Look carefully at the latest press release from Subex and you will find it raises some intriguing questions about the purpose of revenue assurance. On the surface of it, we hear a typical good news story: ‘leading SE Asian operator’, ‘successful implementation’, ‘now processing over 100 million CDRs a day’, ‘provides unprecedented automated correction capabilities’. But hold on… how do we feel about those last two statements when read together? There is nothing wrong with processing lots of data – well done to everyone involved. Unprecedented automated correction sounds good too, but what does it mean? The meaning is not obvious because, after all, this is unprecedented. One likely meaning, if this is applied to 100 million CDRs per day, is that data is being manipulated without human oversight. On the one hand, this can be a good thing. If there is something wrong with the data, then fix it as quickly and cheaply as possible. On the other hand, it begs a question about the role of RA, especially if we believe that RA has something to do with better operational efficiency. If it is efficient to automatically correct the errors in data, then why is it not more efficient to change systems so they produce the correct data in the first place?
100M CDRs per day + Auto Correction = ?
