Two weeks ago I participated in the IBC conference in Panama, which had two tracks, one for Fraud and Revenue Assurance and the second for Billing.I attended both tracks and was a panelist in the Billing session. In the Billing track there were probably 35 participants, representing about 15 SP’s.

It was a good opportunity to see how RA activities are perceived by non-RA people. I opened with a question that might sound passé these days, “who is familiar with Revenue Assurance” – all were. I have asked this question to similar crowds over the last 6-7 years. 6 years ago after I got the negative replies I had no alternative but to explain, what is RA, why is it needed, etc.; nowadays the question seems redundant – and it cheers me up to re-discover this. 

I continued by asking about their perception of RA, with nicknames of these perceptions:  “The enemy”, “The auditor”, ” An obstacle” and ” Somebody that can help”. Nobody saw RA as the enemy or the auditor, only two participants saw RA as “An obstacle”, and the rest saw RA as an entity that can help to achieve business targets. The two participants that saw RA as an obstacle explained that the main reason is that RA sometimes causes delays or extra work in the release of new products.

Even if you are pessimistic, and in this case I am not, and you claim that the billing people’s response came from of “political correctness” – being that political correct “thing” will certainly help RA in fulfillment of its target, but in this case I am not pessimistic. I think the real reason for other departments to embrace RA is that they can see the value of RA, combined by RA professionals taking the right attitude, presenting themselves as partners and not as “auditors”.

I recently returned from an excellent IBC conference on Fraud and Revenue Assurance in Panama. I get to travel often, and one of the things that surprised me in Panama, is the joy of its people, in most countries people seems to be concerned with their day to day problems , in Panama, all the people to whom I spoke, stated that “estoy contento” (I am happy) – it is really nice to be in a country with happy people (It seems that my superficial perceptions are backed by some serious studies – Panama is ranked in the 5^th place out of 178 in the happy planet index)  . Now to even happier things Revenue Assurance; during the conference I asked people about the involvement of Revenue Assurance in launching new products and new services; Is RA checking the new products from its beginning, Can RA stop risky new products, Is RA approval required?  I asked the same question a similar group of operators in Latin America about 1.5-2 years ago, back then, roughly 90% of the answers I got varied between “we wish that we were involved”, to ” you must be kidding, nobody will let us to do it”,  Quoting Dinah Washington What A Difference A Day Makes;   only 1.5-2 years after , in a room with 40 participants, roughly representing 20 operators from Latin America, nobody claimed not being involved in launching new products, most claimed to be involved from the beginning, and to be able to either stop/delay new launches,  or to do a risk assessment, which is reviewed and signed by the people launching the new products. Moreover some of the operators said that similar procedures exist for installing new operational system, and a few stated that they are also involved in a similar way in changes in existing systems.

From my experience a similar changes occurred worldwide – RA in more and more places is becoming more and more proactive; I think that this is very positive as long that we all remember that even the most meticulous proactive RA cannot prevent leakages all together, and therefore reactive and active RA controls will always be needed as a complement to a strong proactive RA approach

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