Revenue Management Confronts New Challenges

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

The concluding line in The Who’s “Don’t Get Fooled Again," released in the glorious summer of 1971, points straight at a dynamic in the BSS/OSS world 40 years later.

In the world of BSS/OSS, fraud has been a player for a long time – the old boss in the analogy above. Fraud is also poised to be the new boss, this time on a gigantic scale.

Revenue management is about to confront a sharp spike in traffic driven by service diversification and the rapid development of machine-to-machine communication. Revenue leaks, not to mention outright fraud, will be far more painful for CSPs in this new environment than they have been heretofore – not that CSPs were ever fans of either revenue leaks or fraud.

The dimensions of the traffic spike, combined with the economic circumstances of this difficult decade, should be enough to make even the most laissez-faire CSP CEO take a second look at future fraud, argues Editor-in-Chief Tim McElligott, in a new B/OSS Digital Issue titled, “Future Fraud: M2M and Other Revenue Stories."

Compared to many other businesses, service providers have done well in the recession, thankfully. An impending spike in traffic would seem to be cause for unbridled joy, not cautionary tales. Not so fast, warns McElligott – and the industry experts he talked to for this issue support his jeremiad.

Here’s how McElligott frames the issue:

“Many [service providers] are heavily leveraged … but with … enviable revenue streams they would be the last to fall if all went to hell. Still … for CSPs not to sew … holes in their pockets that currently let millions of dollars fall to the floor and remain there … would be the equivalent of lighting their cigars with five-dollar bills in full view of their customers.

“There was a time not so long ago that [CSPs] could almost be forgiven for such sloppy accounting. After all, they were so busy taking on new customers they hardly had time to get their orders right the first time – or second. And who cared? Their bottom lines were boldly black and their customers were so fat, dumb and happy with their new broadband or their new jewel-encrusted cell phone that no one cared.

“That party has been over for a while now and improving revenue management anywhere an improvement can be had should be a top priority for CSPs."

Revenue management assumes a new aspect in these circumstances. It moves up the priority list of any CSP CEO from very important to mission-critical. But is the industry truly prepared for this confrontation with the future?

Maybe not – or not enough, warn many expert observers.

Read the Future Fraud Digital Issue, and bring yourself up to date on the latest thinking about future fraud, and the dire consequences for CSP execs who take a business-as-usual approach to revenue management.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows," Dylan memorably observed in Subterranean Homesick Blues, written and recorded in 1965 when he was at the height of his youthful powers.

Likewise, you do not need a Ph.D to recognize that money already made, and then lost, is bad for business. On a large enough scale, it is bad enough to blow even a healthy business head over heels.

To get a handle on the consequences that impend for service providers who don’t take another look at revenue management now, before the spike hits full force, read the Digital Issue.

Or the new boss will be the same as the old boss – just much, much worse.

E-mail me at llannon@vpico.com or click on the comment button below.