MTN Nigeria recovers $60m from audit software use
Jonah Iboma
MTN Nigeria has recorded the recovery of $60m from revenue leakage, using ACL audit software. According to a report published by ACL, the world’s leading provider of revenue assurance systems and solutions, the recovery was made within one year of the deployment of the software.According to the document, a copy of which was made valuable to our correspondent on Monday, MTN Nigeria used ACL in its revenue assurance, audit, reconciliation and investigation activities.Revenue leakage is a problem prevalent in various industries especially where automated systems are used. Revenue leakage has blighted the telecommunications industry worldwide, stumbling some into collapse or suboptimal performance.
Experts have reported that every telecommunications operators loses an average of 15 per cent of its annual revenue to various forms of revenue leakages. Examples include wrongly setting up a prepaid subscriber as post paid and billing system malfunction that sometimes give subscribers excessive airtime balances. This happened in Nigeria in 2005.The same risk is also prevalent in other industries such as banking and financial services. It was said to have contributed to the collapse of Bank of Credit and Commerce International and Barings Bank in the 1990s.Commenting on the achievement, Telecom Analytics Manager, MTN Nigeria, Mr. Adewusi Adebola, who headed up the project said, “ACL has remarkably improved our revenue assurance, reconciliation, audit and investigation activities. Our team has been able to meet expectations within a tight budget and a competitive market.”
Managing Consultant of EDP Audit and Security Associates, Mr. Christian Ekeigwe, whose firm represents ACL in Nigeria, expressed joy at the development, noting that the MTN case was a success story happening in his life time.
“I left the United States in 1990 to Nigeria to help build local IT audit manpower in the audit and assurance profession in order to meet the emerging challenge of information technologies in business. At the time I was the only IT auditor in the real sense of it and working for Akintola Williams Deloitte. Today, consummate Nigerian professionals like Adewusi Adebola and his colleagues at MTN Nigeria make me proud and fulfilled. What they have done is a world-class achievement, they can stand up in the world community.”
The ACL report stated with the telecom industry gradually coming under pressure with many more players showing up, there would be the need for more firms to deploy solutions that would better capture transactions of every subscriber to minimise losses to the barest minimum.
It said, “With increasingly lower customer rates, the Nigerian telecommunications market is a place of tight profit margins and stiff competition. Surviving in this lean business environment requires organizations to find new ways to boost earnings, reduce costs and plug revenue leakages.According to Ekeigwe “the ultimate challenge in automated business process is ability to control at the speed of operations. The gap between manual auditing and electronic transaction processing provides the comfort zone for fraud and errors to occur without being detected. It is impossible for auditors and revenue assurance personnel to pursue electronic transactions with manual procedures; in fact that would be a prescription for institutionalizing the black hole that entraps revenue.
MTN Nigeria has recorded the recovery of $60m from revenue leakage, using ACL audit software. According to a report published by ACL, the world’s leading provider of revenue assurance systems and solutions, the recovery was made within one year of the deployment of the software.According to the document, a copy of which was made valuable to our correspondent on Monday, MTN Nigeria used ACL in its revenue assurance, audit, reconciliation and investigation activities.Revenue leakage is a problem prevalent in various industries especially where automated systems are used. Revenue leakage has blighted the telecommunications industry worldwide, stumbling some into collapse or suboptimal performance.
Experts have reported that every telecommunications operators loses an average of 15 per cent of its annual revenue to various forms of revenue leakages. Examples include wrongly setting up a prepaid subscriber as post paid and billing system malfunction that sometimes give subscribers excessive airtime balances. This happened in Nigeria in 2005.The same risk is also prevalent in other industries such as banking and financial services. It was said to have contributed to the collapse of Bank of Credit and Commerce International and Barings Bank in the 1990s.Commenting on the achievement, Telecom Analytics Manager, MTN Nigeria, Mr. Adewusi Adebola, who headed up the project said, “ACL has remarkably improved our revenue assurance, reconciliation, audit and investigation activities. Our team has been able to meet expectations within a tight budget and a competitive market.”
Managing Consultant of EDP Audit and Security Associates, Mr. Christian Ekeigwe, whose firm represents ACL in Nigeria, expressed joy at the development, noting that the MTN case was a success story happening in his life time.
“I left the United States in 1990 to Nigeria to help build local IT audit manpower in the audit and assurance profession in order to meet the emerging challenge of information technologies in business. At the time I was the only IT auditor in the real sense of it and working for Akintola Williams Deloitte. Today, consummate Nigerian professionals like Adewusi Adebola and his colleagues at MTN Nigeria make me proud and fulfilled. What they have done is a world-class achievement, they can stand up in the world community.”
The ACL report stated with the telecom industry gradually coming under pressure with many more players showing up, there would be the need for more firms to deploy solutions that would better capture transactions of every subscriber to minimise losses to the barest minimum.
It said, “With increasingly lower customer rates, the Nigerian telecommunications market is a place of tight profit margins and stiff competition. Surviving in this lean business environment requires organizations to find new ways to boost earnings, reduce costs and plug revenue leakages.According to Ekeigwe “the ultimate challenge in automated business process is ability to control at the speed of operations. The gap between manual auditing and electronic transaction processing provides the comfort zone for fraud and errors to occur without being detected. It is impossible for auditors and revenue assurance personnel to pursue electronic transactions with manual procedures; in fact that would be a prescription for institutionalizing the black hole that entraps revenue.
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