Credibility and Consensus Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

98
Opportunity Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Collateral Systems Impact Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Infrastructure Investments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Operational and Organizational Investments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Competency Investments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Flexibility Investments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Critical Success Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Cost Tradeoffs −Getting the Optimum Cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Section 3 : Chapter 3 Leakage Mapping and Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Trying to Solve Strategic Problems with Tactical Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Symptoms of a Lack of Strategic Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Strategic Revenue Assurance Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Strategic Guideline Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Key Areas and KPIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Evaluating Revenue Management Risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Subjective Evaluation – A Valid Starting Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Objective Evaluation – The Revenue Leakage Mapping Technique . . . . . . . . 107
Step 1 – Identify Network Activity in Minutes for a Given Month . . . . . . . 108
Step 2 – Identify the Total Revenue Realized for the Month . . . . . . . . . . 109
Step 3 – Create an Estimate of Unrecoverable Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Sizing your Firm’s Risk Exposure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
The Importance of Declaring Noise Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Preparing the First Set of Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
What the Noise Number Represents? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Making Decisions with the Noise Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Formalizing the Noise Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Applying the Noise Concept to the Overall Revenue Assurance Process . . . . . . . . 114
Successful and Profitable Revenue Assurance Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
A Revenue Assurance Project that is a Total Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Section 3 : Chapter 4 Prioritizing Tactical RA Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

The Six Major Disciplines and their Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Handling Collection, Allocation and Follow-Up on RA Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Revenue Assurance Delivery Queues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

eXcellence in Telecommunications