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…