Recently in Revenue Assurance Category

Ahhh yet another partnership for content…. This one is between Comcast and Blockbuster for DVDs by mail ala Netflix.

Jeff Baumgartner’s analysis shows many of the aspects of the partnership including the available tiers of service between the two content providers.

However, I have questions about how Comcast and Blockbuster are going to ensure that the revenues of this relationship can be properly assured.  Linking the proper account information will be key to this situation to match the proper information between the two organizations.

NOTE – Comcast is clearly in the driver seat with this partnership.  However, Comcast will still have the obligation to make sure that their customers are properly billed.  If the revenue assurance, in particular billing assurance, has issues; customer experience and satisfaction may suffer and/or the partnership may cost more than the ‘promised’ value to Comcast provides.

How do you view the situation with Blockbuster’s partnership? And the associated assurance of the revenues?

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (@BlueBuffaloGrp) me directly.

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The silver bullet is a VERY over-used concept in marketing and solution selling.  I honestly don't believe that there is a single solution for any one set of problems... Then again, I do believe the "80/20" rule applies and you can solve a significant number of issues with some core concepts.

Tim McElligott looks at a recent Yankee Group report about streamlining the order management process.  While I am not quite ready to anoint, streamlined/automated order management as the key to all of telecom service providers revenue and cost woes.... I am willing say that I agree with Yankee that being able to automate the various relationships with content and 3^rd party providers is a key to making inroads to lowering costs and increasing customer satisfaction.

For revenue assurance organizations, these streamlined/automated order management processes will require additional controls that OM vendors and implementation teams may not be exactly about... However, these automated solutions have risks associated with not only being able to "screw up" a couple of orders.... but all orders until an issue is discovered and a fix is applied....

Accenture recently released a study about the issues that major organizations see in terms of risk management.  The results included current problems with their risk-management functions:

• 85% Ineffective integration of risk, return and capital issues in decision-making
• 85% Lack of alignment between the company’s strategies and its risk appetite
• 82% Insufficient enterprise-wide risk culture
• 80% Inadequate availability of timely risk, finance and business data
• 78% Lack of integration and aggregation across all risk types
• 78% Ambiguous risk responsibilities between corporate and business units

And biggest challenges foreseen over the next two years:

• 93% difficulty aligning with the overall business strategy
• 89% the need for more effective collaboration with business units
• 89% the need for greater integration in the firm’s processes and culture
• 89% inadequate resources and talent

Telecommunication service providers, and revenue assurance organizations, as a whole can take some of this information to heart as an indication that greater corporate cultures are seeing some of the same issues that impact revenue assurance everyday.

In particular, I am heartened to see that “lack of integration across risk types” and “inadequate resources and talent” are being recognized at the corporate leadership level.  Now the question is…

Will this set of “action items” make it into the corporate action plan and receive the resources that they deserve?

What do you think? Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (JohnLMyers44) me directly.

For years, people have envisioned the combination of micro-payments with cell phones for mobile commerce.  Now, Visa and others are moving toward making that a reality.  Saul Hansell has a good look at combo solution currently being used in Malaysia.

And while this seems like a great idea… ( and who didn’t see the “but” coming… ), but:

Are telecommunications revenue and cost assurance organizations ready to start reconciling all those transactions over phones?

Besides reconciling the number of cost and payment transactions that I’m sure will be flowing across the telecom networks if these systems become reality; attempting to capture the fraudulent transactions from the flow will be a challenge that many revenue assurance teams may not be ready for initially.  This comes from the fact that working with the external fraud teams of the credit card companies will be a new challenge that will be different from working with the internal fraud management teams.

What do you think the future of mobile commerce on wireless phones will be?

1. Integrated phone / credit card apps?
2. Credit card only apps via app stores like iTunes?
3. SMS/MMS based transaction engines?

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (JohnLMyers44) me directly. 

At a recent risk conference, Apple’s Dave Moriarty talked about how waiting for chargebacks is not an efficient strategy for dealing with fraud issues with online purchases.  As more and more online purchase are being made via, on and for mobile devices; I am in “violent agreement” with him. 

In fact, I would go so far as to say that it’s not just issues of fraud that can be tracked with with the “leading” indicator of cancelled orders, but revenue assurance as well.

Being able to track not only the subscription and service orders, but premium service or mobile application orders for provisioning and cancellation are excellent methods to identify problem products and services.  While you cannot eliminate fraud and revenue assurance issues using this type of order analytics, you can understand where issues will come from and help to build controls into those products either in advance or adjustment to meet fraud and revenue assurance issues.

Where do you think the future of order analytics is going?

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (JohnLMyers44) me directly.