How ‘Revenue’ Came to Mean ‘Cost’

The practice of revenue assurance is possibly the worst named discipline ever. There are a dwindling number of hardliners who stick to a scope that only involves assuring the processing of transactions with the potential to generate income (what is loosely but imprecisely referred to as ‘revenue’). More and more practitioners have come to realize that they can make a better overall contribution to the business by utilizing their skills wherever they are needed. The most blatantly paradoxical result is that these RA people assure costs as well as revenues, though their job title does not change to reflect this new reality. Over at his blog, Maverick makes the case that cost management is not merely a convenient extension of RA, but should be seen as an integral component of its scope; you can read his post here. To resolve the confusion caused by the name, he proposes incorporating the work under the umbrella term ‘risk management’. I know others prefer ‘business assurance’ as a way to escape RA’s cul-de-sac of nomenclature. All of which rather implies the more devious and forward-thinking readers should be out acquiring the rights to talkrisk.com or talkBA.com…

Eric Priezkalns
Eric Priezkalns
Eric is the Editor of Commsrisk. Look here for more about the history of Commsrisk and the role played by Eric.

Eric is also the Chief Executive of the Risk & Assurance Group (RAG), a global association of professionals working in risk management and business assurance for communications providers.

Previously Eric was Director of Risk Management for Qatar Telecom and he has worked with Cable & Wireless, T‑Mobile, Sky, Worldcom and other telcos. He was lead author of Revenue Assurance: Expert Opinions for Communications Providers, published by CRC Press. He is a qualified chartered accountant, with degrees in information systems, and in mathematics and philosophy.

1 Comment on "How ‘Revenue’ Came to Mean ‘Cost’"

  1. Avatar Alan Gonzaga | 30 Sep 2010 at 12:51 am |

    Quite often people ask me if “Over Charging” is part of revenue assurance or not. I haven’t seen good discussions about how to handle this kind of thing in RA arena (apart from the post about phone tone’s).

    Do you have something to say about it?

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