“Revenue Assurance” for Information Services

Anyone who has been reading my blogs long enough will know I occasionally dig up and share examples of how the phrase “revenue assurance”, and its concepts, are applied to quite different businesses. In the past I found relevant examples relating to airlines, the oil industry, software, and even government taxation. It has been hard to find good new examples worth sharing recently, not least because the phrase revenue assurance is increasingly used in North America as a cover-all term for any activity that might involve making more money. However, look here for a press release about a type of revenue assurance I have not seen before: preventing “piracy” in the supply of financial information services through activities like the sharing of accounts. The article also describes the loss as a “leakage”. The principle applies well. If two people use the account for the same information resource, the supplier makes half the revenue then if he sold two separate subscriptions, so it should implement checks to stop account sharing.

Though the idea is right, taking revenue assurance to its logical limit may ultimately have a downside. I guess it is only a matter of time before we start talking about “revenue assurance” to stop people sharing their newspapers…

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.