Revenue Leakage [shiver… say it again] Revenue Leakage. We all fear it, but it really is a terrible term. Why - because it doesn’t actually identify the problem. The real problem lies in not knowing why you’re leaking revenue in the first place. Revenue leakage itself is a scary visual metaphor that conjures images of money literally gushing out the holes of your financial world - which can be pretty accurate.
The term itself refers to revenue or potential revenue that is lost through processes/transactions. So, money that is rightly yours, that you are due; but that through various inefficient or ineffective processes you are not receiving, or are ‘leaking’.
Anyone in your Management Team throwing around business’s latest catchphrase is likely aware they have problems - but has no real idea of where the problem(s) originate from.
And that’s what you should be afraid of - lack of knowledge.
As a business owner, when you hear this term you should start asking questions like “Why don’t we know where the leakages are?”.
Not knowing where the leakages are is typically symptomatic of any or all of these greater business problems:
Disconnected: You have disparate systems that work independently of each other, never giving you an overall dashboard view of your business
Company culture: Your departments compete with each other, working in isolation without sharing knowledge or supporting each other’s activities
Inefficiencies: You don’t use business automation software and so waste significant time and person-power on repetitive manual tasks rather than on focusing on growing your business and servicing your customers
For ISP’s, managing complex and often disparate environments often leads to service provisioning errors, incorrect billing, delayed collections and poor service levels - all of which lead to revenue loss.
Unifying your business systems with one cohesive solution lets you see all of your business data in one dashboard view. With all the information at hand you’ll be be able to identify trends, spot holes and adjust your processes and strategies accordingly. Automation can help with the inefficiencies by removing manual processes and making them quicker and more consistent.
‘Revenue Leakage’ itself doesn’t offer any meaningful insights or value. But it does identify a greater problem - not knowing why you’re leaking revenue in the first place. This lack of knowledge is typically symptomatic of a disparate solution environment with inefficient processes and an isolating company culture.
Business automation is just one solution that can help connect your business, make information freely available and remove the inefficiencies caused by error-prone manual processes.
Find out more about how Automation can help by downloading our latest eBook, “An Executive’s Guide to Automation”.