If you want something done quickly…

…give it to someone who’s busy! There’s always something to do; be it the daily chores of chasing up KPIs on the end-to-end, checking tariff changes or attending requirements workshops.

And – don’t get me wrong – it’s nice when you get to work in an RA function that’s well respected for being accurate, knowledgeable and is valued. But what happens when an RA function in this position starts to become bombarded by issues and requests because they’re seen as the ‘go to guys’?

The flood gates open – and usually for many things that are, essentially, nothing to do with RA‘s remit – at least technically not!

Perhaps this is down to a lack of clear definition of Revenue Assurance within the companies this happens in, or possibly because RA are the only people to know who to genuinely go to – or perhaps because it’s seen as a catch-all for ‘management’ who don’t want to be dealing with what may be perceived as a poisoned chalice. Who knows?! Whichever it is, certain impacts to the team and the business are inevitable. The team become overloaded and stretched too thinly, like butter spread across too much bread, to be able to perform their core tasks either properly or at all. This overloading of tasks from different sources carries with it another issue. When too many senior stakeholders are pushing for answers it usually results in conflicts in the management chain and RA (who are usually trying to please everyone) end up in the middle of it.

RA needs strong senior management support to be able to effectively push back on things that genuinely don’t concern them or where the risk isn’t great enough to warrant diverting resource from genuinely impacting issues and core tasks. Often the politics will decide but, as long as a senior stakeholder in the business is on-side, then RA can follow their steer on priorities.

Sadly, I once witnessed a re-org that left RA orphaned and thrown into what became a power struggle. The loss of management was like losing the Thames Barrier during a hurricane and the lack of strategic alignment for the team in the business resulted in the function being a dog with three masters. This lack of clear direction not only affected the morale of the entire team through strained resource and conflicting, mixed messages, but, over time, damaged the reputation of RA across the business, breaking down bridges that had taken years to build.

Yet, in opposition to this scenario, in other organisations RA is seen as an almost temporary function which, once the low hanging fruit has been picked, is seen to add little to no value or, worse still, is seen as an unnecessary cost leading to the function becoming disbanded. This seems clearly short-sighted, but if the RA function isn’t mature enough then what value are they able to add over time?

It worries me that, even now, there are RA functions that don’t achieve necessary support to develop maturity, which sit too far down the chain of command to have adequate protection and that they exist purely protected by individuals in the management chain rather than the senior positions. Perhaps adoption into Business Assurance proper will help shield RA and other fringe teams suffering the same strains.

Time and time again RA and Risk functions within companies try to yield fantastic results, returns and savings by looking for the next big opportunity coming down the pipeline, investing time and money in what sometimes seems nothing more than an exercise in visibility. 

I’m not knocking being seen by the business as a useful initiative in its own right – not least of all because you’re only as good as your last ‘catch’, or because businesses have a way of forgetting what value you are unless you’re shouting doom and gloom.  Nor am I suggesting that mitigation isn’t needed for the ventures and undertakings of any company. 

What I am saying is that I have repeatedly seen a job half done, born from the need to keep up with changes.  No matter where you go in telecoms you can see degradation of maintenance for either data or processes, be it for network structure, product development or simply the processes behind stock control of CPE and SLA’s for third parties.  Given time, the fixes and mechanisms we put in place will either become outmoded or decay to the point where they add little or no value. 

With data and people being at the core of every business, it seems obvious that these foundation stones must be treated with the respect they deserve.  A single human error repeated time after time, a decision made without all relevant information or the implementation of something which isn’t fully considered can have a butterfly affect so profound that, before root cause and even be determined, the loss of revenue or brand damage can threaten and jeopardize an entire business.  If this foundation isn’t properly built and maintained, the whole thing can come crashing down. 

Our functions have a need to step in and correct problems, but what mechanism do we leave behind to monitor the health of our own solutions and how often, if at all, do we revisit any to ensure they are still either being followed or remain valid, effective controls?  Not often – mostly not at all!  There just isn’t the time, and management often doesn’t see the worth in it, thinking that once fixed there won’t be a reoccurrence. 

I don’t think that anyone can say this isn’t true.  Our roles too often seem like triage, patching up one wound and moving on to the next.  There’s clear value in this but we have a need to record, maintain and revisit what we have done to ensure we provide a holistic approach in our undertakings.

Think of it like spinning plates; hard to get started but easy to keep it going as long as you don’t leave it alone entirely.  Neglect it and sooner or later the plate will fall.

It’s all well and good coming up with fantastic ideas to set you ahead of the competition, assuming that you’ve thought the proposition through properly. Take Samsung for example – in these times of paranoia and heightened security consciousness, they released a function onto their handsets which allows you to enter numbers into it so that, should your phone be stolen and a new SIM card installed, the handset automatically sends a default SMS from the new SIM to the designated numbers without the new user ever knowing. Genius! This means that you can contact the authorities with the details and they can duly track down the offenders and pursue prosecution. If you’re really lucky, you may even get your phone back!

However, what if your phone is stolen and leaves the country? This happened to me. When I first saw this remarkable little application I thought ‘Great! A nice added extra that’ll ensure that I can nail someone for stealing my stuff’. In fairness this is probably very true when it comes to opportunists who swipe your handset off an unguarded table in a bar, but falls far short of the mark when dealing with more organised crime.

It wasn’t long after the event of theft that my partner received a message from an unknown number. A very odd message indeed, as it wasn’t English and came from a phone in Morocco.

It seems as though handsets are a shared asset out there or passed on quickly, as my partner continued to receive messages every week. Suffice to say that she and I have been unimpressed by unsociable reminders as to my loss, with many rude awakenings in the middle of the night. Still – I thought that I could contact Samsung for a speedy resolution to this irritation.

Wrong. After around four phone calls and much back and forth between departments, I finally spoke to someone who had heard of this rather unique function. Sadly, as the recipient numbers are stored only in the handset, Samsung have no means by which to change them or reset the service. Their only advice was to speak to my network provider about it. Further confusion ensues here when I can’t speak to them regarding stopping the messages because the recipient account has nothing to do with me. Then the only advice they can offer when speaking to the offended account holder is to try and have the numbers added to a blocking list. There are two major flaws to this solution:

1. to accomplish this you must have a crime reference number from the police and, as the handset stolen was mine and the associated crime number bears no relation to my partner, this wasn’t possible
2. (the more inhibiting problem) as the service is only activated when a new SIM is installed and this is only likely to happen once the phone is resold/passed on, we can’t know the offending number to add to any such list until it has already started to act as an extra alarm call!

It seems that, due to lack of foresight in the concept of this service, there is no hope of controlling the transmission of these messages, unless the latest user sees it themselves an duly deletes the stored CLIs. Well there hasn’t been any activity for a month or so, so we live in hope now – although I have a drafted message explaining the problem to send back to any future number. I can but hope that’ll do it!

This is a small application and has done little damage, all things considered, but it serves as yet another example of poor implementation from a manufacturer or provider, when the how this should have been done is so easy and obvious (white list repository, network operator agreement, etc, etc, rather than something integral to the handset). Normally these initiatives are flawed through a lack of funding and/or time to get something to market as quickly and as cheaply as possible, with testing being what seems the natural sacrifice of any project*. The overwhelming approach now been operated by most companies, to stick to a deadline rather than ensure delivery of something with quality is a worrying and poses such challenges when tasked with assurance and risk.

The value add of RA & Risk functions tends to be directly proportional to what sway it has with senior management rather than the message carrying an independent level of gravitas. As RA and ERM groups tend to be the only areas of a business that understand the potential ramifications across the board and can give some form of measure or scale to these challenges, it seems clear that reputation has a big part to play and our functions need to step out hard into areas of development within our companies to try to offer prevention and not cure. Indeed, RA and Risk functions should be involved from the outset for all change activity in a business, including the definition of strategies.

Anyway, I digress! In short, if you have this particular function active on anything, set the recipient to be someone you don’t like.

*I am not forgetting the damage here also done by a ‘yes’ man approach from Sales to prospective clients, or indeed the innovation of a marketing function who don’t understand or appreciate the complexity of support or billing of a solution when desperately looking for new USP’s.