RA Toons

*Inspired by a post I read on Revenue Protect. Unfortunately I am unable to post the exact html link of the post as the search feature on the blog seems to have a problem. [Update...actually here it is.]

**As much as this post makes use of the pronoun “He”, the culprits are to be found among both male and female members of the homo sapiens species. The female reader is thus advised to wipe that smirk off her face

***This post contains stereotypes. It is not meant to educate. No apologies are made for this unfortunate state of affairs.

Robotic Richard

This guy will finish the review, issue the report highlighting the variances that are beyond the set tolerance. At that point, his work is done. Follow-up will not be done and there will be no understanding of the root cause. He will repeat the same reconciliation day in day out without ever pausing to think: is there a better, faster more efficient way to do it, could I be missing something, is there any value in repeating this. Come performance appraisal time and the kind of responses he will give are: “I conducted 69 switch-to-bill reconciliations and issued a report for each one of them. The reports were double-spaced, used Times Roman Font number 12 and were sent in MS-Word and PDF. They were filed on the RA folder and color-coded using blue for minor issues, yellow for serious issues and red for critical issues. None of the reports had any speling [sic] error.”

Clean-hands Clark

Believes RA is a walk-in walk-out affair. Go in to the operations team, get the data, analyze, pick out the issues and send out report. As opposed to the character above, this one will figure out better, faster and different ways of picking issues but will never be bothered as to how the resolution is done preferring to exit the scene as soon as possible. Should the operations team require his help in further analysis (owing to his prowess in data analysis, process reviews, etc), he will barely acknowledge the request as he will be too busy looking out for the next problem. He is driven by fear that if he participates in fixing issues and the corrective actions fail, he will be in the same bandwagon with the losers from operations.

Clue-less Leslie

Is in revenue assurance but has no clue. He will not make an effort to learn because it does not matter to him where he is. Some of the reports from this guy may contain hilarious statements such as “We did not reconcile usage against the billing platform because this was out of scope for this review” or “Operations team assured us that they had already tested this service hence there was no need for us to test” or “Marketing team wishes to launch this service ASAP. We shall review after launch” or “We recommend that over-charged subscribers complain to our Customer Care team” or “There was no revenue leakage as we ascertained that the billing platforms had more CDRs than the switch.”

Happy-go-lucky Herbert

Quick to start new reviews but never completes them. Gets very easily distracted (classic case of attention deficit disorder). If this guy tells you that a particular area has been reviewed and there was no problem, be afraid. Be very afraid. If you are his manager, read every report, then re-read it, then re-execute the procedure or have somebody else do it. Whatever you delegate to Herbert is as good as not done.

Bored Benson

Benson is always on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and LinkedIn. He figures the leakage is not so serious, after all the company is still profitable. He will suddenly become very animated on Friday afternoon, especially if the team is meeting for some drinks after-hours. Benson is truly in RA mode – no, not Revenue Assurance, I meant Remote Agent.

Raging Robert

Robert is an excellent RA analyst but lacks emotional intelligence. He suffers from an unquenchable need to see somebody take the fall, will always be eager to apportion blame and due to this attitude, operational teams will simply not cooperate or will only cooperate when they have no alternative (usually because the CEO has said they must or heads will roll). This kind of guy is one of the heaviest liabilities the RA department can carry and whatever gains the rest of the team makes, he is sure to reverse them with one email or one phone call or simply an encounter in the elevator. Probably had a difficult childhood and has a harsh spouse and two errant teenagers.

Meticulous Marvin

Marvin is too thorough. He thinks of all scenarios and tests each one of them. He is so careful that before he types a report, he will first write it down using a blue pen, then a red pen and finally a black pen. He then types up the report, prints a copy, proof reads it and makes corrections. He will then share the report with Happy-go-lucky Herbert for peer review and Herbert will promptly state that the report is good to go. Then the report will be shared with Bored Benson, Raging Robert, Robotic Richard….by the time it is ready for issue and discussion with the operations team, somebody else will have discovered the issue, identified the root cause and fixed it. Meticulous Marvin will now take his report, initial every page, laminate it and file in triplicate.