Advanced and emerging postal organizations are increasingly vulnerable to various forms of revenue leakage,including no payment, underpayment, counterfeited evidencing. Postal revenue leakage in Europe alone is estimated at over $1.0 billion annually. The question often asked is whether the cost of protection will justify the returns. As new technology solutions emerge, protection from leakage can be better integrated into business processes in order to deter theft. The webinar will discuss practices that can be applied in various environments across postal organizations, and across evidencing channels (bulk-permit, bulk-meter, retail, online postage, etc.)
How can you increase profits while your money is literally going out the door? We have identified 10 common service problems companies experience and provided some solutions to those problems, which will help you fix your revenue leakage as well as increase efficiencies and drive more revenues.
Revenue assurance (RA) is a niche business activity most commonly undertaken within businesses that provide telecommunication services. The activity is the use of data quality and process improvement methods that improve profits, revenues and cash flows without influencing demand.
ROC Revenue Assurance is a First-of-its-kind, complete
Revenue Assurance solution, designed to tackle critical
revenue assurance challenges across the entire revenue
chain.
For More Details Explore : http://www.subex.com/revenue-assurance/
How can you increase profits while your money is literally going out the door? We have identified 10 common service problems companies experience and provided some solutions to those problems, which will help you fix your revenue leakage as well as increase efficiencies and drive more revenues.
Revenue assurance (RA) is a niche business activity most commonly undertaken within businesses that provide telecommunication services. The activity is the use of data quality and process improvement methods that improve profits, revenues and cash flows without influencing demand.
ROC Revenue Assurance is a First-of-its-kind, complete
Revenue Assurance solution, designed to tackle critical
revenue assurance challenges across the entire revenue
chain.
For More Details Explore : http://www.subex.com/revenue-assurance/
A telecom company named as Bad Idea is expecting for fraudsters.
They designed a weird rate plan called Praxis plan where only four calls are allowed during a day.
Bad Idea has their call logs spanning over one and half months.We are using the Naive Bayesian Classification rule to predict the fraudsters for telecom company.
A fundamental approach to know about Billing and revenue management and its business significance for companies who are in telecom communication/media business.
8 expert tips for creating maximum efficiency in your underwriting workflow. Keep your underwriters focused on what they do best - evaluating risk and writing business.
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Across the corporate landscape IT functions are completing their transformation to a service-orientation. Slowly but surely, “governance” has become a core mission, if not yet the core competency, of the IT organization. Governance involves many fronts and addresses many levels – there is architectural governance, IT finance and projects governance, and of course, supplier governance. All call for new skills and new structures. WGroup collectively brings decades of hands-on experience in IT supplier management to assist our clients with the multi-supplier challenge – from building the governance structures to defining sourcing strategies to facilitating contract reviews to transition management. This states how WGroup would implement a multi-supplier governance model successfully.
No “one size fits all” managed services solution will ever be ideal for every business. When evaluating prospective providers, consider important services such as monitoring, reporting, backup, remote management and security. Also consider key provider qualifications including location, third-party certifications, customer references, in-house staffing resources and contract items. After outsourcing, you should see immediate results in cost controls and service delivery.
Moving Your Contingent Workforce Program from Tactical to StrategicPeopleFluent
Contingent labor is an important and rapidly-growing segment of the modern workforce. The PeopleFluent® Vendor Management System (VMS) manages all non-employee labor and services procurement, providing you with true visibility into cost, compliance, risk, and efficiency. The vendor management system is a critical component of PeopleFluent's total talent solution.
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In this paper, we outline five critical factors for adopting an Integrated Receivables (IR) solution that would provide many benefits to companies looking to streamline receivables processing such as cash acceleration and increasing straight-through processing (STP) rates. We discuss how the payments landscape is changing for AR/AP professionals and why companies have been slow to adopt integrated receivables.
Reviews the importance of the claims payment process and how that moment of truth can define the competitive advantage of an insurance company. Focus is on how understanding and improving the process of claims payment benefits market share and organic growth.
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The ability to evaluate these new technologies in a practical environment where their technological value and impact on business and IT operations can be assessed is extremely important. Exploratory efforts should be structured and controlled similarly to other major projects and in addition should be evaluated for use in the production environment. In addition to evaluating the technical capabilities and practical application of the new technology, IT must evaluate the “fit” of the new technology in the existing service portfolio or catalog. In this article, WGroup has developed a new class of IT investment, referred to as “Exploratory,” along with a supporting management model to guide the effort through the evaluation phases and ensure a tight fit within the service catalog.
Survey costing is a complex process which balances an organization’s financial objectives against the expenses associated with achieving or maintaining the scientific standards which govern validity and reliability, or quality, of the final product. Achieving optimum balance between budgetary and scientific goals requires that researchers first understand how survey components are related to costs and how changing each influences both data quality and budgetary outcomes.
Revenue Assurance Industry Update - Webinar by Dr. Gadi Solotorevsky, cVidya'...cVidya Networks
The Revenue Assurance arena is going through significant changes. To learn more, see this webinar presentation by Dr. Gadi Solotorevsky, cVidya’s CTO and Chair of the Revenue Assurance Modeling Team of the TM Forum. Find out more about those changes, the reasons behind them, and how they come into play in the daily activities of Revenue Assurance departments.
For more information on revenue assurance: http://www.cvidya.com/
Zen Infographic - Revenue Assurance AutomationSubex
Revenue Assurance Automation-The Key to Growth and Profitability
Zen is the industry’s first Virtual RA Analyst, which directly gives root causes of leakages, improving analyst productivity by more than 75%. Not only this, ROC Revenue Assurance is mobile device enabled. Executives can gauge RA health, analyze key metrics and make critical business decisions on the move.
A telecom company named as Bad Idea is expecting for fraudsters.
They designed a weird rate plan called Praxis plan where only four calls are allowed during a day.
Bad Idea has their call logs spanning over one and half months.We are using the Naive Bayesian Classification rule to predict the fraudsters for telecom company.
A fundamental approach to know about Billing and revenue management and its business significance for companies who are in telecom communication/media business.
8 expert tips for creating maximum efficiency in your underwriting workflow. Keep your underwriters focused on what they do best - evaluating risk and writing business.
The first and most important step in payments optimization is to ask the right questions - whether of your internal staff or with a payments provider. This presentation gives payments industry professionals those questions along with some background on the right answers. See more at: http://www.3ptalliance.com/solutions-paymentsprocessing/
Across the corporate landscape IT functions are completing their transformation to a service-orientation. Slowly but surely, “governance” has become a core mission, if not yet the core competency, of the IT organization. Governance involves many fronts and addresses many levels – there is architectural governance, IT finance and projects governance, and of course, supplier governance. All call for new skills and new structures. WGroup collectively brings decades of hands-on experience in IT supplier management to assist our clients with the multi-supplier challenge – from building the governance structures to defining sourcing strategies to facilitating contract reviews to transition management. This states how WGroup would implement a multi-supplier governance model successfully.
No “one size fits all” managed services solution will ever be ideal for every business. When evaluating prospective providers, consider important services such as monitoring, reporting, backup, remote management and security. Also consider key provider qualifications including location, third-party certifications, customer references, in-house staffing resources and contract items. After outsourcing, you should see immediate results in cost controls and service delivery.
Moving Your Contingent Workforce Program from Tactical to StrategicPeopleFluent
Contingent labor is an important and rapidly-growing segment of the modern workforce. The PeopleFluent® Vendor Management System (VMS) manages all non-employee labor and services procurement, providing you with true visibility into cost, compliance, risk, and efficiency. The vendor management system is a critical component of PeopleFluent's total talent solution.
Integrated Receivables: 5 Critical Factors For Adoption3 Point Alliance
In this paper, we outline five critical factors for adopting an Integrated Receivables (IR) solution that would provide many benefits to companies looking to streamline receivables processing such as cash acceleration and increasing straight-through processing (STP) rates. We discuss how the payments landscape is changing for AR/AP professionals and why companies have been slow to adopt integrated receivables.
Reviews the importance of the claims payment process and how that moment of truth can define the competitive advantage of an insurance company. Focus is on how understanding and improving the process of claims payment benefits market share and organic growth.
Management model for exploratory investment in IT WGroup
The ability to evaluate these new technologies in a practical environment where their technological value and impact on business and IT operations can be assessed is extremely important. Exploratory efforts should be structured and controlled similarly to other major projects and in addition should be evaluated for use in the production environment. In addition to evaluating the technical capabilities and practical application of the new technology, IT must evaluate the “fit” of the new technology in the existing service portfolio or catalog. In this article, WGroup has developed a new class of IT investment, referred to as “Exploratory,” along with a supporting management model to guide the effort through the evaluation phases and ensure a tight fit within the service catalog.
Survey costing is a complex process which balances an organization’s financial objectives against the expenses associated with achieving or maintaining the scientific standards which govern validity and reliability, or quality, of the final product. Achieving optimum balance between budgetary and scientific goals requires that researchers first understand how survey components are related to costs and how changing each influences both data quality and budgetary outcomes.
Revenue Assurance Industry Update - Webinar by Dr. Gadi Solotorevsky, cVidya'...cVidya Networks
The Revenue Assurance arena is going through significant changes. To learn more, see this webinar presentation by Dr. Gadi Solotorevsky, cVidya’s CTO and Chair of the Revenue Assurance Modeling Team of the TM Forum. Find out more about those changes, the reasons behind them, and how they come into play in the daily activities of Revenue Assurance departments.
For more information on revenue assurance: http://www.cvidya.com/
Zen Infographic - Revenue Assurance AutomationSubex
Revenue Assurance Automation-The Key to Growth and Profitability
Zen is the industry’s first Virtual RA Analyst, which directly gives root causes of leakages, improving analyst productivity by more than 75%. Not only this, ROC Revenue Assurance is mobile device enabled. Executives can gauge RA health, analyze key metrics and make critical business decisions on the move.
Revenue Assurance, Fraud Reduction and Cost Managment in Telecoms ConferenceArena International
Revenue Assurance, Fraud Reduction and Cost Management in Telecoms 2010 offers practical and effective strategies you can implement in your business to optimise revenue assurance and control costs. Building on the feedback from our successful 2009 event, the 2010 conference features more case studies from operators, VMNOs and ISPs than ever before, and a new focus on combating telecoms fraud.
Held on the 11 and 12 May 2010 in London is the biggest and most eagerly anticipated conference in the EMEA, and will bring together key industry experts to provide answers to current topical questions. From coping with the global economic recession and effectively controlling roaming revenues to limiting bad debt, this conference will provide insight on how to solve the critical issues that you face in the industry today.
"The Impact of Data Traffic Explosion and LTE on Revenue Assurance and Risk" cVidya Networks
A case study on the topic of "The Impact of Data Traffic Explosion and LTE on Revenue Assurance and Risk" was presented by our customer Rodrigo Otávio Moreira Gonçalves, Head of Revenue Assurance at Telefonica Vivo Brazil
Preventing Revenue Leakage and Monitoring Distributed Systems with Machine Le...Spark Summit
Have you imagined a simple machine learning solution able to prevent revenue leakage and monitor your distributed application? To answer this question, we offer a practical and a simple machine learning solution to create an intelligent monitoring application based on simple data analysis using Apache Spark MLlib. Our application uses linear regression models to make predictions and check if the platform is experiencing any operational problems that can impact in revenue losses. The application monitor distributed systems and provides notifications stating the problem detected, that way users can operate quickly to avoid serious problems which directly impact the company’s revenue and reduce the time for action. We will present an architecture for not only a monitoring system, but also an active actor for our outages recoveries. At the end of the presentation you will have access to our training program source code and you will be able to adapt and implement in your company. This solution already helped to prevent about US$3mi in losses last year.
We don’t always pause to think about the effort and dedication to excellence that makes a truly great cup of coffee. How does your favourite coffee supplier provide a good experience every time? What’s the process?
Now let’s think about data. Imagine that we made our coffee using the same principles and techniques as we use to create the information on which decisions will be based. What would it taste like, and does it come with a health warning?
Operational Risk : Take a look at the raw canvasTreat Risk
Operational risks by banks have never been recognised till BASEL II imposed on banks to look forward. Take a look at the broad canvas of Operational risks applicable for banks
In today’s economy, most companies are unable to pay less for what they buy, and unable to charge more for what they sell. So how is a company able to impact the bottom line? One good way is by transitioning to Lean Distribution operations.
Lean distribution is based on the same philosophy and concepts that came out of the Lean manufacturing wave, so popular with companies, as a way to optimize production operations.
This webinar will cover:
•What “Lean” means in distribution operations
•The benefits of Lean distribution
•The process for transitioning to a Lean distribution operation
•How Lean can impact various activities in the distribution center
SymSure Loan Portfolio Solution
An Innovative continuous controls monitoring solution that tracks any data or transaction and remediates breaches in internal controls. The ideal soultion to prevente revenue loss.
How do you know what to monitor in your environment? Failure modes have become so complex that we need a cross-functional view of the system to identify what failure looks like. This talks walks through the FMEA process as applied to monitoring and metrics collection. The process will help you identify your failure points and the risks associated with a particular failure mode.
Exploring Relationship Between Risk & ComplianceComplianceTrack
• How to identify compliance risks in the business
• How to involve risk management in compliance management
• Integrating compliance risks with useful management tools
Measuring the performance of a postal operator extends beyond the traditional metrics used by private companies such as return on equity for instance. Postal service is a public endeavor, and its performance must be measured in light of universal service obligations, and limits to missions and risks that constrain its strategy and operation. In addition to that, posts are networks, and the management of networks is inherently complex. In this webinar, we will talk about what makes the postal service challenging to manage and measure, including public service and network issues.
Advanced postal organizations have implemented delivery sequencing to reduce labour costs and improve the efficiency of their delivery workforce. The availability of sequencing hardware and the quality of multi-line address recognition has made delivery sequencing a lot more affordable than it was 20 years ago. This webinar will discuss how postal organisations in emerging economies can evaluate the cost and benefits of delivery sequencing, and how they can determine which sequencing strategy to use.
The Adaptable Post article shows how postal service enterprises can reduce costs and move towards a more responsive and adaptable operation by describing four sets of initiatives that can be undertaken today to reduce cost and improve service.
2. Webinar Outline
Leakage – definition and overview
Overview of a general framework to combat leakage
Measuring leakage
Establishing mitigation policies
Combating leakage
What you should consider
2
3. Combating revenue leakage
Definition*
Combating revenue leakage consists of
engaging in activities that help a Post:
Collect all the postage revenue owed to it, and
Curb the sources/reasons of leakage.
Leakage stems from one of four main risks
Counterfeit (e.g., illegal issues, fake imprints)
Bypass mail (e.g., mail inducted without any form
of payment)
Shortpaid or underpaid (e.g., mail tendered with
insufficient postage)
Problems related to billing or postage collection
(e.g., bad cheques; accounting errors)
Combating revenue leakage consists of setting
policies to mitigate the sources of risks
* Source: UPU Consultative Committee – Postal Revenue Protection Working Group
3
4. Recent trends
Steps in the right direction But room for improvement
• Global awareness of leakage • Not all posts have established a well-
issues has increased (75% of posts structured revenue protection function
admit they experience leakage)
• Posts have heavily invested in • Mail acceptance and verification is still
revenue protection technology, very much manual and time consuming,
making some channels more and often plagued with inconsistencies in
secure (meters, stamps) performance.
• Verification technologies (e.g., • Fraudsters too leverage technologies...
OCR-based) becoming more • New products may not be ‘leakage-free’
effective and/or more affordable • ROI of technology solutions is still an
and scalable issue, e.g., for smaller posts
4
5. A broader choice of technologies is
now available to fight leakage
Evidencing
• Deployment of digital meters in smaller emerging markets
• Anti-fraud security measures (special inks, holograms…) for stamps
Acceptance/verification
• E-documentation
• Sorters/counting machines for piece count (for sampling, verification
or terminal dues purposes)
• Modular dimensions/weight/data capture solutions for use in post
offices
A few
examples Processing
• Lower-end sorters suitable for mid-tier posts
• Large CFC with on the fly weighing of parcels or letters
• Capability to trace back an item to a specific sender
Billing/reconciling software solutions
(e.g., USPS Permit RP project)
5
6. Two main challenges
Measuring and identification is difficult
A touchy issue : leakages relate to posts’ weaknesses - a mix of fraud
and (operational or accounting) issues;
Amounts recovered are just the tip of the iceberg;
Posts use multiple channels and processes;
Data sources are diverse (spot checks, sampling, data from operations
and from accounting systems) and don’t necessarily match.
There is no off the shelf mitigation
Optimal responses will depend on :
Products’ terms and conditions (e.g., preparation requirements);
Product and channel mix (stamps, permit mail, metered mail, web
based payments), letters vs. parcels…
Post’s use of technology (sorting, barcoding, accounting systems) vs.
use of manual processes.
6
7. Global posts’ top concerns :
identification and controls, HR
issues, streamlining operations
Top 5 concerns
expressed by
Posts worldwide
7
8. Typical leakage issues
Problems Multiple root causes
Accuracy of discounts claimed vs. postage Overly complex (or poorly understood)
paid (non-compliance with preparation product terms and conditions
requirements)
Actual number of bulk mail items entered vs. Fraud (on the part of mailers or postal staff)
number on mailing statement
Underpaid (shortpaid) mail Acceptance, verification and billing
processes poorly documented OR not
Bulk mail deposited at “wrong” places (e.g., followed by postal staff
collection boxes) – “bypass mail”
Malicious duplication of e-parcels / PC Poorly designed or executed sampling plans
postage/meter imprints (fraud)
Lack of integration of the Post’s information
Errors/discrepancies in systems (data from operations, accounting)
reconciliation/invoicing/payment process – islands of automation in oceans of paper
forms
8
10. Measure & Measuring and identifying leakage
Identify
Leakage Methodological approach
Audit Identify Develop a Sampling Monitoring
Existing Critical Sampling and &
Systems Dimensions Regime Estimation Validation
• Leakage • Identify critical • Which • Physical sampling is • Random
estimation is dimensions of the measurements? administered monitoring of
not revenue mail flow to When? How? By physical
recovery ensure adequate whom? • Engage in real time sampling.
representation revenue leakage
• Effective • Conduct pilot estimation • Validating data
estimation • Develop a studies to: integrities
precedes targeted working a. Generate optimal • Update skips ensures
and plan sample sizes quarterly to retain sampling occurs
facilitates (Understand optimum currency as intended.
recovery. variability); and integrity
b. Assess the
constraints for
sampling
10
11. Audit
Measure &
Existing
Systems Audit Existing Systems
Identify
Leakage
Existing revenue recovery mechanisms tend to exhibit a bias to higher
risk customers which is at odds with a simple random sampling approach
across the entire mail flow.
Assess the appropriateness for leakage measurement of the existing
revenue checking system, if it does exist.
Systems configured for revenue recovery only may not be suitable for
measurement.
Effective leakage measurement depends on identifying the critical
dimensions of the mail flow.
11
12. Identify
Measure &
Critical
Dimensions Identify the critical dimensions
Identify
Leakage
Defining Objectives
Estimate Revenue Leakage Risk
Physical Sampling and
estimation process.
How then do we identify the critical
dimensions of the mail flow? Segmented Sampling
Frame Letters Parcels
Conceptualisation will differ
slightly in content to Letters.
A stratification process delineates the
levels where leakages emanate from. Adopted to ensure each Facilities by Level 2 Stratification:
critical component in the Geographical Ensure each product segment
composition of mail is Location relevant to a specific facility is
There is a need for adequate captured. captured.
sampling across each of these
Bulk M1
dimensions. Facility M
A
Level 1 Stratification I
This then provides postal ensures each L
M2
organizations with an estimate of lodgement facility is Sort Center
T
captured across each
revenue leakage at each dimension. wide geographical unit. Y
P
E
Mn
In understanding revenue leakage at Delivery Unit
these sub-levels then combative
policies may be devised to target
problematic areas. Time Dependant Elements
Time Dependant Elements Cross representation of time of the day, days in the week,
months and quarters of the year.
12
13. Develop a
Measure &
Sampling
Regime Develop a sampling regime
Identify
Leakage
Determine optimal sample sizes on a rolling basis using
The underlying sample data
Advanced distribution-free statistical methodologies
Seek to estimate leakage at 95% confidence and within +/-5% precision
Design a sampling system that is capable of dealing with the practical
impediments of data collection, that may alter the degree of data integrity
Tight processing windows
Resourcing constraints
Sample space issues.
13
14. Implement
Measure &
Estimation
Framework
Implement an estimation framework
Identify
Leakage
Collect, record, and transmit sample
information to generate final estimates at a Sample
variety of levels
Processing Center
Integrated algorithms can generate final Letters Flats Parcels
estimates at a variety of levels Compute
Estimates % % %
Stamped Leakage Leakage Leakage
% % %
Metered Leakage Leakage Leakage
Take action via policy responses to % % %
Permit
mitigate revenue leakage in a targeted Leakage Leakage Leakage
Define
manner
Policies
The rolling nature of the estimation
facilitates the benchmarking of policy
effectiveness
14
16. Establish Effective revenue protection policies
Mitigation
Policies have impacts across the board
Customer relations
Impact on mailers’ mail production processes, training requirements, compliance costs
(new investment)
Changes to terms and conditions impact product convenience and demand
Business processes
Impact on quality of service and personnel costs (overtime)
Major initiatives such as “seamless acceptance” impact work positions (e.g., for
verification clerks)
Impact on information systems (turning new data into revenue recoveries…)
Technology solutions
A different response for each channel (e.g., retail vs bulk mail)
Measuring the ROI of proposed technology solution vs. improving/fine-tuning current
processes
People and training
Rev Pro awareness + training on current and new processes
Setting KPI and monitoring compliance with processes
Foster cooperation between R&D, marketing, operations, and finance
16
18. Combat
Discussing “acceptable” tolerance
Leakage levels – Royal Mail
Background
Royal Mail “reversions” have increased dramatically as part of its program to improve
operational efficiencies.
Mailers called for more “transparency” and “proportionality” (of fines) while RM insisted 100%
compliance was needed for both revenue protection and operational purposes.
In 2012 industry outcry prompted RM to launch industry-wide discussions .
There is no “perfect mailing”
What evidence should be provided by the Post’s revenue protection teams to mailers ?
Which mail attributes should rev pro teams focus on ?
RM has temporarily lifted specific non-compliance penalties (on sealing specs).
Policy Implications
Review terms and conditions and make them more explicit to increase transparency ?
Reposition/strengthen revenue protection units on customers’ premises ?
18
19. Combat
Detecting unpaid/underpaid mail: PostNL
Leakage
Moving from manual to
automated detection of
underpaid mail (19 CFC being
installed)
Automated recovery process for
single piece mail : payment
card, online payment by
recipient
Policy implications
Need to balance identification
costs with recovery costs.
19
20. Combat
Balancing technology and better controls :
Leakage SAPO (South African Post)
Bulk mail is #1 priority, other
streams will follow
First mile automation: electronic
manifesting (‘eBDN’)
Optimized sampling plans and
processes
Well-trained regional revenue
protection teams
2 to 3 m USD recovered every
year
Policy implications:
developing revenue protection
capability as a step-by-step
journey
20
21. Combat
Posts in Least Developed Countries still
Leakage need to lay the ground work
Carrying out revenue protection audits
To identify/confirm main issues
To assess robustness of current controls
Prepare and execute revenue protection plans
Documenting current product terms and conditions, product
specifications, and ensuring they are met;
Documenting processes and standards (including sampling)
communicating on them, monitoring compliance;
Training staff along the revenue protection along the value chain/creating teams;
Putting in place management processes/measurement and reporting systems to ensure
that revenue protection is managed appropriately and leakage detected;
Longer-term, considering the RoI of low-cost technology / rev pro devices – from
cardboard letter scales to lower-end sorters to digital meters at counters.
Policy implications
In LDCs streamlining current processes is a priority,
not technology
21
22. Revenue protection moving forward :
Combat
Leakage
Eliminating manual verification ?
– U.S.P.S.
Traditional bulk mail acceptance Seamless acceptance
On the fly verification from scans during
processing
Paper or electronic (e-Doc)
documentation submitted with mailing
Acceptance clerk samples mailing, and
verifies documentation for accuracy
Acceptance of statement = proof of
mailing and payment
Mailing is inducted after acceptance
Source : USPS (2012)
Policy Implications
- Building mailers’ confidence in new tracking/reporting system
- Joint post/industry collaboration is essential (e.g., MTAC in the U.S.)
- Automation is just part of the equation, adaptation of information systems is key + HR implications
22