An alternative profit

Remind people that profit is the difference between revenue and expense. This makes you look smart.”
Dilbert

In times when it is difficult to find money for new OctopOSS projects, revenue protection / fraud detection / leakage analysis could potentially bring quick payback.

I was once indirectly involved in an OSS project worth several million US dollars. The customer was ecstatic but also concerned that their payback period was only 2-3 months, far quicker than initial expectations. Unbeknownst to the customer (or perhaps silently accepted??), various members of the customer’s staff were provisioning cash-in-hand services without registering them in the customer’s billing mechanisms. The OSS performed an inventory audit, reconciled with billing data and identified many thousands of unbilled services.

I bet the business case for this project never thought to factor those benefits in.

Oh, I also failed to mention that this wasn’t even a dedicated fraud detection tool, but a vanilla OSS. Imagine the other more sophisticated revenue leakage methods that may be draining an organisation’s cash-flow and could be identified by specialist tools.

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