The Big Leakage Coverage Survey: 6 Minutes to Complete, 10 Days to the Deadline

Business assurance, formerly known as revenue assurance, has been a maturing discipline for many years, but the rate of improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of our business assurance programmes appears to be slowing as telcos reach the limit of traditional approaches to tackling revenue and cost leakages.

Indeed, there remain differences of opinion regarding what should be within the scope of business assurance, and differences in the methods used to tackle common problems. Historic problems still blight the industry. Newcomers to business assurance often find it a daunting task to know where to start.

As part of the Innovation Programme of the Risk & Assurance Group (RAG), I have promoted a collaborative approach to identifying and documenting the issues that we face. This established a Business Assurance Risk Map consisting of 25 key risk areas. Common threats are catalogued in each area, together with typical root causes.

We can all benefit by sharing our hard won practical experience, so that others do not necessarily have to suffer the same problems, and so that we can get insights into risks that otherwise we may be overlooking. Together we can adapt our approach to new threats as they emerge.

Two and a half years have gone by since the first version of the leakage catalogue was launched at RAG London 2017. With subsequent feedback from RAG conferences in Germany, Australia, South Africa, UK, Kenya, Canada, USA and Bahrain, in addition to contributions from leading companies, the third version of this Risk Map and Leakage Catalogue was released earlier this year. You can download it from here.

The Coverage Survey

Based on this work, we launched RAG’s Coverage Survey at RAG Bonn earlier this year. The survey means participants can assess the coverage of their business assurance activities against this industry framework and benchmark themselves with their peers within the industry.

The survey takes just 6 minutes to complete and the closing date is 30th November. All survey responses will be treated in the strictest confidence.

All participants will receive a personalised report showing how their telco compares with the industry average as well as with the best and worst coverage scores within the pool of respondents. Each report will be sent within a few weeks of the survey’s close. I will have a lot of reports to write, but the comparisons are already proving to be fascinating. Let’s add many more telcos to the survey before the deadline closes, and make the final analysis even more powerful.

I would like to thank those of you who have already participated in the survey. Africans currently lead the world in responding to this survey, submitting more responses than telco managers on any other continent. The Middle East comes next, narrowly ahead of Europe and AsiaPac. North America is lagging behind, turning the usual expectations for industry surveys on their head. Perhaps North American operators believe their coverage is already ahead of the rest of the world, but they would need to complete the survey to find out!

Your Contributions Are Invaluable

With all collaborative initiatives, success is determined by the people who contribute. There has already been a tremendous response, but a recent rush of submissions shows that much more data can be collected in the remaining time available.

If you would like the business assurance industry to work together more closely, and to innovate more often, then we need to share our experiences, knowledge and understanding. Please contact us to explore how you could contribute to future versions of the Risk Map and Leakage Catalogue.

To reiterate, the survey takes just 6 minutes but the closing date is 30th November. Complete the survey here or by filling out the questionnaire below.

 

Geoff Ibbett
Geoff Ibbett
Geoff Ibbett is a consultant at Symmetry Solutions and offers training globally in the area of revenue assurance. Please visit symmetry-solutions.co.uk for more information.

Symmetry Solution’s TRAP™ allows service providers to take full, transparent and proactive control of their reference data to support their business, complementing revenue assurance, marketing, regulatory and financial departments to sustain competitive advantage and financial robustness.

Related Articles

Get Our Weekly Newsletter by Email