November 2013

Flexibility & Fraud Management: 8 Questions for Luke Taylor of Neural Technologies

interview with Luke Taylor

Flexibility & Fraud Management Systems: 8 Questions for Luke Taylor of Neural Technologies

Fraud management in telecoms has gone through some dramatic changes in the last few years. And much of the changes can be traced to the rise of mobile broadband.

We all know that virus protection is essential for protecting our PCs. But are mobile phones any less vulnerable to attack? Probably not. In fact, the wide variety of mobile devices and their use as highly personal tools has made them inviting targets for fraudsters with their bag of identity theft, botnet, and IRSF tricks.

And yet, IP networks are so malleable and good at camouflage and identity spoofing that the question becomes: what threat do I prepare for next?

Clearly then, meeting today’s fraud threats is not just about technology, but also the speed of threat detection, the scanning of data outliers where the fraudsters live, and being enormously flexible in your investigation methods.

Well, Neural Technologies (Nt) is a company who has banked on its reputation on offering a more flexible fraud management product. So we’re pleased to have Luke Taylor, CEO of Neural’s EMEA region, join us for a discussion on the importance of flexibility, his perspective on fraud management issues, and the direction where Nt is headed.

1	Dan Baker: Luke, the history of Neural Technologies testifies to the viability of fraud management solutions. At your largest clients, you’re saving many millions of pounds per year. Yet a number of telecom companies still don’t see fraud management systems as a necessity. Why do you think this is so?

Luke Taylor: Dan, I think part of the reason is that the companies who are getting great value from fraud management are not eager to publicize it because admitting you are experiencing any fraud at all is considered a negative thing. So there’s a big hush, hush around fraud. Certainly no public corporation wants to admit they have been defrauded because it damages investor confidence. It could also even hit the share price.

The same goes for consumer perception: who wants to do business with a company who’s a fraud risk? So for all these reasons, fraud is always kept below the radar: in public financial reports, fraud is usually buried under the bad debt line item.

In my personal experience, only when fraud of great magnitude occurs — one that severely impacts consumers and revenue — do senior managers recognize the seriousness of the fraud management function. Yet I am glad to say that recently this mentality has begun to change. Today we work with CFOs who are well aware of what they need to do to achieve revenue protection.

2	If fraud management is necessary because the fraud threat will never disappear, what’s the proper role of the fraud management solution provider?

Our job is to ensure our tools identify fraud as quickly and as accurately as possible. And that’s a bigger challenge today than it’s ever been because of the increased number of services being offered — subsidised handsets, roaming services, multiple devices, services from third party providers, mobile money, mobile banking, etc.

The risks that surround these services need to be identified and closed down rapidly to reduce financial exposure. Liability towards roaming partners and third party providers means a major fraud hit could cripple a firm or ruin its reputation over a weekend.

A common liability is Bill Shock, a factor that hits consumer confidence. Neural can analyse data in near-real time to identify unusual or possible high usage by a roaming subscriber and allow the service provider to either inform the user or throttle back usage. We have even taken this one step further by developing a self-care portal for consumers to set up and manage their own roaming controls.

3	Fraud is constantly evolving, how is your product Minotaur designed to cope with this?

Minotaur was built with flexibility in mind, and this flexibility allows us to adapt and evolve the product with new services, new data sources, and new fraud/risk threats very quickly. Our customers are not constrained by hard-coded product releases: they simply configure changes from the powerful user interface in the product. In this way, their fraud policies can become proactive, not just reactive. Many of our customers think outside of the box and use Minotaur in innovative ways — Mobile Money, Money Laundering, Law Enforcement, to name a few.

4	Neural Technologies‘ customer base in telecom is quite diverse. Is this due to the high scalability of your product?

Scalability is certainly important to many of our customers. Another thing customers like is that our solution is not domain specific. We have deployed our system around the world from Alaska to New Zealand in three industries: Telecoms, Finance and Utilities.

Minotaur is designed as a generic data analysis tool that can take in a variety of data sources for analysis and then identify unusual activity, missing information, etc. to provide intelligence on fraud, revenue assurance, and credit risk.

5	What do you see as the next big thing in fraud, both from a fraud threat and solution vendor point of view?

Definitely, I think the new financial capabilities on the user device -- mobile money, banking, NFC, and others — open huge new opportunities for abuse. The fraudster is always seeking the easiest path to quick gains and mobile financial services looks like a gold mine for them.

Ironically, our relationship with the fraudster is symbiotic: our business comes about because of the fraudster’s success. We have already seen this mobile finance vulnerability as Nt was enlisted to protect Safaricom’s M-Pesa money transfer environment, currently the most developed mobile payment system in the world.

6	“Big Data” is a phrase that seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue at the moment? What’s your opinion on the buzz term and its impact on the fraud industry?

We have been in the Big Data industry since our inception: we process billions of records a day with customers analysing this data for fraud threats, revenue assurance leaks, and customer delinquency.

Yet while Big Data is not new to us, we think complementary tools like Hadoop will be useful in allowing end users to interrogate large data quickly. We are now investigating how we can best use this technology to processing large data volumes in near-real-time. Nt is also exploring the off-line mining of that data and adding more analysis and investigation dimensions.

Our latest product, Minotaur Insight, takes big data analytics to a new level. It basically allows for deep, unrestrained data analysis. It has advanced visualization and you can interrogate and drill down on the data very flexibly for a particular understanding of the data being processed. The User interface can be configured to allow individually tailored views of the data. This has become increasingly important as customers use the interface across multiple departments: fraud, credit risk, revenue assurance, etc. — all using the one deployed system for their own unique needs.

7	In recent years we have seen many vendors fold out of the fraud software market. Some would suggest the cause was failing to understand the needs of customers. How real is that claim?

I think it is a combination of things. As you say, vendors who do not listen intently enough to their customer’s needs cannot evolve with the Service Provider.

But also, fraud is also a moving target. Once a particular type of fraud is adequately controlled, the fraudsters move on to more lucrative avenues. This means to survive as a fraud management firm, you must constantly pour new R&D into your product. Neural Technologies diversified away from simple fraud many years ago. We now offer Fraud, Revenue Assurance and Credit Risk Management on one product and one user interface: I believe we are the only vendor who has this capability today.

Innovation is also key: to stay one step ahead of the industry we need to reduce the hardware expense, improve our performance, expand analysis capabilities, and boost user productivity.

Another vendor failing comes from stretching themselves too thin financially. If debt gets too high, it puts pressure on your R&D budget because you need to pay off your investors. Other vendors have ceased business entirely or have been sold in a distressed sale.

Fortunately, we have been careful to not over-stretch ourselves, but instead have grown the Nt business organically — and through selective acquisitions As a result, our customers feel comfortable working with us as a long term partner for the foreseeable future. Actually, some of our first customers who purchased Minotaur in 2000 are still with us and have grown their solution through our product development.

8	Finally, Luke, what’s the future outlook for Neural Technologies?

At Neural Technologies, we are very upbeat about the future. We are building on our experience and knowledge from over 15 years in the telecoms industry.

Much of our growth comes from our flexible product design that allows the customer to fully configure the product on their own. That flexibility and the ability to achieve things without hard coding has even allowed us to win a number of awards for undertaking large and complex projects

Finally, we are optimistic about new product offerings coming in areas such as Mobile Money Remittance, Self Help provisioning, etc. We also see our number of cloud-based offerings increasing because customers like the idea of having a fully managed service to lower their CAPEX expenditure.

NOTE: Are you a product manager or expert whose solution serves the business assurance or telecom analytics market? Then contact Black Swan’s editor Dan Baker to explore conducting a similar Q&A interview.

Luke Taylor

Luke is a seasoned business executive with a deep knowledge of telecoms fraud management and business assurance from his 20 years in the industry working for a risk management software vendor.

He founded Lateral Alliances in 2017 to offer business management and consultancy services focused in the IT sector and specifically telecoms risk management.

Luke has also established his own not-for-profit awards body, Risk Reward Awards with the goal of recognizing the best work done by risk professionals in the telecoms sector. Contact Luke via

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The 2021 State of Communications-Related Fraud, Identity Theft & Consumer Protection in the USA — iconectiv — This 49-page free Report on communications-related fraud analyzes the FTC’s annual Sentinel consumer fraud statistics and provides a sweeping view of trends and problem areas. It also gives a cross-industry view of the practices and systems that enable fraud control, identity verification, and security in our “zero trust” digital world.

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Big Data: Is it Ready for Prime Time in Customer Experience Management? — interview with Thomas Sutter — Customer experience management is one of the most challenging of OSS domains and some suppliers are touting “big data” solutions as the silver bullet for CEM upgrades and consolidation. This interview challenges the readiness of big data soluions to tackle OSS issues and deliver the cost savings. The article also provides advice on managing technology risks, software vendor partnering, and the strategies of different OSS suppliers.
Calculated Risk: The Race to Deliver the Next Generation of LTE Service Management — interview with Edoardo Rizzi — LTE and the emerging heterogeneous networks are likely to shake up the service management and customer experience management worlds. Learn about the many new network management challenges LTE presents, and how a small OSS software firm aims to beat the big established players to market with a bold new technology and strategy.
Decom Dilemma: Why Tearing Down Networks is Often Harder than Deploying Them — interview with Dan Hays — For every new 4G LTE and IP-based infrastructure deployed, there typically a legacy network that’s been rendered obsolete and needs to be decommissioned. This article takes you through the many complexities of network decom, such as facilities planning, site lease terminations, green-safe equipment disposal, and tax relief programs.
Migration Success or Migraine Headache: Why Upfront Planning is Key to Network Decom — interview with Ron Angner — Shutting down old networks and migrating customers to new ones is among the most challenging activities a network operators does today. This article provides advice on the many network issues surrounding migration and decommissioning. Topics discussed include inventory reconciliation, LEC/CLEC coordination, and protection of customers in the midst of projects that require great program management skills.
Navigating the Telecom Solutions Wilderness: Advice from Some Veteran Mountaineers — interview with Al Brisard — Telecom solutions vendors struggle mightily to position their solutions and figure out what to offer next in a market where there’s considerable product and service crossover. In this article, a veteran order management specialist firm lays out its strategy for mixing deep-bench functional expertise with process consulting, analytics, and custom API development.
Will Telecoms Sink Under the Weight of their Bloated and Out-of-Control Product Stacks? — interview with Simon Muderack — Telecoms pay daily for their lack of product integration as they constantly reinvent product wheels, lose customer intelligence, and waste time/money. This article makes the case of an enterprise product catalog. Drawing on central catalog cases at a few Tier 1 operators, the article explains the benefits: reducing billing and provisioning costs, promoting product reuse, and smoothing operations.
Virtual Operator Life: Enabling Multi-Level Resellers Through an Active Product Catalog — interview with Rob Hill — The value of product distribution via virtual operators is immense. They enable a carrier to sell to markets it cannot profitably serve directly. Yet the need for greater reseller flexibility in the bundling and pricing of increasingly complex IP and cloud services is now a major channel barrier. This article explains what’s behind an innovative product catalog solution that doubles as a service creation environment for resellers in multiple tiers.
Telecom Blocking & Tackling: Executing the Fundamentals of the Order-to-Bill Process — interview with Ron Angner — Just as football teams need to be good at the basics of blocking and tackling, telecoms need to excel at their own fundamental skillset: the order-to-cash process. In this article, a leading consulting firm explains its methodology for taking operators on the path towards order-to-cash excellence. Issues discussed include: provisioning intervals; standardization and simplicity; the transition from legacy to improved process; and the major role that industry metrics play.
Wireline Act IV, Scene II: Packaging Network & SaaS Services Together to Serve SMBs — by John Frame — As revenue from telephony services has steadily declined, fixed network operators have scrambled to support VoIP, enhanced IP services, and now cloud applications. This shift has also brought challenges to the provisioning software vendors who support the operators. In this interview, a leading supplier explains how it’s transforming from plain ol‘ OSS software provider to packager of on-net and SaaS solutions from an array of third party cloud providers.
Telecom Merger Juggling Act: How to Convert the Back Office and Keep Customers and Investors Happy at the Same Time — interview with Curtis Mills — Billing and OSS conversions as the result of a merger are a risky activity as evidenced by famous cases at Fairpoint and Hawaiian Telcom. This article offers advice on how to head off problems by monitoring key operations checkpoints, asking the right questions, and leading with a proven conversion methodology.
Is Order Management a Provisioning System or Your Best Salesperson? — by John Konczal — Order management as a differentiator is a very new concept to many CSP people, but it’s become a very real sales booster in many industries. Using electronics retailer BestBuy as an example, the article points to several innovations that can — and are — being applied by CSPs today. The article concludes with 8 key questions an operator should ask to measure advanced order management progress.
NEC Takes the Telecom Cloud from PowerPoint to Live Customers — interview with Shinya Kukita — In the cloud computing world, it’s a long road from technology success to telecom busness opportunity. But this story about how NEC and Telefonica are partnering to offer cloud services to small and medium enterprises shows the experience of early cloud adoption. Issues discussed in the article include: customer types, cloud application varieties, geographic region acceptance, and selling challenges.
Billing As Enabler for the Next Killer Business Model — interview with Scott Swartz — Facebook, cloud services, and Google Ads are examples of innovative business models that demand unique or non-standard billing techniques. The article shows how flexible, change-on-the-fly, and metadata-driven billing architectures are enabling CSPs to offer truly ground breaking services.
Real-Time Provisioning of SIM Cards: A Boon to GSM Operators — interview with Simo Isomaki — Software-controlled SIM card configuration is revolutionizing the activation of GSM phones. The article explains how dynamic SIM management decouples the selection of numbers/services and delivers new opportunities to market during the customer acquisition and intial provisoining phase.
A Cynic Converted: IN/Prepaid Platforms Are Now Pretty Cool — interview with Grant Lenahan — Service delivery platforms born in the IN era are often painted as inflexible and expensive to maintain. Learn how modern SDPs with protocol mediation, high availability, and flexible Service Creation Environments are delivering value for operators such as Brazil’s Oi.
Achieving Revenue Maximization in the Telecom Contact Center — interview with Robert Lamb — Optimizing the contact center offers one of the greatest returns on investment for a CSP. The director of AT&T’s contact center services business explains how telecoms can strike an “artful balance” between contact center investment and cost savings. The discussion draws from AT&T’s consulting with world class customers like Ford, Dell, Discover Financial, DISH Network, and General Motors.
Mobile Broadband: The Customer Service Assurance Challenge — interview with Michele Campriani — iPhone and Android traffic is surging but operators struggle with network congestion and dropping ARPUs. The answer? Direct resources and service quality measures to ensure VIPs are indeed getting the quality they expect. Using real-life examples that cut to the chase of technical complexities, this article explains the chief causes of service quality degradation and describes efficient ways to deal with the problem.
Telco-in-a-Box: Are Telecoms Back in the B/OSS Business? — interview with Jim Dunlap — Most telecoms have long since folded their merchant B/OSS software/services businesses. But now Cycle30, a subsidiary of Alaskan operator GCI, is offering a order-to-cash managed service for other operators and utilities. The article discusses the company’s unique business model and contrasts it with billing service bureau and licensed software approaches.
Bricks, Mortar & Well-Trained Reps Make a Comeback in Customer Management — interview with Scott Kohlman — Greater industry competition, service complexity, and employee turnover have raised the bar in the customer support. Indeed, complex services are putting an emphasis on quality care interactions in the store, on the web, and through the call center. In this article you’ll learn about innovations in CRM, multi-tabbed agent portals, call center agent training, customer treatment philosophies, and the impact of self-service.
21st Century Order Management: The Cross-Channel Sales Conversation — by John Konczal — Selling a mobile service is generally not a one-and-done transaction. It often involves several interactions — across the web, call center, store, and even kiosks. This article explains the power of a “cross-channel hub” which sits above all sales channels, interacts with them all, and allows a CSP to keep the sales conversation moving forward seamlessly.
Building a B/OSS Business Through Common Sense Customer Service — by David West — Delivering customer service excellence doesn‘t require mastering some secret technique. The premise of this article is that plain dealing with customers and employees is all that’s needed for a winning formula. The argument is spelling out in a simple 4 step methodology along with some practical examples.

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