Conferences, Vacations and Education – GRAPA User Groups

How many times have you heard conversations like this?

“Are you going to the IMAZ Conference this year?”

“No, why do you ask?”

“Oh, it’s being held in IBIZA, great beaches, super suntans”

“Yes, but what are they going to be talking about?”

“Oh, you know the usual. A couple of software companies will be trying to sell the same old stuff. Jim is going to give that same speech he gives every year”

“Sorry, the beach sounds nice, but I just cannot get excited about that same old conference routine. Same talks, more than half the speakers do not even make sense. My time is too valuable for that kind of thing.”

“I guess you’re right. I guess I will not go either.”

I am sure most of you have overheard or had this conversation or thought the same things many times over. Yet, despite most people’s opinions about these conferences, they tend to fill up year after year, with more and more people attending. What is the big attraction? Why do people go year after year? I can actually think of several good reasons. These include:

• It is a break from the routine, a chance to get away on “official” business.

Face it; we all need a break from work (and from our hectic home lives one time or another). Often vacation time (if you can even get some), turns into yet another kind of work. Getting away to a ‘conference’ can be the best breath of fresh air that many of us can imagine.

• It is a company paid vacation.

I know what you are thinking. I would never try to get my company to pay for a holiday. But, realistically we all do it, and it is certainly part of the allure of conference events. It is a chance to go somewhere different and exciting, fly across the continent or the world, and experience something new.

• Something to get excited about – the gala ball of the year.

Conferences tend to be like the annual ball, the spring dance or homecoming. They are like a “national holiday” for everyone in the profession. We all need the sense of order and regularity that helps us have a sense of belonging in the universe.

• The chance to get some recognition.

Who does not need to get out of the same old routine and get away from the same old faces? Who is not tired of working hard, and performing well and performing so many spectacular feats of revenue assurance magic, only to have our peers and managers take us for granted. No, we all need the chance to “strut our stuff” and to show off to people who actually appreciate what we do. Conferences create the opportunity for things like that to happen.

• The chance to compare notes with peers.

Another major function that conferences provide is the chance to compare notes with others of like mind and skill. It allows us to meet people who we can talk to about new ideas or approaches, sympathize with our unique challenges, or be a sounding board when things seem crazy. The relationships created at these events make this kind of thing possible.

• They give a sense of professional identity.

Without a doubt, in our highly compartmentalized world, it is very easy to become isolated and feel like we are the only people like us in the world. Conferences provide a critical function in that they help us to understand, identify with and develop a true sense of profession and community. They break down the isolation barriers and increase the professional camaraderie and espirit d’corps.

• They provide continuing education

Most critically, these events provide us with a badly needed “shot” of continuing education. Where else can we go to feed our own need for input and direction in the world of chaos we live in?

Having a revenue assurance conference is more than just a good idea, it is critical to our success and development as professionals. So what is the problem?

The problem, at least up until now, is that most conferences available to revenue assurance professionals have lacked several key ingredients to make them optimally effective. Oh, they allow us to get some of the benefits, but they leave us far short of the sense that we are getting a good value for the time that we spend (the most critical aspect), and secondarily for the money.

I think there are several reasons for this.

First – conferencing companies, not revenue assurance associations, put on the vast majority of revenue assurance conferences.

That means the people running the event do not really understand revenue assurance, and do not really have stock in your success. These companies put on hundreds of events a year for oil well drillers, lawyers, shopping mall managers, accountants, street merchants and janitors–you name it. Unfortunately, what that means is that they are good at putting on events – but not especially good at revenue assurance. They can’t help it. It’s what they are.

Second – Revenue assurance conferences can fall short on the education and quality of experience dimension. Since these event groups are not actually dedicated professionals, they have no way of knowing if the talks given are quality or bogus. They have no real sense of order, structure or quality. These conferences are more like a game show than an educational event. You show up and hear a random number of speakers talking about a random selection of topics based not upon what is important, but on who is available and is a good speaker.

Third – Legitimacy and value to your business may be questionable. While many of us have been able to convince our management teams that sending us to these conferences is a good idea, it is getting harder and harder to do. The benefits are getting less and less, while the costs keep going up.

Having said all of that, it might come as a surprise to some of you that GRAPA is going to be piloting a new program this year. That is right; we are getting into the revenue assurance conferencing business.

Actually, I do not want to call it a conference, because there are several things about it that are going to be different and we will be calling these events GRAPA User Groups. We call it that because we want people to understand that this is much more like a User Group event than a conference.

The objective of the GUG will be to provide as much of the value and positive aspects of a conference as possible, while minimizing the negatives. So what does that mean? How will we do it?

First, the event will be structured and focused in nature. Topics will not be random. The agenda will based upon the most critical issues and challenges facing revenue assurance professionals today. The agenda will be set by the need to discuss things, not upon the ability to find someone with an easy answer. In other words, it will be based on need, instead of availability.

Secondly, it will be focused on community and sharing. While the basic agenda of a conference is for many people to show up while a handful of people talk down to them, our format will be to encourage interaction and participation at every turn. Our goal is interaction and collaboration not entertainment and lecturing.

Thirdly, we will have a purpose for what we are doing. Getting together at a GUG is not about watching, it is about contributing. Each activity scheduled will be tied to some aspect of the definition and validation of our standards, the development of a common vocabulary and understanding of our profession and the enhancement of the shared knowledge base of all of us –in other words, a continuation of the GRAPA mission to an even higher level.

Fourth – and not inconsequential is the fact that attendance and participation at a GRAPA user group will provide you with recognition. Attendance and participation will earn attendees ongoing continuous education credit towards attaining GRAPA Certification or maintaining your status. In other words, the GRAPA User Group will provide you with a legitimate, measurable, provable quality that can be communicated to management.

For the first time, you can look your manager in the eye and state that you are going to the conference because you really are going to learn something of value that will help the company. There is so much more that I could say about the GRAPA User Groups but we are running out of time. So let me just provide you with some closing thoughts.

The GRAPA User Groups represent an exciting new addition to the repertoire of training, networking, certification and recognition options available to the revenue assurance professional.

These two day events will allow professionals to capitalize on the benefits of a conference (networking, sharing and collaboration, earning recognition, building relationships, education and expanding your horizons) while minimizing the downside (random agendas, unfocused curricula, questionable quality, erratic consistency and massive irrelevancy).

We will be starting out small, piloting limited attendance events in Capetown in October, Dubai in November and Las Vegas in December, in order to get a handle on things, and in 2010 we will be ready to launch the full blown round of events.

The 2010 schedule calls for events in Europe, South America, North America, Middle East, Africa, India and South East Asia. Stay tuned for more information.

And it is not too early to get information now for inclusion in your budget for 2010. I guarantee you, these events will be different, interesting, exciting and educational in a way you have never before imagined. I want to invite you to join us in this exciting new attempt at shaping the future of the revenue assurance profession and the telecommunications industry.

Until next time, this is Rob Mattison saying “Be Safe”.

You can get more information about GRAPA User Groups at www.revenue-assurance-conferences.com or contact us at info@grapatel.com

Revenue Assurance Reboot – Converting KPIs to Clarity

Revenue Assurance Reboot – Convert KPIs to Clarity

R Mattison’s Podcast

Have you noticed there are some people who are good with computers, and other people who are not? At least for me, it is funny to watch somebody who does not get it when it comes to computer use get angry and frustrated when the computer doesn’t do what they think it should.

My mother is a perfect example. She is one of those people who never really liked computers, and who only uses it to check email and FaceBook entries for family and friends. For her, the computer is an ugly, mean little box that is there to torture her. She sits, punching keys, typing things into the screen and in general trying to force the computer to do what she thinks it should be able to do.

Often what she is doing is not something that the computer was programmed to do. I tell my mother repeatedly “the computer will only do what you tell it to do,” it cannot read your mind. It does not know how you feel, and it certainly does not know what you mean by that. A computer just follows instructions.

Recently, as I finished my little speech to my mother and helped her reboot her computer for the third time in a day, it occurred to me that a lot of the problems CFOs and management teams have with revenue assurance can be boiled down to this same issue.

Like a computer, the revenue assurance team is a tool at the disposal of management to help solve problems and get information. Like a computer, the revenue assurance team is capable of doing many different things–if you give it the chance. And, unfortunately for most CFO’s and managers, a revenue assurance team, just like my mother’s computer, only does what you tell it to do.

Yes, it is ironic, but if the CEO and the CFO are not clear about what they expect to get from a revenue assurance department then the results are going to be equally unclear. If management changes its mind about what the priorities are on a week-by-week basis, then the revenue assurance department is not going to be effective. It is actually logical and obvious when you think about it.

Of course, in telecommunications today priorities constantly change, and what managers need actually do change frequently. The solution is not for management to stop asking questions and changing the direction. That is ridiculous! This is telecoms after all! Change and chaos is what we do! No, what is required is that, just as I keep coaching my mother, managers need to learn where the ‘keys’ are, and what, realistically, can be done.

Of course, a revenue assurance department is not really a computer, and it does not have a keyboard. So, what is the equivalent of the keyboard and instruction set? How do you set up the structure for communicating with and getting the results you want from your revenue assurance team? Yes, it’s those dreaded KPIs. The KPI, or Key Performance Indicator.

KPIs are much more than irritating numbers that show up on your reports each month. The KPI is the one, pure, clean, unadulterated thing by which management communicates to the revenue assurance team exactly what is expected of them. Is it any wonder that requests for help and training on setting up the right KPIs have lately become the top demand from the GRAPA membership? Yes, members used to ask for Standards and Certification, and now that we have been able to satisfy the professional community with those two things we are seeing KPIs emerge as the new top hot button. And appropriately so. KPIs are the one thing that managers seem to understand least.

The KPI defines your expectations. They communicate what, at the end of the day, the effectiveness of your revenue assurance. So of course, if your KPIs are wrong, if they are not in alignment with what you are doing, or with what management expects, then you are going to be in trouble.

Some of the “other standards bodies” out there have generated some of the funniest KPIs I have ever seen. They issue KPIs regarding the percentage of rejected CDRs issued by a mediation system, and other such highly technical things. Unfortunately, while these KPIs might be interesting for an I/T guy, or a Software Salesmen they are worse than meaningless for the revenue assurance team.

Around the world, in pursuit of often ridiculous and meaningless KPIs, naïve revenue assurance professionals fight to reduce the percentage of rejected CDRs from .001% to .0001% (yielding a cost savings of only a few dollars a day). And, they do this while their organizations continually launch products and rate plans that generate negative margins (selling things that cost more money than they make), lose millions to fraudulent partners and SIMBOXes, and in general rush toward the doors of bankruptcy.

I do put some of the blame on the revenue assurance professionals themselves for this phenomenon. Certainly, a revenue assurance professional that knows what he or she is doing will understand that they have a responsibility to ensure that they:

• Rationalize their efforts – ensuring that they deliver maximum value for their investment.
• Perform with Integrity – ensuring that they work on what they really believe is the highest priority.

Ultimately, the revenue assurance manager can only advise top management. If top management decides that the best way to measure the effectiveness of a revenue assurance team is by how many CDR’s they can “shave off of the reject bucket”, then that is exactly what they are going to get.

Unfortunately, the most common scenario I have witnessed is when management and the revenue assurance team set up leakage and CDR based KPIs that neither truly believes has value (but are the KPIs that they believe they should use). In the meantime, the CFO sends the revenue assurance team into situation after situation having nothing to do with those silly KPIs.

Revenue assurance teams around the world are involved in user acceptance testing on new products, new technology assurance (making sure that new network components generate billable transactions), fraud detection and margin assurance. Each time the revenue assurance team “helps out”, they are given a “thanks for the good job”. But at the end of the year, it is not the “good job” that dictates the status of the revenue assurance team, it is the KPIs. Since those KPIs are only vaguely related to the job the revenue assurance team is actually doing, everyone is dissatisfied.

So, the long and the short of the story is this: if you are unhappy with your revenue assurance team’s performance, then maybe the first place you need to look is not software, hardware or personnel changes. Maybe the first thing you need to do is to take a good hard look at your KPIs and determine if they are really providing the desired results. If you don’t, then you are going to be just like my mother, sitting there constantly re-booting the revenue assurance “computer” while you try to get it to do what you think it should do..

Until next time, this is Rob Mattison saying … be safe

Revenue Assurance – Global Village or Isolated Isle?

Revenue Assurance – Global Village or Isolated Isle?

R Mattison’s Podcast

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

That is an old saying that keeps proving itself in the world of telecommunications. For decades now, telecommunications have grown, expanded and developed into one of the largest and most profitable and influential industries in the world.

When I worked at AT&T back in the good old days, everyone was trained to understand all of the different aspects of the technology and the business. We could hook up the phone line, work as an operator, string the lines on the poles and even troubleshoot a circuit. For the telecom employee back then it was about making sure that one had an integrated view of the technology and kept their eye on the ball, the ball being the profits that were being generated.

Unfortunately, in order to grow and expand, individuals and professionals in corporate cultures have had to adapt in order to accommodate the incredible rate of change and sheer volume of continuously updated knowledge that has to be dealt with. Because there are so many different things to know and so many things to keep track of, the telecom has changed from a single global village type of view, where all of the people work together on the same thing at the same time, to a huge collection of separate islands of knowledge and influence.

In telecoms today, it is literally impossible to understand it all, and understand how it all works. It takes dozens of specialists to make something work, and over time, these specialists tend to pull up their gangplanks and isolate themselves. So was born the revenue assurance function. Revenue assurance was created as a fill-in or stopgap function. But, revenue assurance were the people who brought the complete view of the products and services back into focus.

Over the years revenue assurance teams have proven repeatedly that their single-minded focus on the sanctity of the revenue resulted in big returns for telcos. And the reason is clear, it is because revenue assurance brings back the integrated single village view. Unfortunately, as revenue assurance grows in popularity and acceptance, I am sensing a seriously damaging trend. What is this trend? Revenue assurance is turning into yet another island of expertise. More and more revenue assurance professionals are digging in and specializing, creating yet another isolated function.

I know its human nature to try to seek out the comfort and tranquility of a specialized, isolated set of tools and functions. I know that it is counter-intuitive for many people to actually seek out chaos and confusion, look for conflict and disparity and try to interject a sense of order and priority into the mess. However, this is exactly what revenue assurance has always been about. As we move forward and we continue to struggle with ourselves and our profession, I think that it is critical to keep this at the forefront of our thoughts.

When revenue assurance becomes too specialized and isolated, it nullifies itself as having any value. In fact if you are a revenue assurance professionals and you are beginning to suspect that management and the operational teams are questioning the value of your services then maybe you could do a little soul searching in this area.

I am reminded of what I was told by a revenue assurance management team for the TelNor Group, a few years ago. They told me that their mission was to make revenue assurance everyone’s problem. What a concept! Their goal was that every area of the company— customer service, to sales to marketing, and everyone else, include their KPIs as a revenue assurance component. What a powerful idea! When you think about it, it is pretty much spot on.

The job of the revenue assurance team should never be anything but the proactive, aggressive search for risks to the company’s revenues and working with the company’s operational teams to make them aware of problems and help correct them. Our mission should not be to offload risk and problems from operational managers, but to focus on techniques for helping those managers optimize their activities. We should not try to function as a telco police force that goes around finding fault and putting bandages on broken systems and processes.

In an ideal, albeit less than realistic world, I think the revenue assurance team could be like of small team of revenue cheerleaders or team of revenue advocates; people who specialize in making sure that everyone in the company, and all of those isolated pockets, have an awareness of and a dedication to, maximizing revenues and profit. What a concept! The job of revenue assurance therefore is to eliminate the need for revenue assurance. Will it ever happen? Probably not! At least not for a few more years. In the meantime, it offers us a very refreshing and potent goal for our revenue assurance activities.

Revenue assurance is not a specialization that should be isolated from the other operational areas; revenue assurance should be a generalization. Revenue assurance should be injected into the DNA of all the operational groups, whether those groups be marketing, sales, new product development, network, billing or anything else.

Maybe there is potential here than we realized. Is Revenue assurance about helping the telco to return to the global village model or is it about creating islands of isolation? That is a decision each of us has to make for ourselves. What do you think? I would like to hear your thoughts about this.