I came across the term crowdsourcing and wondered how we get to come up with new concepts at the speed of white light. Throw around big words and we all sound clever and highly regarded. I wiki’d it and came up with this:

Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.

The term has become popular with businesses, authors, and journalists as shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals. However, both the term and its underlying business models have attracted controversy and criticisms.

Is crowdsourcing only valid when it involves the use of Web 2.0 technology or would this be applicable to writing book chapters as well? Can we regard the guidelines, technical reports, etc generated by the TMForum and GRAPA as crowdsourcing? If so, how does crowdsourcing differ from collaboration?

Just wondering.

The long awaited moment arrived. The study (phase 1 I have to add) was completed and submitted to the University of Johannesburg for examination. A series of academic articles will share the provisional taxonomy.  Additional work will be done in the DPhil to continue building and validating the working definition of RA. I can’t share too much prior to formal publication but I can discuss the study approach and some of the outcomes and implications for industry.

There is a saying about going back to the beginning if all else fails. Grounded theory enabled me to do just that. The qualitative method for those unfamiliar with it works on the principle of inductive reasoning. It assigns codes or words to concepts as it appears in the raw data. The creation of the code is done within the context of what is said without considering who said it, through which medium and for what reason. Obviously one can use the method to analyse “who said it” and “how it is communicated” but for this study I focused on what is said. Some 200 “what of RA” codes were generated and analysed to create hierarchies of conceptual categories. Developing the hierarchies of meaning this way allows your theory (or the concepts only in this case) to be grounded in the data. It thus becomes free of emotion, own values or ideas.

Over 20 core concepts emerged from the data, many of which are of no surprise. When you read industry material, what is foremost in most of these RA articles? Motivation to do RA, structure of the RA function, functional area in which to do RA, the process and the methodology of RA, etc. Known concepts but with vague or fluid meanings attached.

The core concepts saturated. In other words I did not find industry material talking about a concept I did not already have. However, there are concepts, which did not develop density, as there was no material that provided detailed enough descriptions to develop properties. Using an example. The RA methodology developed properties of its purpose, e.g. what it should do for the CSP but did not develop enough on what it should look like or consist of to be regarded as a methodology. Needless to say, there is overlap in the material pertaining to concepts. What one source describes as the methodology, the other would position as a process. Some differences can be eliminated through analysis, while others become issues for industry debate and field assessments.

The provisional taxonomy positions these 20+ concepts into 8 domains within one of two underlying themes (business management practices and the philosophy of RA). The study was a bit wide to publish as one article. The basic taxonomy and the method used to arrive at it will be published in 1 article. Conflict across concepts or obvious disparity within concepts will be dealt with individually though discussion documents. These will be published in academic journal where you will have the opportunity to respond.  I will also attempt to resolve these conflicts through fieldwork, which may….will be quicker than formal journal discussions.

Happy to answer questions if I can do so within the constraints of publication requirements.

I collected books from the university library a few weeks back and picked up a book from my list of references on the topic of qualitative research methods. I quickly scanned it for its usefulness. One such usefulness criteria is the date of publication. 1967. Who in his right mind references such an old volume today? I left it just to return to it an hour later realizing it is the original work by Glaser and Strauss.

It occurred to me that just as any student of Grounded Theory (GT) would not dream of using this methodology without acknowledging this foundation work, we equally do not challenge Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory as it supports many recent contributions to management and motivation literature today. There may be some aspects of both these theories that don’t sit well with all researchers but both these seminal works left a basis from where we can depart. The novice does not have to start from scratch or worse, start from a jelloware base.

Another little gem I found is Undisciplined Theory by Gary Genesko. Not easy bedtime reading but it has a refreshing view on interdisciplinary level theory. He challenges the limitations placed by institutional organizations on social theory, which tends to assume an established canon of work and clear boundaries. Academia ends up with concrete practices of theoretical production and reproduction.

This made me think of the state of RA material. Like in formal theory, we can argue that we have concrete practices out there and a number of war veterans who deserve a state burial the day they depart. But most of the work is a reproduction of what already exists. A proprietor, like a university or state department, that owns a body of knowledge it produced over a period of time. Unfortunately not of substance to stand the Glaser or Maslow test of time.

But this is good news. I hope that posts like this will entice other researcher to approach the study of RA in a more formal manner. Maslow and Glaser devoted their lives to their work, well Glaser is still active. This did not happen in 5 or 10 or even 20 years. A decade or two is normal and relatively little for the development of the good stuff.

I support Genosko’s notion of questioning the limits of the canon and expose the porous character of boundaries. He believes that three urgent requirements emerge for social theory.

1.    To think and feel ambivalence. The love and hate relationship we have in this industry both between groups or schools of thought and between those that believe the industry has a right to existence and those that cannot fathom what it is all about. This in my mind is good tension for a good story;

2.  To track the circulation of anomalies in theoretical texts. We circulate selectively, we quote selectively and we apply selectively. When you zoom in RA, the anomalies stand out. Yet we seldom question the reliability and validity of what we use or follow. We ignore context and personal or commercial motivation when we make important decisions affecting the common good of this colony. I sound like the narrator of Antz :)

3.  To learn from the fascination with interpretive boundlessness. I have to concede though that for many RA is just another job. It probably does not hold the fascination for many practitioners and life is too short to get over interpretive about what is really cooking under the hood. Can we see the RA movie in 4D now pleeezze?

I don’t think there are right and wrong answers but there is definitely another way to put this puzzle together.

I was speaking to the new Revenue Assurance manager at a previous employer and was thrilled to hear my friend took over that department. The wellbeing of those team members has been renting space in mind for some time. I emailed an ex-colleague to say thanks for looking out for what remains of this team and was struck by a thought. What exactly was renting space in my mind? The wellbeing of the function I am passionate about or the great many people putting heart and soul into it?

The mind and language philosopher Wittgenstein says language belongs to groups, not to individual or isolated minds. Language reflects communal practices and specifically how those communities use the words in that language. The language also has context and is infused with socio-cultural detail, which further informs the common understanding and adoption of the specific language as practiced.

The term Revenue Assurance has a generic meaning to all who are interested in the subject, yet not specific enough to categorise its components when we reduce the term to a cipher, or a bit, or an atom. A lot of what is going on in blogs, advertorials, vendor white papers and certification efforts are based on pretty much the technical stuff. The how to, or with what cool tool. The sales pitch is about the technology, with added benefits of consulting and on-site support. It assumes that the question is How to do RA?

Is this the question? Does answering this question inform of us of what exactly RA is? I could not help to reflect that for many of us in the RA industry, RA is a logical certainty. One for which we are prepared to fight, motivate and convince. Is the question perhaps Whether to assure revenue? The answer would certainly be yes. Does this require a dedicated team and specialised tools? Ask a commercial bank or car manufacturer and the answer is no.

Is RA perhaps rather a personal relationship? In some of the material I review for the research I find reference to technique to convince the CFO of the merits and benefits of investing in RA. The mere fact that there are executives who do not immediately see the must have of this function and who need a compelling business case to assign funds in this direction rather than that, is cause to revisit the question.

What is the correct RA question to ask to get an answer of 42?

Many years ago I was contracted to do process re-engineering at a government department. Somewhere during this time I became involved in an ISO certification exercise for this particular department. Not having had much experienced with ISO implementations, I asked the project manager to explain to me in brief terms what ISO quality standards were. He responded with “document what you do and do what you have documented”.

That has pretty much become my motto for Revenue Assurance, and much broader really. This pertains to anything that should be documented. Business rules, business processes, system flows, system rules, you name it. Very often these are not documented which means we all do what we think we should, or are capable of doing given the uncoordinated chaos between systems and departments that is most often the norm.

It becomes difficult to assign and monitor KPI because you are not working from a known and agreed factor. Much like yelloware: firm enough to touch but not solid enough to hold. I have seen many first stabs at KPIs and these are based on gutfeel or general common sense things we should measure. These KPIs were not scientifically determined or based on any maturity index of the department or function’s capability and/or capacity.

I have recently spoken to a number of junior level staff, both in the RA field and other industries and disciplines on the topic of defining KPIs for their business functions (such as procurement and SLA Management) and their individual performance (how are they performance managed against the job’s KPI’s).

I was astounded to find that both the HR people I spoke with (1 was senior) did not see the relevance of the continuous string of interconnection between the organisation structure; to the job role (stating the role objective in context of the strategic and tactical plans); to defining the job outputs (those core responsibilities that would add the execution view to the strategy); to the KPIs to measure and manage the contribution to the organisation. A Balanced Scorecard was some academic thing that resides with the Head of Department and does not filter through to the job description. That means the performance management chain is broken.

I also found that all KPIs discussed with me assumed a process maturity of between 3 and 4. In other words, it assumed the processes involved in producing the output to be measured, or support processes to enable the output, are all in defined and managed mode. I did not find one KPI that was aimed at establishing a capability, as you would assign for a level 1 or 2 maturity. Needless to say, those poor individuals with these sky-high targets did not have the basic doing capability in place let alone the measuring and reporting capability. For some reason organisations assume that building the infrastructure and processes with which to run and grow the business are either in place or relatively easy to just do as part of the overall job.

It was quite alarming to realise how few individuals thought their personal KPIs had any relevance to any measurements that might be in place for specific financial or service related work they may be involved in. This I would put down to not speaking to an individual who had both a set of KPIs used for annual performance management as well as measurable and reportable work tasks, typically the stats you would find in a call centre, help desk or RA. The Customer Service and RA people I spoke with did not have a Balanced Scorecard and those individuals with a BSC don’t work in an environment where objective performance measure are taken.

I have seen this in telco and have tested it now at 2 Banks. Same mindset. There is a disconnection somewhere, a fragmented view on this complex whole we call an organisation. Yet, come financial yearend we are back to drawing up the new BSC because last year’s failed.

Am I seeing a connection where there isn’t one or have I just not seen this implemented anywhere?

As part of the literature review for the RA research dissertation, I contrasted the definition, objectives and approach to RA, mainly using the work of the TMF and Mattison, supported by similar work by other authors. While most additional sources covered certain aspects of these dimensions of RA, the TMF and Mattison’s work were more holistic in terms of the labels I chose to analyse RA from.

When I reviewed the material initially, I found Mattison’s The Revenue Assurance Handbook and The Revenue Assurance Standards very difficult to follow. The conclusion did not follow from the premises. However, these I can deal with in the analysis by comparing favorably those aspects that do add value and highlighting the inconsistencies or lack of cohesion where these are evident when summing up the contribution of a piece of work to this discipline. I included this work since it was one of the few sources, which gave a holistic view of the entire function. It did not try to sell me tools or consulting services. Instead, it tried to explain WHAT the function is about and HOW it should be done. Exactly what I needed for this chapter.

I learned from the last review done by the university that the content of academic contribution is not always as important as the method used to arrive at such insight. The thought or argument journey we take to arrive at the facts is what differentiates facts from fiction or in this case, opinion. The methodology determines the validity and reliability of the contribution. We are all well versed in the art of revenue assurance and have experience that make certain things fact, like it or not. We will take on any academic journal and have it for breakfast because nothing makes up for the roasties we earned burning ourselves.

In an age of self-publication, why then do we still put so much importance on peer-reviewed publications and what exactly do we mean with peer-reviewed? Surely when GRAPA says it ratified material amongst its members, this should constitute peer-reviewed, as it is clearly a number of subject matter experts who reviewed and clarified the material before publishing it?

The difference is in the rigor with which the review was done and the thoroughness of the methodology followed in writing the material as well as analysing the output or result prior to publication. An objective and very critical analysis of content and indeed intent of the writing, by a 3^rd party, unemotional to the blood, sweat and tears which created the initial output, culminates in a piece of work that can withstand any scrutiny. Such review will immediately eliminate an error of logic; an error of conclusion not following the premises. Peer-reviewed material also provides the opportunity to question the content and argue these until the facts hold up. This is difficult to attain when publishing a book or a non peer-reviewed article. However insightful such material may be, it does not provide a basis from which to build theory. It does not give one a bird’s eye view on the different points of view, contrasted against and for an argument or the evaluation of support for and against the initial stances to such material.

To sum up the research progress, I always wondered why it took so long to do it and often wish that I could give it more focus than I currently have time for. The last 6 months saw substantial review being done but sadly, it did not provide the academic base I needed, so back to the scientific databases.