Major fraud types and estimated cost to industry*
- Abuse of network, device, or configuration weakness – $2.5B USD
- Dealer fraud – $3.4B USD
- Network/IT abuse – $5.2B USD
- Unauthorized abuse of access (e.g. customer care system) – $1.2B USD
*Source: 2013 CFCA Global Fraud Survey
IT Systems Misalignment
Of course, not all in-house revenue losses are a result of intentional fraud. Manual errors or data misalignment between multiple systems can affect revenue when discrepancies affect billing or service delivery. Unfortunately, it’s not always clear whether these errors are intentional or the result of an honest mistake. This requires further investigation — but many service providers aren’t even aware that these data errors occur, which means revenue can slip through the cracks undetected.
Detecting and Preventing Internal Fraud and Errors
Combat internal fraud, errors, and data discrepancies — whether intentional or not — with the following safeguards:
- Make sense of Big Data to track revenue leaks back to human errors
- View per-subscriber bandwidth usage to identify gaps between usage and revenue, or speed and purchased package, to target potential CSR fraud and leakage areas
- Detect and investigate fraudulent devices to stop potential external threats
- Automate and streamline internal workflows to reduce the chance of errors
- Access controls to secure subscriber data
- Simplify the management of complex service bundles, even for large enterprise customers
- Track consistency of promotions and customer plan upgrades across CRM, billing, and provisioning systems, as well as configuration files and IT middleware