Who Should Attend?

The training is addressed to employees of mobile operators involved operationally in fraud prevention and fraud detection process, as well as revenue assurance process, including customer care, finance and IT departments.

Course Content

Part I: Introduction to Revenue Assurance (1.5 day).

1. The section is about the approach for revenue protection (assurance) within the revenue chain. Threats about the main revenue streams within the telco industry – process of selection and protection important ones. Selected processes with main RA KPI will be presented:
   • Retail sales / prepaid / postpaid.
   • Wholesale market (interconnect, international roaming, national roaming) – revenue cost assurance.
   • Handset sales / distribution
   • Other (on demand)
   • Based on above processes, the operational controls are presented with necessary details and cases. In addition, RA successful strategy building process will be shown.
2. Building automated tools for supporting more complex operational controls – embed automated controls as a target for effective organization – explained simple tools for faster loss recovering. What kind of tools are useful? Self-made or bought from the shelf – which one better (PROS/CONS), recommendations. IT tools preparation – tools configuration, building, special requirement.
3. Organisational issues explained an important role of building successful process (SWOT) – selected models:
   • Distributed or centralised organization.
   • Building organization from the scratch.
   • Reporting level issue.
   • Financial accountability importance.
   • Key targets for RA organization distributed over the organization (management by objectives).
   • Risk Management – possible owner for managing risk.
   • Benchmarks for an effective organization, RA KPI.
4. Business models for outsourcing / consulting for revenue loss recovery – benefit share or fixed price (time and material) – maturity level dependence.
   • New product and offers risk recognition.
   • How to implement operational controls within new product but not kill the business case? Possible synergies, awareness, reporting, an opportunity for an extra revenue.

Part II: Technical Fraud, including 3G network Fraud (0.5 day).

1. The section explain what are the key procedures for detecting technical fraud (internal/external).  How to manage external technical fraud?
2. Technical vulnerabilities in the New Product Development – how to prevent technical fraud? Offer / tariff plan construction (DO/DON’T).
3. Implications on GSM/3G basic security issues, authentication, SIM cards, 3G services (data transmission, video transmission); 3G implementation - new risks or myth?
   • SIM Boxes / FCT – examples of bad marketing product in terms of technical fraud; – case study.
   • The results of FCT/ negative impact on revenue, customer quality perceptions – key indicators of FCT usage. Revenue impact calculation – high impact on bad debt – case study. FCT types (sim card server, distributed radio, directional antennas) – examples from the market.
   • SIM cards and scratch cards – the important issue for technical fraud prevention. How to deal with the loyalty points exchange (i.e. CRM system) – case study on possible fraud.
   • Prepaid platform charging/billing – key issues impacting on revenue loss due to fraud (tariffs, tree of billed data, typical financial reports for detecting technical fraud within prepaid platform).
   • Premium Rates – drop-box tariff phenomena, how to construct the terms and conditions for the revenue share partner to avoid bad debt/losses.

Part III: Fraud Aspects (2 days).

1. Fraud types in GSM networks.
   • Three major types of fraud:
     - Customer’s fraud.
     - Dealer’s fraud.
     - Technical fraud.
   • Fraud vs collection. 
   • Fraud vs  revenue assurance. 
   • Fraud definition.
   • Fraud calculation.
2. Fraud prevention.
   • Law and regulatory environment.
   • Activation process.
   • Document requirements.
   • External data bases => stolen, fault etc. documents.
   • Dealer’s obligations.
3. Statistical fraud detection.
   • Customer’s profile identification.
   • Dealer’s network weaknesses detection.
   • Business case for fraud “business”. 
   • Fraud generating offers. 
   • Fraud generating services. 
   • Common fraud patterns recognition.
4. On-line fraud detection. 
   • Fraud segmentation. 
   • Rules and thresholds settings => case study.
   • Types of alarms and alarms strategy.
   • Alarms setting tuning.
   • Managing of alarms.
   • Data availability + rating vs pseudo-rating.
5. Fraud in 3G.
   • 3G specification from customer’s side.
   • New types of Fraud / Revenue Assurance actions.
   • Data transfer vs roaming.
   • 3G based services => fraud analysis.
6. Fraud vs Mobile Number Portability (MNP).
   • Mobile number portability process overview.
   • Main fraud threats.
   • Technical and business aspects of fraud detection for ported customers.

Course Objectives

Various aspects of fraud from operational and technical side are studied. Fraud classification and prevention methods are described. Technical side of fraud and detection methods are shown. Aspects of 3G fraud is mentioned.  Main aspects of Revenue Assurance process and tools supporting the process are  described.

Pre-requisites

General knowledge of mobile operator business.

Training structure

Four days training divided into logical sessions.

Methodology

Instructor led training on presentation slides. Examples from real networks.