After making a short presentation to the senior management team (SMT) of a bank today on the topic, revenue assurance and real-time data analytics, the CFO and MD invited me to the CFO’s office for a quick private chat.
This is always a great pointer for me since contracts are not signed by a group of people.
I always get excited about this side meeting. You get to understand the real need and the budget available if you ask the right questions. Plus, it indicates that people were actually listening to your presentation.
While in the side meeting, the CFO asked: “how did you know that we need revenue assurance service like yesterday.”
I replied, we have visited about five banks now, and all of them need the service. It is good to work hard to put money on the table. But if you don’t know how much, it may be difficult to identify any leakages. A leaking container cannot keep water for too long. The trend we find in the market is that the bank seems to be growing, with increasing total revenues and portfolio. However, profitability is low. Always the cost to income ratio is about 80%+ that level is a pointer to some corporate fat due to inefficiency and revenue leakages that require clear analytics – revenue assurance does exactly that.
There must be some revenue leakages somewhere.
We have done the assignment for two client banks now, and you find over Ugx. 5billion undeclared revenues just because of the loan interest indicated in the contract were not updated on the loan among in the system!
So, when did you last undertake revenue assurance?
Remember, however much you drive, if your car has a puncture, you will continue moving but at a slow pace. The best leaders stop. Identify the puncture. Fix the tire and then continue on the journey.
It is self-defeating to drive on a car tire that is losing pressure. You increase the risk of accidents not only to yourself but other road users. If your company or bank driving at full speed or it has flat tire issues. Revenue assurance helps you identify the blind spots in your business so that you make decisions based on facts, insights, and data instead of hearsay, opinions, and feelings.
When did you last undertake revenue assurance?
Copyright Mustapha B Mugisa, 2019. All rights reserved.
