talkRA is a new collaborative project founded by Eric, which brings together top writers on revenue assurance, revenue management, fraud prevention, business intelligence and data integrity. The authors at talkRA represent the best from around the world, and represent a mix of telcos, vendors and consultants. Be sure to drop by and find the latest news and views from all around the industry.

Eric: Revenues are up, margins are up. How satisfied are you with the most recent results? You have seen improvements in Q1 and Q2. Is everything on plan in terms of management hopes?

Benny: Yes, everything is on plan. We are very proud that things are going better. We look to improve even more in the future.

Eric: You mentioned, in discussing the margins on the call, that margins were depressed because of some very big deals involving third party hardware. Do you expect that you will be doing more deals that involve third party hardware in the future, or were your sales relatively unusual for Q2 and Q1?

Benny: It can always happen. We cannot really foresee if we are going to involve hardware in our deals. Most of the time it comes from the customer's request. Obviously, margins on hardware are much less than for services and much less than for software. We are not building our plans on the assumption that we are going to have a high percentage of hardware within our deals, but it could always happen. We control our services, we control our software, we control the margin on the planning of the implementation of the project. We cannot really control the margin on hardware. By the way, besides the hardware, you need to understand that the dollar rate also influences our gross margin.

Eric: If the customer wants it, you'll provide it. It's not ideal for you to be selling hardware but, at the same time, you are making some margin so obviously you'll provide hardware where customers ask for hardware. In the end it's good business although it's lower margin business, so you can't afford to turn that business away. To some extent your margin will fluctuate depending on whether customers ask for hardware or not.

Benny: Exactly. Margin-wise, we would not like to provide it, but I believe in customer relationships. If the customer tells us 'we need this as a turnkey project and we need you to provide the hardware' then I have no choice. I want to be very flexible to the customer. Although I am not really keen on selling hardware, sometimes I do not really have a choice.

Eric: On your results call, it was mentioned that there is still some hope that you will break even this year, but that is very dependent on the exchange rate with the US dollar. Looking at the order pipeline that you've got now and the exchange rate at the moment, if the exchange rate stayed the same, would you be confident of breaking even by the end of this year?

Benny: I don't want to make any declaration other than the declarations made on the call. As we said, our results were affected by the contribution of two lower-margin, yet strategically important projects with major telecom groups and potential for higher-margin follow-on business. Also the Company’s results were negatively impacted by the continued weakening of the US dollar against the Israeli shekel, which during the quarter devalued 5.7% against the Shekel. This directly contributed to an approximate $300,000 decline in the net income for the period. We are doing everything possible to reach the break even point

Eric: 41% of your sales went to Eastern Europe in the quarter. Are you thinking of perhaps spreading your risk by increasingly invoicing in different currencies, rather than the dollar?

Benny: We are not trying to build a business based on currency issues. When you say 41% of sales, it's not 41% of bookings, you mean 41% of revenues. It relates to delivery of projects within the same quarter, it does not suggest how business is distributed. We are building our business to accommodate all opportunities we can handle in every part of the world. If I can increase the share of North American from X percent to 3 times X percent, I will do that, even though I'm more exposed to the dollar. I'm trying to build a healthy business based on the fact that I am going to have profitable deals that are going to give benefit and value to the customer and that are going to be smart for me. I'm not taking dollar rates as a factor when I'm trying to compete on deals or we are building the strategic plan on where to focus and what to do. Of course, on the bottom line there is some impact, but building a healthy business doesn't take into account short term dollar exchange rate issues. I am sure in the long term it will have no impact, and if I have an increased footprint in US dollar based deals, that will help me a lot.

Eric: Can I ask a couple of questions about some of the deals you have made recently. You've got the deal now with Amdocs, where they're going to become a channel to sell particularly your fraud prevention software and equipment. Are you starting to see some orders come through the Amdocs pipeline already?

Benny: We started to build a pipeline and I am very pleased that the pipeline is growing and to see its progress. Unfortunately, it is not time to announce a joint deal yet. I hope it will be in the near future. It is not only for fraud but also for revenue assurance and other products we have in the portfolio. I think we need to give it a little bit more time. We know that the sales cycle for such a deal is not three months - it takes a little bit more to actually finalize a deal. Personally, I am satisfied with the pace of development of the relationship with Amdocs and the pipeline that we are working with.

Eric: You acquired Compwise's products earlier this year. Are you expecting mostly to cross-sell your existing products to Compwise customers, or are you looking at Compwise as an opportunity to offer diversified products to existing ECtel customers, or do you expect this will open up new markets? What do you see as being the likeliest source of benefits from the Compwise deal?

Benny: Everything you've said, plus.

Eric: [lol] Good answer.

Benny: Let's start from the beginning. We decided to buy Compwise not only because of the fact that we want to cross-sell our products to Compwise customers and vice versa. It started from the concept and the portfolio that we are trying to build. We see ourselves as the leading provider of integrated revenue management. We don't believe that operators today need to focus only on fraud issues, or only on revenue assurance issues... we do believe that there should be a very high rate of interoperability between all those systems. When we came up with this strategy, we decided we needed certain applications to be added to our portfolio. One of them was Compwise's product. We are going to rebrand the Compwise products - probably we will announce that soon. We took two products that Compwise had, and rebranded them into two of our models within the IRM portfolio. One of them is BillView, which is actually the product that handles the billing verification or the audit of the invoices provided by the operator. The second one is the start of capabilities to provide strategic planning on rating plans to the operators. It is mainly used by strategic departments, rating planners etc. We took that and we're going to integrate it into our Business Intelligence model which we call BusinessView in order to give additional capabilities for 'what-if' scenarios: what will be the impact if I am going to raise my rate plan by five percent? Probably I will lose some customers, but I will make more money on the customers that will stay. What will be the impact if I do the opposite operation, and reduce the price? I will get more customers and make less on each of them. We decided to purchase the assets of Compwise - we didn't buy the company, we bought the assets, the systems, the customers etc - in order to complete the portfolio of revenue management. Naturally we wanted the ability to be able to cross-sell to Compwise customers. We get very prestigious customers with the Compwise deal: France Telecom, Orange UK... customers in Australia, Spain, Thailand, South Africa. And of course we want to sell Compwise products to our customers. But the deal mostly came from our understanding that we need to expand the portfolio, that customers will not see the highest value by only implementing a revenue assurance system or only implementing a fraud system or only implementing a business intelligence system. They will see the highest value, both from an IT and a functional perspective, if they address all the problems they have now and might have in future when tackling revenue management issues.

Eric: You talked a little bit about being the integrated revenue management company. It is a very competitive market. What would you say is ECtel's USP in comparison to its competitors, and how would you distinguish the importance of that USP in driving future sales?

Benny: We touched on that a little bit in my last answer. First of all, it is about the need of the market. It resembles in a little way the collision of concepts between Airbus and Boeing. Boeing said 'we want to do point-to-point planes, we believe that people will fly point-to-point and not through hubs'. Airbus said 'we believe that most people will fly hub-to-hub and then they will spread to a smaller network'. That is why Airbus came up with a bigger plane that can accommodate more passengers. We believe, like Airbus, that management should provide an extensive portfolio. We believe our products are very highly competitive in all aspects, but we don't believe in best of breed. We don't believe companies should be highly focused on, let's say fraud, but not other aspects of the portfolio. We don't believe companies should excel only in revenue assurance and cannot address problems of customers in terms of network issues, business intelligence, and billing verification etc. That is why we believe are unique selling point is our ability, not only to address the whole range of issues that cause headaches in terms of revenue management, but also to build an infrastructure that is so flexible that we will be able to add more and more applications, according to the market trends, according to the operator needs, and according to problems that nobody even knows of today but will emerge in the next couple of years. That's why we came up with the IRM concept. We are accompanying the IRM concept not only by products, but also by what we call IRMA, the IRM Alliance.

Eric: IRMA?

Benny: It is a sort of a social network, a Facebook for revenue management users. We are going to allow everybody to share information, to share knowledge. For our customers, they will also be able to get deeper controls and KPIs and plug-ins, but for the open community, they will be able to meet other people that are tackling the same problems, understand what they are doing, understand their challenges, and reduce the learning curve. In terms of the unique selling point we believe that, first of all, we need to provide a single point of contact in order to tackle all revenue management issues - by the way, not only leakage issues but also monitoring and control issues. I want to allow business people to be sure they are on top of their processes. I don't want the CFO to wait until he gets a report from Marketing telling him that 'on this service we did not do as expected'. I want him to see if the pace of acquiring new customers for new services is as planned, and if less, I want him to know immediately so he can ask why and what can be done to meet the plans. The second aspect is that I want to provide my customers with a tool that will reduce the total cost of ownership. Let me give you a quick example. If you buy revenue assurance and fraud systems from two different vendors, you have two projects. You will have to load the CDRs into the revenue assurance system, you will have to load the CDRs into the fraud system. You will have two storage systems, two projects, two implementations, you will have two different systems to maintain. With our concept of IRM, let's assume you've installed the fraud system. You already have all the CDRs in your storage. Now you would like to have another module from our portfolio. It could be the revenue assurance, it could be the billing verification... it doesn't really matter in what order. You don't need to load the CDR's again. They're already there in your storage. When I'm going to plug in the next module, I'm going to use that. You get the benefits of both worlds. It is loosely coupled, so you don't need to have everything at the same time. You can start with one module, but as you grow, you reduce the time to implement new systems. This reduces delivery time, return on investment time, but also reduces the total cost of ownership.

Eric: I agree with you entirely about the cost and processing efficiencies of trying to achieve multiple goals from the same data, but I can also see a counter-argument that says if a company isn't organized so the same people are working in similar fields, say that revenue assurance and fraud aren't managed by the same people, that may be an obstacle to implementing one system across an organization. Do you find that it's easier to sell to companies where they do have revenue assurance, fraud, maybe business intelligence as well, being run in the same area, than it is to sell to businesses where these teams are fragmented and in different parts of the business?

Benny: Not necessarily. It's always easier to sell to a single point of contact. If I have a relationship with a specific department, it is always easier to sell the next product to the same guy. But it's not for the reasons you mentioned. Let's say it's a fragmented operator, so I am selling to the department that handles revenue assurance, they are going to IT to handle the storage, the loading of the data and all the CDRs are located in the database. Now let's assume I have to sell the fraud system to another department because in this operator it is a different department. They would still go to IT, and IT will tell them: 'great, we already have those CDRs'. The department will only see the implementation of the specific controls, alerts and alarms on the dashboard that we will now provide. But everything that is under the hood is still there. This is under IT responsibility. It is not that the new department will say we have to do it all again because it is not the same department. On the contrary, I will come to the next department and say 'because you already have the CDRs, the time to implement the system will be a lot shorter, and you will see return on investment a lot faster'.

Eric: Okay, all very sensible. Now your model is to integrate at least at the point of collecting and extracting and managing the repository of data. One thing I do hear people say, and I'm not saying I agree with it, but I hear people saying from time to time things that sound like 'fraud systems should be separate from revenue assurance systems' or that 'revenue assurance systems should be kept separate from business intelligence'. Do you find that customers ever say that to you, and how do you respond if they do?

Benny: We can make our way either way. It is loosely-coupled. I can put the revenue assurance into one department, and the business intelligence into others. They will get separate dashboards. The fact the CDRs service both applications is not important. It is the same with data mining or data warehouse projects. All the operators are going to a point where they will have one place for storing all the data they are working on. It doesn't really say those are not two different systems. We can also go with the other story saying you see more benefit if you get interoperability of systems. Let's take the bypass issue of fraud. Sometimes there are cases you can detect on fraud systems and you can detect on revenue assurance systems. You don't want your two separate teams to work on the same problem. If you connect the systems so the alert gives you a hint: 'you have now an alert on bypass, but be aware that the revenue assurance team has already been alerted from a different control two days ago'. You will be able to save money. There is a benefit working on systems that can share information. The executives will certainly understand that, even if the two separate departments see themselves as separate.

Eric: On the call, there was a question asked about the market and how the market is developing for revenue assurance and for fraud. The answer was that you saw growth in revenue assurance, and the fraud market being stable. Is it that the revenue assurance market is growing overall, and the fraud market is stable overall, or is it that your share of revenue assurance is growing and stable in the fraud market?

Benny: You cannot generalize such an issue. Maybe if you take the median of all geographies, it is fair to say the fraud business is stable. But there are some geographies like Africa and Eastern Europe, with focus on the former Soviet Union countries, where the fraud market is not stable, it is increasing. In Northern America and Western Europe the fraud market is stable, maybe even less than that. It is fair to say the fraud market is overall stable. Indeed, the revenue assurance market is growing faster, even on a geographical basis. But in some geographies the customers are less matured, less progressed on their operations, and want to tackle fraud before they tackle revenue assurance. That's why the IRM concept is very flexible and we believe unique for us. You can start wherever you want, but you are flexible to grow into tackling all the issues when you decide to grow. We say that revenue management - not specifically revenue assurance or fraud or etc - we say that revenue management is definitely growing everywhere.

Eric: Tell me if you think this is right or wrong. It sounds almost as though revenue assurance is still a less mature market than fraud, which is why it has growth potential, but that means it may be easier for you sometimes to sell into a customer the fraud product first, because that is an easier product for the customer to understand, and then sell the revenue assurance product. Is that fair to say you would typically expect to sell the fraud product first?

Benny: Yes, but again, related to geography. Everything you said now is 100% right if we speak about Africa. If we speak about North America, then it's the opposite.

Eric: Oh really?

Benny: We know that in North America fraud is less of a problem than in developing countries. In North America and Western Europe, revenue assurance is now more positively perceived. In Africa, South America, the former Soviet Union, APAC, in less matured operators - not necessarily less developed countries - they want to tackle fraud first. It depends on the type of the subscriber base in the operator. Fraud is a low-hanging fruit issue. Then you can move on to revenue assurance and monitoring processes. In countries like North America, with the overall trend towards accounting visibility and being on top of the numbers, they are more driven by control and monitoring.

Eric: You touched upon the differences in the market geographies there. On the results call you discussed the deal with China Mobile, where you're rolling out to a second region now. Each province in China is like the size of most countries. Are you expecting that you will continue to roll out to more regions with China Mobile in the long run?

Benny: Yes, we definitely expect to roll out more regions with China Mobile and we are also targeting the other operators in China as well. The Olympic Games starts this Friday so, during the summer we don't expect big news. You know, everybody that dealt with China knows it's about first breaking the confidence issue, then you can roll out relatively fast. It took us a little bit of time to show them on the first installation that we do have a product, that it actually works, that everything is according to their requests, that our local partner is actually providing what we need, that the relationship with Motorola - it's a joint deal with Motorola - that our relationship with Motorola is very solid, that Motorola have the education on our system that they will be able to provide all the answers needed... Once we did it successfully on the first project, the second was a lot easier. We expect the next opportunity to be faster and easier. Just to relate to your statement about the size of the installation: yes, China is very big. They have over thirty provinces that we can potentially roll out to. The provinces that we've implemented so far were not one of the three biggest. Of course we have our hopes on that and we look forward to that.

Eric: Can you talk at all about the specific challenges in terms of what the Chinese customers need, or the specific challenges for you as a company, in terms of providing services and products into China?

Benny: It's not unique to China, but it's very important for them to be close to the customer. It's not only about physical difference, it's also about culture. We have not only a branch in Guangzhou in China, but we also did this deal together with Motorola China. They know they are working with Chinese people. They know the knowledge is dominantly in China. They don't need to get the support from Israel. They want to know they are able to speak with Chinese people on Chinese time, knowing the Chinese culture, understanding each other. All the knowledge is there, all the local support is in China. Italians would like to do business with Italians, French with French. In China, more so. We have AT&T as a customer, it wasn't really important to them. We had a very successful Proof of Concept there. Three other vendors did the Proof of Concept. Only we completed the Proof of Concept on time and successfully. AT&T didn't really mind that all the support came out of Israel. They witnessed the fact that we can meet the SLA, they did not care that the knowledge base was outside of the US. For China Mobile, it was very very important to have it in China.

Eric: I see. One thing I was thinking of was that some big companies over the years have had concerns when dealing with China over control and respect of intellectual property. In your business, intellectual property is a large factor in your commercial advantage relative to your rivals. Have you had to do anything special to protect your intellectual property rights as part of dealing with Chinese businesses?

Benny: No, not at all. Of course, when we first decided to go into China, all those issues came up and we had to evaluate the risk and decide on our position. The fact that we are working with big operators and the fact that we are working with a channel like Motorola China, a Chinese company but with all the ethics and business codes of Motorola worldwide, gives us comfort. Nevertheless if you want to do business in China, you have to accept the Chinese culture. You need to decide if you want to play the game. If you want to play the game, everything can grow to numbers you never dreamed of. If you don't want to accept they are different to Europe or the US, you cannot do business in China.

Eric: Moving to more general sales and trends in future, in 2007 about half of your sales came through system integrators and various distributor channels. Are you expecting that ratio to remain constant this year, or do you expect that to change over time?

Benny: I can give you the trivial answer. We are increasing the number of partners and channels to our business. We want to grow the direct sales as well. Channels are very important because they give us global reach. They are very important. But we also want to increase our direct business as well. I don't want it to change, but I want both parts to grow.

Eric: You mentioned the social network you've set up. Do you think this will help you to drive increased direct sales?

Benny: Yes, but it will also help us to drive indirect sales. It will bring the knowledge closer to the users. They will get more opportunity to know that we are facilitating the way they will be able to share information between ECtel customers but also with customers of other companies. We want to allow them to share information. Today it's not only about systems. It is also about information and the ability to share. I don't care if you are my competitor's user. I want you to be able to share knowledge with other colleagues, even if they are my customers, so you will be able to do your work better. That's the reason behind it. It's an ECtel environment, but it's not related to ECtel promoting our products. In every marketing move you believe it will enable you to position you better in the market, to brand you better in the market etc, and that eventually it will gain more customers for you, but this first comes from the social sharing perspective and not from increasing sales.

Eric: Some of your competitors are doing similar things. Subex has for some time now had its user forums and its user forum meetings, where they invite people to various exotic locations to meet and to discuss things. cVidya has been very heavily involved with the TM Forum. How do you distinguish what you're doing with the social network and what your competitors are doing?

Benny: We have several ideas, but you will have to wait and see when we launch it. We believe we are doing something that is very unique, very special. It is not only about putting up a forum and allowing people to ask questions and to have answers. We believe that we are going to introduce something that will also evolve in time. Maybe on our next call I will pinpoint what is not being done so far in the industry.

Eric: Do you have a launch date in mind?

Benny: The launch date is the end of the summer, which is early September, and I'm sure you will know about it as well.

Eric: I look forward to finding out more. One last question. Competitor pressure, consolidation, and the pressure to discount prices: do you think that consolidation will be a good thing because it will reduce pressure to discount prices, or a risk because it may create larger competitors?

Benny: There are two sides to consolidation, as you have mentioned. It reduces competition but creates a bigger competitor. When it creates a bigger competitor, it takes time for the competitor to reorganize itself and integrate the systems into one offering. We know what happened to Subex after they bought Syndesis. They chose to go into the OSS world, we are focusing on the BSS world. Predominantly, I am happy that they decided to have OSS also within their business, because I think it is a bit of defocusing from BSS. In general, we don't see consolidation as a risk factor unless the consolidation was done by the bigger players. We are working on our strategy of the IRM portfolio, and we believe even the consolidations are not giving a full answer to our strategy.

Eric: So although there is intense competitive pressure, you're expecting with the way your strategy is, and the way consolidation is working, you do not need to alter your strategy, and that overall you expect price pressure to reduce as companies consolidate.

Benny: Not in a major way. Of course we always have to listen to the market trends and what other companies are doing and amend our strategy or tactics slightly to tackle specific issues. It also depends on specific companies that we are competing with. In general, we are working according to our strategy, and we believe it gives us an advantage even in the face of consolidation.

Eric: I've taken up a lot of your time today, Benny, and I really appreciate it.

Benny: Thank you for the time. I'll be happy to speak with you whenever you want.

Eric: Many thanks.

"Our Ascertain revenue assurance software and our self-amortizing consulting services remain in demand, particularly in the cable sector, and we continue to see solid new customer and total engagement activity overall."

Development of the Ascertain product range continues, most recently with the announcement of an improved subscription reconciliation module. If sales remain strong, further development is inevitable.

Later this week I will be talking to Benny Yehezkel, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Sales at ECtel, about these results and the future of the business. Come back to find out more.

Eric: Morisso, what lead you to set up a new LinkedIn group for revenue assurance professionals?
Morisso: The idea first came to me two years ago, when I tried to found a group for my university alumni. At the end there was a huge fee. A few weeks ago I saw there was a new and free way to connect people through LinkedIn. The difference between contacting people through LinkedIn and asking them to be your friend or your network contact is that you have to write to someone, get an answer, they do not know you. I had a few problems with that, and people were not happy to connect without knowing me. On the contrary, people are much happier to connect via LinkedIn. The fact that I already knew a lot of revenue assurance professionals, and the fact that I am not a vendor, and only interested in professional matters, helps a lot. I think a lot of vendors have joined, but we have a nice proportion of professionals amongst us. One of the questions I asked myself was whether to accept people coming from HR, who are seeking to network only to find people looking for jobs. But that might be in the end interest of everybody. Not so much in the revenue assurance group, but In the credit and collection group, the people most happy to respond were unemployed people, so if we can help them by having people from HR join, why not?
Eric: You've set this group up, and you've been involved with GRAPA...
Morisso: Not exactly. I joined the site.
Eric: The reason why I mention GRAPA is that you've set up a LinkedIn group, and they previously set up a LinkedIn group for revenue assurance professionals. Do you see yourself doing something completely independent from other organizations?
Morisso: My most honest response is that I can make a statement of being completely independent as long as I am a revenue assurance manager in a telco. I don't know what I am going to do in two, three, five or ten years. In future, I may make use of that networking, but for now that is not my purpose. On the contrary, I think my position as a revenue assurance manager opens a lot of doors that would be closed if I was a vendor or any kind of advisor.
Eric: What would you say are your main goals for the LinkedIn group? Or is that too hard a question - is the goal to network, and see what happens as a result?
Morisso: [lol]
Eric: I ask because you've got a lot of members already [the group has 141 members at date of writing]. I think you've attracted a surprisingly large group so quickly. You've got a lot of people interested, so when you speak to people, what is it that you're saying is the reason for the group... or are you just saying let's have a group and then people can use it how they want to use it?
Morisso: I sent two kinds of invitations: one to all my contacts and then another to revenue assurance managers in groups I am in already. The text said:

"I am pleased to invite you to join the revenue assurance professional group. Our goal is to promote our profession, build up a network of professionals and be able to help each other on professional issues like questions and answers and benchmarking."

What I did with my other LinkedIn group, the credit and collection group, is that I opened a Google group, and put there about twelve, thirteen questions that really interest me, and then... nothing... [lol]
Eric: Oh yes, that's the problem with things like this. That's why I am pleased and surprised you have got so many people interested. I once wrote an article, and it was based on a lot of research about these things, and if you look at Wikipedia or any internet-driven activity, for every hundred people who are interested enough to take a look, there may be only one person who is interested enough to provide some content. That seems to be a very consistent statistic. I think the difficulty we face in the revenue assurance industry is that when you take a ratio of 1 to 100, that is not very many people producing material. You have to get an awful lot of people interested before you find even a dozen who will be consistently involved in discussions and debates and the rest of it. That intrigues me, and I am curious to know if your model is more passive - wait and see what happens - or more active, where you will take more of an active lead.
Morisso: The reason why I did not set up a Google group for revenue assurance is that we tried to find questions that were interesting... but for the most interesting questions we have now, the source was the revenue assurance benchmarking we are doing with the TMF. So we cannot share our published KPI's, and if I put there only very narrow issues, that would not interest anyone.
Eric: True. That is another big difficulty too, isn't it? People often get very specific with their questions, but too specific to interest other people who have no reason to be concerned with those kinds of problems. Finding common points of discussion isn't that straightforward, especially ones that are relevant to people on a day-to-day basis.
Morisso: One of the things we did after joining the TMF's benchmark was that we had access to the TMF's guidelines, and we created a connection with the COSO cube. We tried to mix the revenue assurance framework from the TMF within the COSO cube.
Eric: Wow! Ambitious!?
Morisso: It is very interesting as an idea. The framework of the TMF gives you two levels, and the COSO cube gives you the third level, the business unit, and then you have a three-dimensional model. But the problem is that it gives us about 500 [lol] points to check... it will take us ten years to do [lol]. My main problem is to set my priorities and goals.
Eric: That's one of the difficulties isn't it? You spend a lot of time gathering data. You spend so much time trying to gather data to understand what to do first, you never find time to do anything. I am intrigued... you are involved in the TMF benchmark program, have you been involved in the TMF before?
Morisso: I have been to Nice [to the TMF's European conference] twice, and we took part in the billing benchmark last year. But the answer to the question, why aren't we members of the TMF, it is a question of money. It costs a lot of money to be a member, and I have some difficulties to sell it to my boss.
Eric: It is expensive. If only one small part of the business is interested, it does not really justify the fees. If you can get many sections of the business interested, then it makes sense. I understand your situation entirely. But that's a shame, because it's one opportunity to share ideas like your idea of using the COSO cube in conjunction with the revenue assurance measurements. Maybe this is the start of creating a new vehicle to share that kind of information. Is that one of your thoughts, looking for a more cost-effective way to discuss, agree and share ideas with other revenue assurance people, without spending so much money or through face-to-face meetings which usually need vendors to sponsor? On that point, were you hoping when you joined GRAPA, that they would be a low-cost but effective organization where you could share information?
Morisso: Yes, exactly. I am coming from the area of credit and collections, then I turned to revenue assurance, and now I am risk manager. And as risk manager, I am responsible for credit and collections, revenue assurance and the risk function. About five, six years ago, I founded an informal group for credit and collections only. In telcos, you have seven or eight telcos in Israel. We are competing with each other. It is easier for me to cooperate with someone based in the UK or Europe, than it is to cooperate with someone based on the other side of the street. So, for me, GRAPA or TMF or similar model is much more exciting and gives more information and much more interesting issues. Discovering what was inside the benchmarking of revenue assurance in the TMF was like seeing Jesus - for an Israeli something very interesting!!! [lol]
Eric: You come from the credit and collections background. In fraud prevention, there are other organizations that are effective in this space. There does not seem to be as many, or the quality, of organizations working in revenue assurance.
Morisso: I don't have any model in mind. But I would be happy to cooperate with any group which gives a public place to meet and cooperate with people. Take Gadi Solotorevsky from cVidya, who is not really like a man working for a vendor. Most of the time he does research. It is interesting to cooperate with guys like that.
Eric: Absolutely, though part of the reason is he has cVidya to pay the bills! [lol] So he can fly to meet operators and attend the TMF events. The difficulty in this sphere is that you do get individuals like Gadi Solotorevsky who do a lot of good work, but they have to be in a lucky position to have the time and resources to do that kind of thing. We have not really been able to form a professional organization with the business case and the business model that can finance itself and do those kinds of things we would like to see done in this area.
Morisso: Even the TMF is not pushing in the direction of public revenue assurance standards. Rob Mattison did this directly. The TMF is missing something by not publishing standards for use by everybody.
Eric: I agree entirely, but I can understand their point of view too. Rob Mattison has a business model where he publishes, and you buy his advice later on. It is advertising for him. For the TMF, people are contributing the information, for free, to the TMF. It becomes the TMF's intellectual property, but the TMF does not have a really good and obvious model for how to use this intellectual property. It tries to sell it, or retains it as a way to encourage people to become a member and pays fees. But this discourages people from providing information, because why give information when possibly not many people are going to see it? It would be easier to do something like Rob Mattison has done, and publish so all the world can see it.
Morisso: I have to disagree a little bit with you. I have no problem to give my data to the TMF. I do not care what they do with it, to make a profit, so long as they do not misuse it. As a middle manager, I gain immediately by sharing information.
Eric: Don't get me wrong, I am not against giving information to the TMF. I've given them plenty of information myself over the years [lol]. I just think it puts off other people, who would be more keen to circulate material more widely. There are people like yourself who will see TMF material sometimes, and not other times. Something like what you are doing may be the start of an opportunity to put out material more widely and share it more freely.
Morisso: Two years ago I went to an IIR conference, and there were about five to ten revenue assurance managers. Everybody was speaking about KPI's. We spent three days there, and we leave without getting one KPI from anyone! [lol]
Eric: That's not the first time that's happened [lol]. If information is shared, it may only take place when you fly people to the same place, for a conference. It does not give you something you can maintain. After they leave, they do not keep in touch. The use of the internet, like LinkedIn, gives us another opportunity to share information.
Morisso: I will go in any direction that helps me to be a professional.
Eric: One last question. We have used the word "professional" in this conversation, but there is no professional organization for revenue assurance. Quite a lot of people in the industry, in GRAPA and the TMF and elsewhere, have been talking about the need for professionalization of revenue assurance. They are looking for qualifications and certifications, distinguishing who the professionals are. What are your thoughts on the need for it?
Morisso: We are very poorly represented in the telecom professions. Even when talking about the risk function, nobody knows what we are doing. If you look at something like the Association of Credit Managers in the United States, and with my being from Israel, a country of seven million people, it gives you humility about starting something like that. If you ask me, if there was a professional organization in England, or Europe or the States, would I try to get in involved in it, then the answer is yes.
Eric: The problem is getting it started.
Morisso: The problem is starting. If we look at CPA organizations, which have been in place for 100 years or 150 years, we are not going to be a recognized profession at the beginning.
Eric: It evolves, doesn't it? You do not jump to being a professional. Consensus evolves. Getting everybody involved is great, but you have to draw a line on what is professional practice. Part of the problem is that you have to distinguish who is the professional from who is not.
Morisso: Maybe our direction should be to unify enough revenue assurance managers in Europe and maybe the United States, a few hundred revenue assurance managers, and then go to the TMF and force them to publish their standards. Because with independent people located in so many countries, it will be difficult to build up a new organization.
Eric: I have taken up a lot of your time, Morisso, and I do appreciate it, and have really enjoyed talking to you.
Morisso: Me too.
Eric: I could probably keep talking with you for a lot longer [lol] but let me finish here and thank you for talking with me today.
Morisso: Thank you.

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...

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.

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.

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...

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:

• Equity: Let everyone join, or follow your own rules about who can join. No special exceptions for anyone, no matter how much they are prepared to pay.
• Transparency: Make it clear who set up the organization, and where the money has come from.
• Governance: Pick the leaders only after you have some members, and only after you state the rules for how the leaders will be picked.
• Honesty: Achieve something before you start boasting of your achievements. Get interest from across the world before you pretend to be a worldwide body.

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! ;)

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?

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.