's homepage has been removed and replaced with a message saying it is under construction. Perhaps that indicates they have already abandoned or altered their plans. In which case, Geoff Hammond or any of the guys at cVidya could simply have contacted me, told me know what is going on, and we could have sorted out any misunderstandings quietly and politely. They all know how to get in touch with me - Geoff Hammond did contact me, but only to tell me to pull the post, something that nobody has ever asked me to do previously. I talk to people at cVidya on a regular basis for many varied reasons. But nobody has gone down the route. As an alternative, they are also welcome to exercise a right to reply on my website. I have never turned anyone down who asked for view to be put across, so long as they refrained from the more robust and abusive language that I sometimes have to endure. I can hence only assume that, if the backers of WRAF dislike what I write, it is not because they can find any inaccuracy with my facts.
By the way, the "construction" page has only overlayed the site's home page. You can still see all the other WRAF pages on the internet, if you know the URL and type it into your browser. Once on one of those other pages, you can also hyperlink to all the other pages except the home page. Here is the link to the "news" page:
http://www.ra-world.com/News.html
From reports, it appears that cVidya has been telephoning its customers to drum up interest in WRAF. Hammond lends WRAF the credibility that comes with his job title. None of the current claims about WRAF being a worldwide organization are credible. In my blog, I criticized the legitimacy of WRAF's claims about itself. In response, Geoff Hammond took steps to shut me up. I believe his action was cowardly. Hammond is afraid to debate his position, and cannot justify the grandiose title of Chairman of the WRAF Steering Committee, a title bestowed upon him by his friends in cVidya. I offered him a right to reply on my blog. Instead, he tried to silence me by exerting pressure through BT's internal processes.
If I had no contractual relationship with BT, Hammond would not be able to exert influence over me in this manner. My blog has been a constant and regular critic of many people in the world of revenue assurance. I do not have any favourites, but treat all equally. Over the years, I have criticized, and received complaints in turn, from rival vendors to cVidya, including ECtel, Subex and WeDo. cVidya has been treated no better and no worse than anyone else. cVidya is the main supplier of RA tools to BT. I believe they are not justified when claiming to have set up a "World" RA forum. I have also been a regular and prominent critic of GRAPA, an organization that stated aims that sound similar to WRAF. The similarities between GRAPA and WRAF are plain. In criticizing WRAF, I have been entirely consistent. BT employees interested in revenue assurance were perfectly aware of my blog and the nature of its content prior to our forming a contractual relationship. My contract with BT is not a blanket agreement to endorse the actions of all other BT employees. I do not pretend to be a politician and there is a great difference between supporting the decisions of a company, and supporting the pretensions of one employee of a company. If I were a politician, I would probably avoid these debates. However, I believe that any endorsements of WRAF are premature, especially given the exaggerated claims about WRAF's status. Nevertheless, Geoff Hammond has endorsed WRAF. In my blog, I merely state what many others already think. Hammond has raised objections to my post, none of which I consider valid. The most prominent of the complaints is that I should first ask his permission for using his name and the name of BT. I do not believe that is credible. WRAF and Hammond put their names into the public domain, allowing content about themselves to be published on the internet. I merely commented on that public information. As yet, nobody has given me a convincing explanation of why I should retract my earlier post. I have hence, after much reflection, reinstated it.
BT did not provide a satisfactory explanation of why I should remove my earlier post. To be precise, BT has not even said if they are complaining about the content of that post. But they asked that I remove it from the public domain. I think that is intolerable. I have a right to freedom of speech, and that freedom should not be suspended whilst BT lumbers through some slow decision-making process. If BT, as opposed to a single employee of BT, objects to what I say, it should state its objection and not expect me to be silent pending its deliberation. Why should I adopt the role of the accused, whilst my accuser, Hammond, fails to make a credible argument? In contrast to my plain language, Hammond and BT have been cryptic in their choice of words. I do not use innuendo; nor should they. When BT asked me to withdraw the post in question, I initially acquiesced. I have since decided that, after talking to friends and colleagues around the telecoms industry, that I made the wrong decision. The post has been republished on my website so everyone can see what the fuss is about and decide the rights and wrongs for themselves. Many thanks to those of you who have already commented on the blog or emailed me to indicate your support.
BT was my employer for a short while. I say "was" because, although I still have a contract with them, I intend to terminate it at the earliest opportunity, which would be Monday. It may be a race as to who terminates the contract first, though I would have preferred to settle the matter already. I believe that by terminating my relationship with BT, I will leave BT with no further opportunity to block my freedom to express my point of view. I believe I have done no wrong in law, and have not broken any terms of my contract with them. I have not violated any confidence, as all the information I discussed was already in the public domain. I would have wrote what I wrote, whether I had a contract with BT or not. I am not afraid. My actions speak for themselves.
Irrespective of my contractual relationship with BT, I think WRAF is a sham, and Geoff Hammond, a representative of BT, is foolish to back it. He is making BT look foolish as a result. If that fact hurts BT's reputation, the fault is not with the person who points the fact out. The fault is with the person who lends their name to a bogus organization. The emperor, Hammond, has no clothes. I have the impertinence to be the child that says so out loud. You can chide me for my childish antics, but not without also damning Hammond for his vanity. Perhaps I should have handled the matter internally, away from public eyes. But let us be realistic - WRAF put itself in the public eye, and a subsequent private debate within BT would likely be unproductive. Somebody must have already agreed to sanction Hammond's public endorsement of WRAF, and they would be unlikely to listen in an impartial way to criticism of that decision. Hammond should withdraw from the role as Chairman of WRAF's steering committee, and cVidya should back down from attempting to create "operator only" organizations that they "facilitate". Do I hurt BT by assuming the role of critic? Does Hammond hurt BT, by being the emperor with no clothes? What kind of BT process finds fault with my communication to the external world, but approves the way Hammond brings BT's name into disrepute? Is BT's name brought into disrepute because of my discourse - consistent with everything I have said before - or because of the decision by Geoff Hammond to lend his name to a cVidya sales vehicle? If BT is unwilling to hear this criticism, so be it. I will terminate my contract with BT and exercise my freedom to criticize without impediment. I now deeply regret forming a contractual relationship with BT. If I had no contract with them, I do not believe they would have dared ask me to withdraw what I wrote.
It has been a difficult time for me. It brings me no personal pleasure to upset Geoff Hammond. When I have spoken to him in person, I have found him to be a nice person. I also have no desire to be provocative. It is not my goal in life to pick fights with people. At times I worry that some people will just think I want to be difficult and cause trouble. But I also feel very strongly that WRAF, if successful, will not serve the best interests of the telecoms industry and will hurt many good people who deserve better. Nobody can seriously think that I planned to take work with BT with a view to starting a public squabble with the Head of its Group RA function a few weeks later. That would be absurd. It is not as if I have a track record of writing diatribes about BT or any other telco. Sometimes I make fun of people who go too far, especially the big vendors, who can afford to look after themselves. I have been most assertive when stating opinions on organizations that claim to represent the industry where I believe that claim is fundamentally dishonest. My views on WRAF are strongly expressed because somebody needs to consider the wider ramifications of what an undemocratic and unaccountable organization can do to the credibility and livelihood of the many different people working in the field of RA. Not everybody works for a big software vendor. Not everybody works for a telco. According to its own stated agenda, WRAF will seek to make decisions that will impact many people who will have no opportunity to participate in or influence this body. Even allowing them to join later is unacceptable, as the key decision-making positions and direction of the group will have already been finalized. I have no crystal ball, and cannot say I know what WRAF might do in future. But I can say that some of my predictions about the plans for GRAPA turned out to be true, even though other people scoffed at my warnings and accused me of scare-mongering. I correctly predicted that GRAPA would seek to introduce a professional certification process for RA, and hence create a divide between who is fit, and who is not fit, to work in revenue assurance. If they do so, they intend to levy fees on the certified practitioners. Some recent comments from cVidya staff gives me every reason to fear that they also have ambitions to introduce their own certification process for RA professionals. I have no objection to professional certification itself, but I do strongly object to the idea that certification might be introduced by an undemocratic institution that does not represent the interests of all valid stakeholders working in the revenue assurance domain. It is too early to predict if WRAF will go down this route, but if WRAF was a genuinely democratic body, there would be far less reason to fear.
I am going to end my relationship with BT, and the sooner the better. Let Hammond be the "chairman" of a sales vehicle for a software vendor, if he still wants the role after this. There is room in the world for people with contrary opinions. In many ways, Hammond and cVidya deserve each other. My conscience is clear. If anyone wishes a legal fight over my freedom of speech, I will fight them, no matter what the cost. Those of you who read this blog, I know it may be difficult to express it, but I hope I can count on your support. Now may be a difficult time to ask, but I sincerely ask that you let me know how you feel about this topic. Many thanks to those of you who already contacted me to give wise words of advice. I feel myself to be in a battle for the freedom to say what is right and wrong about the world of revenue assurance, a minuscule sideshow in the great scheme of things, and not worthy of being censored. Whatever you have to say on the topic, I would be deeply grateful to hear it. I speak to you as equals who enjoy our freedom. That was what Lincoln was talking about, so many years ago. I may sometimes resort to mockery, but I do not take those words lightly.
The post in question, "Straight Talking (Would Make A Nice Change)" was removed from this site at the request of BT. I then later reconsidered and republished it. I have left this post here so you can see how my thoughts were bouncing backwards and forwards like ping pong.
In case you were looking for the last entry, entitled "Straight Talking (Would Make A Nice Change)", it has been removed, at least for now, at the request of BT. I would like to tell you more, but for the time being I do not know the thinking behind BT's request, and I will not know more until Monday. Sorry to those of you who already let me know you enjoyed it, those of you who were looking forward to reading it and those of you who commented on the post already. I hope to get this all sorted on Monday, when I will get the chance to hear what BT has to say on the subject. In the meantime, all I can suggest is that you wait and see...
Be careful what you wish for. Last post I was asking for an unconference for revenue assurance - a gathering of like-minded people wanting to work together and share ideas, quite unlike conferences that offer little new information but lots of hard sell. Yesterday it appeared that my wish has been granted. Unfortunately, appearances proved deceptive. Because what the so-called World Revenue Assurance Forum really offers is a captive market for pushing the products of its sponsors, cVidya.
The tag line on WRAF's new website reads "for the operators, by the operators". Hmmm. At least that is what it read when I looked at the site yesterday. Today, the site has disappeared, replaced with an "under construction" message. Construction looked pretty darned finished yesterday, so perhaps the backers - BT and cVidya - are having second thoughts. To prove the site was finished, take a look at the invite to the first meeting, and a screenshot from the "facilitators" page.
Of course, the silly thing about this organization is that it is obviously a sales front for cVidya, but it pretends to be only for operators. Which means it is only for operators and cVidya. The site says their involvement is one of facilitating. What does facilitating mean? It means paying the bills. Here is a quick quiz for you.
Why would cVidya pay the bills for a meeting where operators are allowed to come, but rival firms are not? Is it because:
A) cVidya just loves operators and wants to give them money, expecting nothing in return
B) cVidya has a deep commitment to improving the practice of revenue assurance
C) Using pliable operators as front men helps with with making new sales contacts
D) Running events like this is cheaper and more effective than paying to attend conferences
E) Controlling your own official-sounding organization fills press releases and makes your VC backers happy
My vote is with C, D and E.
What the heck is wrong with Geoff Hammond of BT, lending his name to this stunt? It seems like every crackpot organization has to pretend it has a worldwide reach, even if it consists of nothing more than two men talking down the pub. First we had the "Global" GRAPA, now we have the "World" RA Forum. "Global" GRAPA, lest we forget, was formed by Moly McMillan and Papa Rob Mattison in a hotel bar in Kuala Lumpur. At least that is how McMillan tells the story. Presumably the story with WRAF is pretty similar, except you need to substitute the names of Alon Aginsky and Geoff Hammond. Unlike WRAF, at least GRAPA has the decency to allow people to (fail to) exchange ideas over the internet, which really is a global tool for communication. Exactly how much of the world is willing to travel to London for a meeting, where there can expect to hear a cVidya sales pitch? Answer that question, then take away the number of operators where the flights are paid for by cVidya, and where the only reason for going is a fun break in London, then answer the question again. City break or not, I cannot see the Israelis from cVidya attracting much participation to this "world" event from the Middle East. I hope Geoff finds that damaging his credibility is worth the addition to his CV - he apparently is the new Chairman of the WRAF Steering Committee. Whoop-de-do. Here is a quick review of who is on the committee so far: Geoff Hammond (Chairman), lots of people at cVidya (his favourite supplier), and.... erm.... nobody else.
Did I forget to mention that today I was appointed Grand Overlord of the Pan-Galactic Revenue Assurance Union? I went down the pub earlier with a couple of guys who work in the industry (for different companies, to make the appointment process entirely legitimate and independent, of course), and we all agreed that the Grand Overlord of PanGRAU should be my new title. I am thinking of appointing the guys who appointed me to other important and not at all bogus positions in the new organization (I was thinking I needed a Sub-Overlord and an Assistant Overlord, for starters). And who can argue with that? :P
RA has been down this path before. Last time it was Papa Rob and his GRAPA cronies, trying to grab the spotlight and make a quick buck by creating a bogus global organization. The GRAPA project has stalled, and looks like it is out of ideas. Despite that, it seems cVidya have decided to copy Mattison's scheme to set up a pet society. Guess what? The World RA Forum will fail for the same reasons. There are not enough good people doing revenue assurance to split them all into separate camps, each defined by a commercial operation that skews debate to suit the products it offers - training and books from Mattison, software from cVidya. The similarities are startling. GRAPA is global, and headed by a President. WRAF covers the world, and is headed by a Chairman. Nobody knows who appointed the President, and nobody knows who appointed the Chairman. Each talks of a committee, but there is no evidence that the committee makes decisions, and no way to get on to the committee except to grovel to the committee's existing, self-appointed, members. Both institutions started out saying they are for operators only, and conveniently forgot to mention the notable exception to the rule: the supplier that provides the resources needed to make it happen. GRAPA in the end had to backtrack miserably, when it discovered that lots of operator staff looking for easy answers leaves you short of people with the motive to give answers. cVidya should know all this already, because they were one of the first vendors to join GRAPA. And, like most people, have made no contribution since.
Soon there will be more pan-national revenue assurance groups than there are bodies that sanction championship boxing. I can think of some more names: The Federation of Revenue Assurance Companies (FRAC), the Consortium for Revenue Assurance (CRAss) and the Institute for Revenue Assurance Technical INTegrity (IRATINT).
Here are a few suggested ground rules for anyone else out there dreaming of setting up the next GRAPA, WRAF or CRAss:
WRAF has broken all these rules. At this rate, the revenue assurance industry will soon need someone to perform assurance over all these revenue assurance bodies! ;)
If you think what I write sometimes goes too far, you should hear some of the stories that I am not able to share with you. For example, I cannot tell you the details of the complaints I hear from certain quarters about the multitude of revenue assurance conferences. You may be guessing that this comes from telco employees, bored of the hard sell from vendors and the same presentations being repeated over and over. No, this unrest comes from the vendors, asking if they get value for money. I can see their point. Those conferences cost a lot of money, and it has to come from somewhere. The conference company is trying to turn a profit. The hotel is trying to turn a profit. Somebody has to pay for all that food, and all that travel. If telco staff learn something, it may worth what they pay to attend - but that is a big if. Whether the conference is good value for operator attendees rather depends on whether the chosen speakers have something to say that is worth listening to.
One difficulty is that speakers are selected either because their job title looks good in the brochure - which does not guarantee that they will speak well on the podium - or because they pay for the privilege. I have somehow, over the years, managed to get myself to a point where I am one of the few that fits neither category. And that it is only because I take the risk of saying plenty of things that nobody else is going to! (Although, to be fair to me, I see my words and slides are still often copied - without credit being given.) But in the end, even the best speakers cannot attend every event. They have to be selective. I have spoken at three conferences already this year, and have tentatively agreed to a fourth. When I recently received another invite to present at a conference in an exotic location, I was briefly tempted. However, I declined. Exotic location or not, the prospect for making new business is slight, and the return on the time spent on travel and attending the event is poor. What would really make a difference is if I was confident of engaging with a dynamic audience, prepared to teach as well as learn.
In the end, the expense of conferences has to be borne by someone. The amounts paid by attendees covers only a small proportion of the total cost. The bulk is provided by the vendors, in exchange for the right to promote their products and make new introductions. The problem is, just because a few representatives of operators attend the conference, does not mean they have the appetite, or funds, to buy. And they may be the same people who the vendor met at the last conference.
Is there a solution? Perhaps. Anyone who works for a conference company should stop reading now. The antidote to conferences is the unconference, an idea that emerged about a decade ago and has gained momentum since. This is how unconference.net describes an unconference:
An unconference is a facilitated participant-driven face-to-face conference around a theme or purpose.
In contrast, a traditional conference is characterized thus:
Presentations selected months beforehand, sponsors buying speaking slots, boring panels of talking heads, and high fees.
I do not know about you, but the latter description sounds all too familiar to me. There will always be a need for good conferences (though maybe we would be better off if they were fewer in number, but bigger in size and better in quality) but really, if revenue assurance is a worthwhile activity performed by people of substance, there should be room for unconferences too. The big difference with unconferences is that everyone who shows up is expected to contribute. Think of it like the natural extension of those roundtables that are increasingly popular at conferences, but where nobody is allowed to say "I am new at this, I just want to listen..." Unconferences keep costs low, because the draw is being with the other participants, not staying in a swanky location. The aim is for the event to break even, not to make money for anyone. Attendees pay the least amount necessary to take part, and everyone pays the same. Preparation is kept to a minimum, so the only way to know what is going to be said is to attend. That makes each unconference unique, increasing its value to attendees. Unconferences are about everyone sharing, not a majority of listeners sitting and listening to a minority of speakers. So it only suits attendees with genuine enthusiasm for the topic. This has its own attraction: enthusiasts want to meet, talk with, and listen to other enthusiasts. Are there enough enthusiasts, in any part of the world, to run a decent unconference on the topic of revenue assurance? I am not sure, but I would be keen to hear what people think. In the end, success depends on active participants. Asking who might be interested, and seeing who responds, should be as good a measure of the potential for success as any.
I know what you some of you are thinking: the vendors would look at an unconference as a cheap opportunity to sell, so would show up and try to bore everybody else with their relentless sales tactics. One solution would be to ban them. However, I am not that sceptical about vendors. Remember how this particular post began - even the vendors get cynical about their opportunity to make sales when they realize that nobody in the audience wants to buy. If the vendors did not have to pay so much to attend, perhaps even they could afford to be plain and simple enthusiasts for a day or two, and leave the hard sell at home. I think it might be worth a try. What do you say?
Analytics cannot tell you how people in general will behave in the future, but it does tell you how your customers have behaved in the past. Businesses spend a great deal of money on market research. Even so, many mistakes are made, not least because of the risks of sampling error, of asking the wrong questions, or because there will be factors in real life that may not be anticipated. In contrast, the current customer based will often provide a larger population than any that could possibly be assembled through another kind of research exercise, and will also permit insights to be drawn over a much longer period time. Current customers are an authentic representation of real life. To effectively exploit this valuable resource of information, you need two things. First you need the ability to collect, store, mine and analyze the data. Then you need to know what questions to ask.
Collecting, storing, mining and analyzing data. Does that sound familiar? Sounds like the kind of thing you need to do for revenue assurance. There will be strong feelings about whether revenue assurance people should concern themselves with helping sales and marketing. I myself made the argument that revenue assurance works "without influencing demand" in the TM Forum's definition. The point of that statement was to exclude the promotion of increased customer sales as an element of revenue assurance proper. However, whether or not it is revenue assurance, it will offer an opportunity to revenue assurance people to get increased value from the tools, skills and data they already possess. If they can do it, and if they are finding that returns from addressing leakage are diminishing as a result of their hard work over time, is that a bad thing?
A business may possess a lot of data, but data is not the same as information. For data to become information, there has to be a use. Knowing that families have 2.6 children on average is not useful, because no family has 2.6 children. By the same token, inferences about "most" people, the "average" and all that are probably just convenient fictions. They make it easier to think of how large numbers behave, without really understanding how each and everyone in that large number is actually behaving. Successful analytics involves drawing conclusions from actual individuals, by cutting the data based on theories of how to group individuals into coherent groups that tend to behave the same way. This makes marketing both personal and relevant.
One of the most effective uses of analytics is to tailor prices and promotions to drive increased sales and improved margins. Provide a selection of customers with a better rate than normal, and see if the increase in sales justifies the lower price. The connection between data and customer is already established for postpay customers. The rise of mixed postpay/prepay plans, or offering enhanced services and special offers via the internet can be ways to increase the span of knowledge to prepay customers. Future promotions can be targetted at the customers that are most responsive. This will enable the business to segment its customer base according to the different utility curves of different customers, and hence refine its pricing strategy and offerings accordingly.
Analytics can be used to assess the relative profitability of competitor's pricing schemes and incentive programs, or to perform hypothetical what-if analyses of proposed new prices and incentives. Particularly where there is highly stratified pricing, with rates decreasing as consumption increases, comparing new prices and pricing points to current customer behaviour will help to understand the potential for revenue growth or cannibalization depending on customers opt to buy more or less. Overlaying the volumes of sales per individual customers with competitor's pricing will identify which customers would be better off if they switched to competitors, and which customers are benefitting from the best available deal at present. This may help with identifying price reductions which would draw price sensitive customers away from competitors, and also price rises which would still better the offers made by rivals.
Adding data on cost of sales changes the focus from revenues to margins and profits. In a similar way, it is possible to include data on the timing of cashflows, say from bulk purchases of 'bolt-ons', to gauge how these can be improved through understanding the segmentation of the customer base. Any numerical data on costs and revenues that can be associated with individual products/services and with individual customers can provide a rich basis for comparison to competitors and pre-assessing the impact of proposed changes to prices and offers.
Customers that superficially seem profitable may be viewed differently once all costs are taken into consideration. Time spent handling customer complaints, or a track record of returning goods, may indicate the customer is more costly to serve and less desirable than originally thought. When identifying which customers to offer loyalty benefits to, it is worth directing these benefits to customers that are cheapest to serve by virtue of the smaller demands they place on the business. For example, there may be incentives for customers to purchase on-line because of the lower cost of taking the order compared to processing a sales order through a call center or in a store. It makes sense to extend that logic by and prioritizing customers that place a smaller burden on the business, for example because they submit orders in a way that consumes less staff time or because they raise fewer customer service queries.
Revenues and costs are readily susceptible to analysis because they are numeric and because it is relatively simple to gather the necessary data and associate it with products and customers. In practice there are many ways to measure and segment customer behavior, and hence look for trends and groupings within the customer base. Geography may be a factor in sales and costs, thus enabling different strategies for different locales. Geography can be analyzed by either the customer's home address or, in the case of mobile phones, where the customer is when the phone is switched on. Demographic factors like age or cultural leanings may also provide a viable basis for analysis and segmentation. This kind of data might be obtained via credit checks or by asking customers to submit to a survey.
What data will be relevant depends entirely on the product on offer and the nature of human behavior. Generalization from past experience may be useful, but will be misleading if nobody has considered some options for altering the offering or segmenting the customer base. No amount of data will assist in drawing useful conclusions if the wrong questions are asked. That takes the skill of the imaginative marketeer. But harness that insight to data and the power to perform analysis, and, like a scientist, the skilled marketeer can progress from forming a theory to being able to corroborate it in practice. This will lead to better decisions made with greater confidence and improved understanding of the results that are subsequently achieved. Imagination combined with data makes for good business sense.
Check out this video of Gadi Solotorevsky, TMF RA team leader, talking at Management World 2008. But I was confused about one thing - why is now an especially good time to pursue revenue assurance? Surely any time is a good time for revenue assurance?!?
NTP time synchronization is not the most obvious way to eliminate leakages. However, Symmetricom makes some convincing arguments about how enforcing consistent network time can improve the bottom line. Whilst it is not the job of the revenue assurance manager to take the lead in purchasing solutions of this type, there is no harm in them understanding the benefits, so downloading and reading the relevant content from Symmetricom's website is a worthwhile thing to do. But Symmetricom let themselves down, by failing their own promise of accuracy. This is from their "case study":
TYPICAL MOBILE SERVICE PROVIDER REVENUES $50b per annum
POTENTIAL REVENUE LEAKAGE DUE TO IP/CDR MISMATCH @ 0.005% = $25,000,000 per annum
The Return on Investment in Symmetricom Carrier Class NTP can be measured in days.
The same example can also be found in their "white paper":
Total Revenue per year (medium carrier): $50 B
CDR Leakage (%) due to misaligned billing and logging services: 0.005
Revenue Loss per year: $25 M
$50 B is the same as $50,000 M. $50,000M*0.005% = $50,000M*0.00005 = $2.5M. In other words, Symmetricom got their sums wrong by a factor of 10, grossly exaggerating the revenue benefits as a result. Not very impressive for a business wanting to sell enhanced assurance on the basis of increased precision.
I was lucky to chair the recent ViB conference on Fraud Management and RA held in Dubai, where there were a number of high quality presentations. Hayley Daniels of Neural Technologies gave a very informative talk on fraud. Her thoughts on internal fraud got me thinking. She provided the following checklist for opportunistic internal fraud:
Take a look at that list once more. Then think about the typical revenue assurance department. Do they have knowledge of processes? Yup. Are they in a position of trust, with access to sensitive data and the right to direct alterations to it? Yup. Whilst they give out controls to others, might they lack adequate controls, especially over the non-standard activities and irregular projects they conduct? Yup. Lack of policies and procedures, especially when taking on new challenges? Yup. Turnover of crucial employees? Yup. Constantly operating under crisis conditions? All too often, yup. And low morale? Sadly, the answer to that is often yes as well.
Then I thought some more. Staff in Revenue Assurance departments have some particular advantages if they were inclined to engage in fraud. They may be free to direct and give approval to changes to network and billing data, especially during data cleanses and system migrations, but who supervises and reviews whether those changes are correct and justified? Revenue Assurance may have liberty to set up and remove services and accounts. They may have access to SS7 probe data and be able to specifically track the calls made and received on specific lines, and even review the content of SMS messages. They will often be responsible for test accounts that are an exception to normal billing activities and hence may not be as well controlled. Many of the staff will have superior skills for manipulating data or a keen understanding of how changes to data may exploit controls weaknesses to the benefit of a customer. Because of recruitment pressures, and because the numbers of staff are relatively low, checks on staff may not be as stringent as in other areas more commonly perceived to be high risk. In addition, vendor, contract and consultant staff may be given unusual levels of freedom to inspect and even alter sensitive data. And finally, the line management responsibility for fraud management and revenue assurance may be unified. A failure to segregate duties magnifies the risk of opportunistic internal fraud executed under the guise of revenue assurance.
Of course, I am not saying that all revenue assurance staff are fraudsters. But they have an unusual freedom and latitude to access systems and data, and direct changes, and with that comes the danger of fraud. So the question is really, what are Fraud departments doing to mitigate the particular and unique risks relevant to the Revenue Assurance department? If they are just trusting that revenue assurance people care about the bottom line, and cannot be corrupted, surely they are missing the point of why fraud takes place? And when Fraud and Revenue Assurance reports to the same manager, who is expert enough to ensure that there is no collusion between the two? These are all tricky questions, but staff who work in fraud prevention or revenue assurance should aim to provide good answers.
The amazing revelation of my week has been that, perhaps, somebody in the Global Revenue Assurance Professional's Association (GRAPA) is listening to me - or at least taking notice of what I blog. I do regularly pester a number of the GRAPA 'execs' about what GRAPA is up to and what they have been doing, but usually the answer is the same - they have not been doing anything and nobody tells them what is going on in GRAPA. That should come as no surprise given the revelations about the very low levels of participation in GRAPA's forums. What did surprise me was to see one of GRAPA's most active members, Wessel Scheepers of South Africa, blogging about me. To be precise, he cut and paste a chunk of one of my posts and topped it with his own commentary, in which he says he will not discuss the contents of my blog. Very strange - why draw attention to something and then say you are not going to discuss it? I will not reciprocate, as I am only too happy to discuss his blog posts, although so far there is not enough content to draw any conclusions on where Scheepers is heading.
Scheepers' new blog, branded as from the South African regional chairperson for GRAPA, raises an interesting question about how GRAPA reaches out to its members, and what the purpose of GRAPA is in the first place. I assume what we are going to see is Scheepers' opinion, and not an official statement of GRAPA that is co-ordinated with the family Mattison back in Illinois, despite the liberal use of references and logos from GRAPA. So what distinguishes this from a blog by Wessel Scheepers in his capacity as a private citizen, minus the GRAPA title? In fact, what is the difference between this and people using standard freely-available blogging software and sites, used by ordinary people to share all sorts of opinions on the web, without needing an 'organization' like a GRAPA to arrange it for them? It also raises some interesting questions of how revenue assurance practitioners talk to each other. The manifesto of GRAPA is to create a new hierarchy - distinguishing good from bad based on who has GRAPA titles, certificates, attend their training courses etc. What qualifies Papa Rob or any of his colleagues to place themselves in a position to distinguish good from bad is unknown - they did not wait for anyone else's approval or permission but just assumed the mantle of revenue assurance lawgivers. My preference would be for a free-flow debate, irrespective of all the fancy chairperson, executive and presidential titles that some people need in order to justify themselves, although I could always go one better and call myself Grand Overlord Emperor Super Wizard of Revenue Assurance of the known Universe and see if anyone gives themselves a bigger title than that ;) On that basis, let us keep a quick score on who really is giving away something for nothing. As of today, in the grand revenue assurance blog count, we have:
Wessel Scheepers: 4 posts. Not bad for the first month, but will he keep up the pace?
Gadi Solotorevsky: 12 posts. A sure and steady output since November last year.
Papa Rob Mattison: 1 post. His GRAPA blog mysteriously disappeared several months after he started it. Perhaps he ran out of things to say. Probably it is still on the internet somewhere, but it must be the only example of Papa Rob hiding something that publicizes himself.
Me: 261 posts over the last two years. To all would-be revenue assurance bloggers I have only one thing to say: bring on the blog!!! ;)
They say what goes around, comes around. Mark Yelland, formerly responsible for revenue assurance at Cable & Wireless, and currently boss of revenue assurance at Thus, must be pondering that proverb right now. He is by no means the only person in revenue assurance to have C&W on his curriculum vitae (you include me amongst the C&W RA alumni) but he might just be the first person involuntarily forced to list it a second time. Though Yelland left C&W some years ago, C&W's proposed acquisition of Thus seems likely to take him back to his old employer. Good luck to Mark, and I hope that if the takeover takes place, Mark will enjoy the new challenges posed, and not be facing the same ones he tackled once before!
This little story serves as a timely reminder that revenue assurance will not be immune of the effects of consolidation in the telecommunications industry. Like a game of musical chairs, people have been swapping places for many years, but the number of seats reduces over time. The impact of consolidation has been disguised whilst telcos have been setting up new revenue assurance teams, but there are far fewer greenfield opportunities than before. The merry-go-round (in this case, a Yelland-go-round) is slowing down. That may be good for the discipline in some ways, as effort will shift from the induction of raw recruits to getting better performance from experienced staff. However, it will also cause discomfort for those worried about keeping a seat in the game, especially with job losses occurring at revenue assurance vendors. In terms of total staff, telecommunications revenue assurance may have already hit a peak and be on a decline. This could be the high water mark for numbers employed worldwide. In honour of Mark's round journey, perhaps we should be calling this the Yelland high water mark ;) though I am confident that Mark's career will be a case of onwards and upwards.
Many of you will know that I am a big advocate of the leakage point checklist of the TM Forum, largely developed under the supervision of Stephen Tebbett, who now earns his keep as a consultant at Ernst & Young. The main reason for recommending the checklist is so obvious you would have to be quite brain-dead not to appreciate it: the checklist provides a comprehensive and authoritative breakdown of where leakage can take place. It is common sense to use an existing checklist rather than develop one of your own. If you develop your own checklist, you might omit something that someone else would have included. I mean, why start with a blank piece of paper when you can start with a catalogue of where other telcos have previously found leakages? My impression is that many companies are using the checklist, but without wanting to openly recommend its use to others. There may be a few reasons for that. Pride or secrecy may be a factor. Wanting to use the checklist does not mean wanting to add to the checklist, especially if that means the telco admits to specific problems that nobody else has ever admitted to having. Some individuals will just want to delete the TM Forum logo and claim they invented the checklist for themselves. And a large minority will be worried that the checklist may send out the wrong image - by highlighting all the areas that have not yet been covered by their assurance efforts.
Thankfully, Dr. Lee Scargall, formerly of Cable & Wireless, is one of those individuals who sees more to gain by sharing ideas and knowledge than from being secretive. Being secretive can work well if you want to hide your ignorance, but spending a lot of time hiding your ignorance is ultimately a lot less productive than just getting on with the job of learning and hence reducing your ignorance. Like they say, there are no stupid questions, only stupid people afraid to ask them. Like all the contributors to the checklist, Dr. Scargall saw the advantages of putting pride to one side and following the best practice guide on where to look for leakages, in order to fairly and honestly determine what C&W was doing well in its international operations, and where it needed to improve. Recently we co-authored a new case study for the TM Forum based on the experience of using the leakage checklist across C&W's international operations. You can see the case study here.
C&W was able to rapidly deploy a fair and comprehensive reporting framework by constructing both tools and processes based around the TMF's leakage inventory. I recommend that you take a look at the case study, and consider how you would do something similar in your own business. There is nothing wrong with copying a technique that works well, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Just remember, if you intend to take credit as if you invented it yourself, that you had better change the logos ;) However, the TMF team would all be happier if you dropped us a line to let us know if you are using the checklist, and where you think it can be improved. In the end, the checklist, and our understanding in general, improves if we work together and share information, instead of being secretive. Then we can all be winners at revenue assurance.
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