Musings from GroupM: Resolving Discrepancies: A Holy Mission - Sarah Hammel - MediaBizBloggers

Resolving online discrepancies (the inevitable difference between publisher count impressions and 3^rd Party Adserved impressions – thus necessitating a billing reconciliation) is not the type of activity a normal person wants to be thinking about at 3 a.m., but it's sort of a holy mission of mine.

A recent article in The New Yorker gave me one of those light bulb moments in my continuing quest to find a solution to the problem of discrepancies. The idea relates to the value of real time processing versus batch processing.

Consider: When you get on a plane and your bag doesn't, they actually know right away that it's not there. But no one tells you, and a big part of that problem is that they don't have all their information in one place. There are passenger systems that know where the passenger is. There are aircraft and maintenance systems that track where the plane is and what kind of shape it's in. Then there are baggage systems and ticketing systems—and they're all separate.

So you land, you wait at the baggage terminal, and it doesn't show up

Everything bad that happens in that scenario happens because of the lag between the event (the luggage doesn't make it onto the plane) and the response (the airline tells you that your luggage didn't make it onto the plane).

The lag is why you're angry. The lag is why you had to wait, fruitlessly, at baggage claim. The lag is why you vow never to fly that airline again.

Put all the databases together, and there's no lag. What if you got a text message the moment you landed, letting you know your bag didn't make it and that it was being sent to your house? How awesome would that be?

Agency purchasing and processing systems for clearing vendor invoices have the same faulty elements:

• Planners order inventory from media owners

• Media operations enter buys into the bill pay system

• Finance gets invoices and tries to match the invoice with the buy in order to cut a check.

Agencies actually know at the time the activity is ordered whether or not it is discrepant.

If the system used for ordering media was the same as the system used to bill and pay the media invoice, agencies would effectively be using real time processing versus batch processing and we could virtually eliminate lag time in resolving discrepancies.

At GroupM, we consider discrepancies a holy mission. We are working towards a best in class solution, combining work process and technology to reduce/eliminate lag time in processing invoices.

This is my holy grail. Until we get there, I'll see you all at baggage claim!

Sarah Hammel is Chief Financial Officer for GroupM Interaction

Read all Sarah's MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Musings from GroupM - MediaBizBloggers.

Follow our Twitter updates @MediaBizBlogger