Revenue Assurance – Sufi Style

Once of the rewards of traveling is seeing the different ways people around the world live, work and play. During our recent  Dubai GRAPA training event, Brigitte and I took an evening off to go on a Dune Bashing – Desert Retreat. Brigitte, Friday our good friend from Nigeria, and me along with three Japanese tourists were whisked across the dunes of the Sahara dessert in SUV’s and Humvee’s at incredibly high speeds. After a 45-minute drive to the middle of the dessert, the adventure began. At the end of the ride, we were to be left at a dessert “oasis” and offered local cuisine, camel rides, and the opportunity to bargain for stuffed camel dolls and watch local entertainment.

I was very worried about Brigitte on this outing. Brigitte gets sea and airsick all the time, and the people at the tourist board warned us not to eat lunch, since there was a good chance that we would “lose it” after the wild ride through the dessert. But, off we tore through the dessert, up one dune, down the other, swerving, falling, twisting and turning. At first, it was exciting. Then after about 15 minutes, my stomach started to get funny and my skin turned an odd shade of green. Yes, I got motion sickness.

Brigitte had a great time, screaming and enjoying herself, but by the time we got to our destination, I could barely stand I was so nauseous. We were dropped off and I fell to the desert floor, staring at the sky, hoping the world would stop spinning. After I recovered, they took us to our oasis. The food, socializing, music and dancing were quite interesting.

For those of you not familiar with Middle Eastern cultures, there is a group in the Middle East known as the Sufis who are famous for, among other things, their style of dancing. For the Sufi, dancing is a form of prayer. This is accomplished by spinning around and around and around to the music, faster and faster for minutes and minutes.

It is amazing to watch, and I cannot imagine how the dancers do it. The Sufi dancer we watched just kept spinning around to the music. After some time, his assistant started throwing things to him. The most amazing thing was his incredible sense of balance. Of course, after I had just had trouble standing up after a few lousy minutes in a jeep, here is this person spinning around faster than a top maintaining perfect poise and balance.

The feeling of being turned in a million different directions, and being “dizzy” and suffering from vertigo is no new experience for the revenue assurance professional. We are constantly tugged and pulled in different directions, and many revenue assurance professionals complain about being unable to “get their bearings” when it comes to exactly what they should be doing and where they should be focusing. The image of the Sufi dancer, spinning and spinning with perfect balance and harmony is a fitting image for what the truly talented revenue assurance professional should be.

I recently read an interesting article about the challenging “balancing act” that all professionals need to deal with, and I thought it would be good to share some of it with you. As professionals, especially as revenue assurance professionals in telecoms, there are several contradictory things we have to keep in mind as we do our jobs. Several things require us to continually balance our approach to problems, including:

Taking the Initiative vs. Following the Rules

One thing that managers complain about more than anything else is employees who do not take initiative to identify problems. Clearly, for the revenue assurance professional, waiting until someone tells you to check into things can mean the difference between preventing a crisis and dealing with a major revenue loss disaster. Initiative, the willingness to be proactive and to anticipate problems is a highly valued trait.

On the other hand, being proactive is not license to behave in an unrestrained manner.  Good professional behavior is guided by the social and business-related expectations of coworkers and managers across the organization. The balancing act is this:  To show initiative and independence on the one hand; while observing the prevailing social norms and the expectations of business associates on the other.

For example, managers often expect their direct reports will get things done more or less independently, without constant direction from above.  Employees who are "initiative-takers" and "self-starters" are valued…up to a point.  The balancing act for employees is to take initiative that is bound and guided by the strategies of their supervisors and the overall mission of their firm.

Acting professionally means demonstrating individualism in ways that are subtle, observe locally prevailing norms of behavior, and do not annoy or unduly distract the others with whom one is interacting.  It means not demonstrating one’s individualism in ways that strongly call attention to oneself.  Second, acting professionally means taking initiative on behalf of the firm in ways that support the strategies of one’s superiors.  Initiative is properly directed in support of the employer’s objectives, not one’s own unique ideas.

Pushing for Solutions without Offending People and Seeming Rude

The telecom industry, more than any other, admires self-reliance.  Individuals are able to be self-reliant, in part, by obtaining what they want through acting assertively towards others.  Personal assertiveness, or "directness," is often expected, but too much of it can be interpreted as being aggressive.  The difference between enough and too much is determined by the employee’s sensitivity to others.

Similarly, self-assurance is good…to a point.  When it shades over into arrogance – a demonstration of one’s certainty that their own view is infallible – others quickly react negatively.  It is never complimentary when someone is viewed by others as opinionated, dogmatic, or arrogant. One of the biggest problems that we face as revenue assurance professionals is the tendency to translate our opinions, no matter how well researched or justified, into dogmatic declarations of this is how it works.

In our GRAPA training events, one of the first social challenges we face when we get revenue assurance professionals from different carriers together, is to teach members to communicate in ways that are not so dogmatic and absolute. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to caution people who make statements like; “This is how it is done,” “Everyone does it this way,” or “You have to do this.”

Being bold and definitive is a natural reaction to situations where we are unsure of ourselves, or surrounded by people who know less than we do. However, there is a difference between respectful confidence and aggressive bluster. Acting professionally means being flexible in the practice of our assertiveness and self-assurance. It means making sure we vary our assertiveness based upon times, situations, and people.  This ability to adapt our level of assertiveness must be managed by our awareness of the likely effect it will have on others.  The professional constantly tries to be sensitive to others, thereby learning how to modulate his or her behavior.

Respecting Deadlines but Being Flexible and Patient with Problems that Arise

In the hectic world of telecoms, executives and coworkers are highly conscious of time. Activities are scheduled in advance, and people follow these schedules as much as humanly possible.  Activities are expected to begin and end on time. Being punctual is about being sensitive to the needs of others, who are also following preplanned schedules.

People also have many responsibilities and tasks to attend to daily.  Sometimes a particular responsibility or task, may take more time to accomplish than might seem reasonable.  So, along with punctuality, one needs patience.  Being patient is about being sensitive to others’ workloads and priorities.

Two related points need to be made.  First, managers take deadlines seriously.  When a task is clearly high-priority and/or its completion is critical to the work of others, the deadline should be met.  It is not good to miss a deadline.  However, one should agree in advance only to a "realistic" deadline. Second, for many, family responsibilities take precedence over business responsibilities.  In many business settings, a person’s explanation for lateness or a missed deadline will be more readily accepted if a family emergency is the reason.  Note, however, that this is not uniformly true!

Acting professionally means being conscious of other people’s constraints with respect to time and timings.  One respects other people’s schedules by arriving on time and meeting deadlines that are viewed as critical.  But one also respects coworker’s and manager’s huge load of responsibilities by not constantly prodding them about the completion of tasks. . . other than the most critical tasks.

As we can see, the job of the revenue assurance professional, like the balancing act of the Sufi, can only be accomplished with a great degree of care and practice. Our Sufi dancer didn’t learn how to be well balanced in one day. He practiced for years to accomplish the level of skill he exhibits.

In the same way, we revenue assurance professionals must constantly stay aware of, and focus on our need to find the right balance in our professional practice. It is a full time job for anyone to:

• Be sensitive to the individual egos, and the needs and constraints that our coworkers face, while being patient as they figure out how best to do a job in a productive way (the consensus principle).
• Be assertive, and promote what is right for the good of the company, (the integrity principle).
• Do this in a way that focuses on maximizing revenues to the firm (the rationalization principle).

I hope that you find, as I did, that this way of looking at our jobs offers some interesting insights into some of the ways we can improve ourselves in our professional practice.

Well, I think that is enough for this time so, until next week, this is Rob Mattison saying… BE SAFE.

Revenue Assurance and IA – Partners in Crime and Loss Prevention

Revenue Assurance and Internal Auditing – Training in Kuwait

R Mattison’s Podcast

Recently, we finished yet another breakthrough-training event for GRAPA. I was privileged to provide our core curriculum class to a room full of experienced telcom internal auditors from around the world.

This event, sponsored by Protiviti, Internal Audit provider to telecoms across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, saw 30 IA professionals certify in Revenue Assurance, with many opting for the special training and testing verifying their expertise in IFRS, GAAP, FRAUD and Internal Audit.

The group was brilliant, providing excellent proof of the professional competency and caliber of the internal audit profession. For those who thought internal auditors were not qualified to understand or wrestle with complex RA, Systems, Network and Operational Issues I can only say that “the proof is in the test scores”. As is common at training events, we had our share of controversy, and the revelation of a wide range of different personal experiences and “war stories” helped everyone better understand how big the IA and revenue assurance job really is.

This event reinforced my belief that in the battle for revenue assurance and fraud protection, there is a clear synergy and need for cooperation between the Internal Auditor and the Revenue Assurance Professional. This imperative is not new. GRAPA benchmarks have shown that Internal Auditors are traditionally the primary providers of requirements, and feeders of new domains into the revenue assurance arena.

More importantly, what became clear to this group of auditors was the many ways they can look to revenue assurance as their partners in discovering and containing revenue risks. Time after time, an auditor has come to me and said, “Oh my goodness, I should have turned this over to the Revenue Assurance team immediately!” Or, “I had no idea that things were this bad everywhere. I always assumed I simply didn’t understand what was going on, even though I thought something wasn’t right”.

Most interesting were our discussions about the various ways fraudsters penetrate the environment and steal money from the most obscure corners of the operational framework. I know that I speak for many revenue assurance professionals when I say that the enhancement of the knowledge, skill and insights that the internal auditors bring to the organization is a welcome addition to the battle that revenue assurance professionals fight every day.

Too often, I hear stories about revenue assurance professionals, when after identifying risks and communicating them to the CFO, were told the Internal Auditors signed off on them and they were overreacting. Nothing can be more frustrating then to have the proof of a problem and then have it dismissed because another operational area misread the situation. For this group of auditors, and the dozens of Internal Auditors we have already certified, this will no longer be the case.

The Auditors in our class came away with a great belief in the GRAPA standards based approach to revenue assurance; specifically that:

1. The primary purpose of revenue assurance is to:
   1. Build consensus based solutions within the organization
   2. Do their job with integrity and fairness
   3. Be sure that solutions are rationalized

And that the revenue assurance professionals’ primary responsibility is to:

1. Identify risk of loss
2. Quantify it into financial terms that everybody can relate to
3. Address that risk based upon managements appetite for that risk
4. Assist in the implementation of Corrections, Controls and Compliance reporting

Just imagine a world where the Auditors and Revenue Assurance professionals are on the same page. That is an exciting prospect.

For more information about what our internal auditors thought about the training and testing, and how they are putting it to use, check out the following sources:

1. The RA-Academy – Testimonials Page
2. The GRAPA Certification Site
3. The GRAPA Peeps – Blogs and the GRAPA Voice Newsletter

Yes, it is amazing what we can accomplish when we get together and work based on the same playbook. That is exactly what GRAPA is trying to accomplish (and what we actually are accomplishing in location after location).

Stay tuned for more partnership stories and opportunities to advance your career and the revenue assurance of your operating companies.

Until next time, this is Rob Mattison saying.. “ BE SAFE”.

Cape Town : My Kind of Revenue Assurance Town

Cape Town – My Kind of Revenue Assurance Town

R Mattison’s Podcast

There is a famous Frank Sinatra song that goes something like this:

This is my kind of town…
My kind of town,
My kind of people, too.

When it comes to revenue assurance, Cape Town is definitely my kind of town. Our second annual GRAPA South Africa Revenue Assurance Training and Certification event was held at the base of the famous “Lions’ Head” rock. The weather was typical of Cape Town: rain, cold, sunny, warm, windy, foggy, and then sunny again. Cape Town is famous for its erratic weather changes, but that did not stop us from having a productive and intensive five-day dosage of revenue assurance. We had participants from many of the South African telcos including MTN and Telkom, and we had quite a respectable representation from other African companies as well.

Cape Town with its beautiful scenery, nightlife, shopping and incredibly friendly atmosphere is clearly a favorite destination for many Africans. I think any city with a large surfing culture is a great place to hang out and enjoy life. Where else in the world can you sit over a cup of coffee and hear stories about diamond smugglers, gold exporting and the latest FIFA Football competition all in the same conversation?

Deep Forensics and Deep Controls

There is nothing I enjoy more than spending five days with a group of intensely dedicated revenue assurance professionals, hashing out the details of how best to do revenue assurance in diverse operational environments. As usual, there were several points of controversy we needed to work through, and at times, the “atmosphere” in the classroom was as tumultuous as the weather. This time, discussion centered on roaming and the method for containing credit risk when customers who roam on another carrier’s network exceed their credit limit.

Roaming risk is increasingly an area where carriers are losing a lot of money. Carriers around the world have reported tens of millions of US dollars worth of losses due to roaming fraud (internal, external and partner based). It seems that trusting the TADIG and IDREG processes as the “final word” in revenue assurance for roaming revenue can be a serious mistake.

Many people assume they understand the process, but the specifics and details of managing roaming risk can be incredibly complex. The reason is, no matter how well you handle your own credit management and High Usage Report processes, you have no control over what your roaming partner does. Exacerbating the problem is that the GSM Association has been trying to require Near Real Time management of customers and their credit risk, but the number of carriers actually ready, willing and able to implement this aggressive new standard is far from unanimous. The result is that every carrier is maintaining a different level of sophistication and capability when it comes to Roaming Credit management and if you are not careful, you will experience large revenue risks that you did not realize you had.

One solution that GRAPA members are implementing is covered under the concepts of “deep forensics and deep controls”. These terms were created for, and are still utilized in assuring Virtual Network Operations relationships, but we are finding the concepts, controls and approaches are equally relevant to roaming cases. Deep forensics is the process of being aggressively involved in understanding how your partner intends to implement and complement your roaming credit management strategy.

A deep control is a control implemented by the partner and shared with your organization so you can keep current on the shared credit exposure that a roaming relationship represents. (The GSM Association Near Real Time Credit monitoring solution, where the partner sends the actual TAP FILES to the partner, so that the carrier can do its own Traffic, Fraud and Credit risk analysis is a perfect example of this type of control).

After debate and controversy, we were able to develop a better understanding of the different ways to implement these solutions and greatly increase everyone’s understanding and appreciation of the risks and issues they need to address when they return to their own operating companies.

I love this business and I am always impressed with the incredible dedication, intelligence, curiosity and commitment to digging down to the root of the problem that typifies the revenue assurance professional.

Certification, Credential-ization

This week also saw the graduation of another group of certified bachelors of revenue assurance. I am amazed at the rate at which people are being certified, as well as the diversity of people involved–with many people certifying in Revenue Assurance, Fraud and Internal Audit. Our newly instituted standard bank of questions has been “calibrated” and we continue to raise both the bar and our confidence that certification establishes a real value to employers for both existing employees and new hires.

Our new certification tracking pages are posted on the GRAPA site. Certified GRAPA member now have their own personalized home page, showing their membership and certification status, including courses completed, tests taken and grades assigned. (These pages are password protected and available only to the members themselves).

In addition to this news, GRAPA continues to pursue our “credential-ization” efforts. We are negotiating with several universities in Asia, Africa and North America, to offer a sanctioned GRAPA certification for new college graduates. Just imagine a new generation of revenue assurance professionals trained in GRAPA standards at the beginning of their careers! We continue to pursue recognition and verification of the GRAPA standards by a number of global industry certification bodies and work for the acceptance of GRAPA training for continuing education credit with internal audit standards and certification bodies. All of these processes take time, but we are well on the way to accomplishing all of the objectives.

GRAPA has surpassed yet another milestone: 3000 registered members. I never thought we would have that many people. Clearly, the number of people who are getting into revenue assurance is growing along with the rest of the industry. Now, we have set our goals even higher. We have members from over 1300 operating companies around the world and next month we will launch a series of campaigns to increase our membership numbers on a region-by-region basis.

In December, we will make a concerted effort to bring our program to North America with our Las Vegas Revenue Assurance event and our Bundling and Reseller Assurance Town Hall meeting run by our US National Chair John Myers. In January, we will launch our Spanish Language website, blog and translated versions of the standards books available free to our members in Latin America, and later in the year, similar programs will be launched for Northern Asia and South East Asia.

Yes, GRAPA is growing faster than we ever imagined, so stay tuned. So until next time, this is Rob Mattison saying… Be safe.

How Do you Certify an Entire Country? Leave it to a Revenue Assurance Professional

How Do you Certify an Entire Country?

R Mattison’s Podcast

I have got to tell you, no matter how long I am in this business, and the longer I am associated with GRAPA the better it gets.

You just never know what is going to happen, or what is possible when a group of sincere, intelligent, honest and well-intentioned people put their minds to the accomplishment of a monumental task. I had the privilege and honor or working with such a group of revenue assurance professionals in Uganda recently.

In order to appreciate why this is such a big deal, you need to have a little background. As the President of GRAPA, my goal is to bring training and certification to as many people as we can, at the best price possible. (Of course, the naïve among our readers will say, “Great, so give it away for free!”. Of course, if we did that we would not be able to do it for very long. It takes money to run an association like GRAPA, and getting people to pay for the training is the best way we could come up with to make it happen.)

This means that some people (especially the people in the larger telcos, and the larger, richer countries) have a much easier time of getting access to the training then those in smaller countries with lower customer counts and lower ARPUs. The result, unfortunately, is that many times, the people that need the training the most have the hardest time getting access to it. There are several things we have tried in order to fix this problem including web training (again, a disaster in exactly the places that need it the most) and other methods.

One of the things we have tried in the past is to put on a ‘co-op event”. This is how it works: all of the carriers in the same country or region get together and agree to cover the expenses, we have the event at their location, and the carriers share the expense.

In most places, although the people working on it tried, the politics and rivalry between the carriers made such an event impossible. Before now, our biggest success story was the awesome job that Henry Whyte did, putting together the GRAPA training event in Ghana.

So when Hawas Matta, our National Chair in Uganda, approached me with the idea of doing a co-op in Uganda I was skeptical to say the least. “How are you going to get your management team to agree to shoulder this risk?” I asked. “How will you avoid the inter-carrier politics?” However, Hawas assured me that he could make it happen. And, he did.

In an incredibly short amount of time, Hawas, with the full support of his management team at Zain Uganda, and with the support of the Zain Corporate group, was able to build the National Coalition of Revenue Assurance managers from every major carrier in Uganda, and get them to all agree to participate in the event! Unbelievable! It was an unprecedented act of coordination, win-win negotiation and cooperation.

For the first time ever, we at GRAPA are proud to announce that we have provided training for, and certified an entire country! Well not quite the entire country, but pretty darn close to it. Equally critical was the incredibly professional way the participants handled the experience. There were even some potential “inter-carrier” romances in the brew.

We had thirty revenue assurance professionals, including some Internal Audit, Fraud and I/T professionals, and we covered the entire core curriculum and Xtreme© training and testing during the allotted five days (we did go late a couple of times, but who is counting). At the end, we were able to award certification to most of the participants, with the commitment from every one of them that they would go back to their telcos and show their management teams how effective a true revenue assurance professional can be.

I think revenue assurance professionals around the world should look to the revenue assurance community in Uganda with considerable respect and pride. We can learn from their example of what revenue assurance professionals can accomplish when we put our heads and our hearts to the task of doing whatever it takes to get a job done.

I am proud and honored to have participated in this event. I hope and pray that we have many more experiences that are similar around the world, as we, as a professional community figure out what we can do, and how to do it. Really, there is no limit to what we can accomplish working together. That is what GRAPA is all about.

Again, my profoundest thanks to the management teams and revenue assurance teams from MTN, Orange, Warid, Hawas Matta and the Zain management team for making this happen.

Until next time, this is Rob Mattison saying…. Be safe.

GRAPA: Minding the Gap and Assuring the Revenue in London Town

I cannot tell you how excited I was to put on a GRAPA training event in the city of London. What many of you may not realize is that a subset of people in the world that believe that London is the heart and soul, the actual birthplace of revenue assurance.

Many of the “old-timers” from the Revenue Assurance league had their grass roots in the old British Telecom Revenue Assurance regimen. Without a doubt, those people did a lot to launch the profession and prove how revenue assurance added value to a major league telecom player. It is also true that London has one of the largest, strongest and most cohesive revenue assurance communities, with a large number of revenue assurance managers from the different telcos getting together on a regular basis and sharing best practices and “war stories”.

I was very honored to be invited to present to that group several years about, and I remember the meeting place; a grand old Victorian renovated “gentleman’s club” with domed ceilings and polished granite floors. It was cool. They were also great bunch of people.

Of course, since those “good old days” of the supremacy of British Telecom on the telecoms scene, many things have changed. BT is no longer the Lion of the industry. Recent statistics show them dropping drastically in the global standings (and even within the UK itself). The old school is moving out, and the new school in moving in.

We decided to put on a training event in the UK with some misgivings. The “GRAPA style” of revenue assurance does not especially play well in the hallowed halls of the British Empire. Our “Xtreme” approach causes many of the “old school” RA people to scoff and claim that we do not know what we are talking about. However, with our successful track record of European events in Amsterdam, Luxembourg and Madrid, we decided to take the gamble and see if we could convince anyone in Old London Town to take GRAPA training out for a spin.

I am very pleased to report that the London event was a success on all counts. It seems that telcos in the UK are facing the same challenges faced by telcos around the world, and our European audience was surprised and pleased with what they got out of the event.

The focus of this particular group of students was different from other classes (but then, it always is). The issues that seemed most important and raised the most focus and attention in London were in the areas of Location Based Services, GPRS-3G Assurance, the special challenges faced when doing Virtual Network Operator Revenue Assurance and most critical of all, topics associated with Margin and Market Analysis. That one surprised me the most, but in retrospect, it makes perfect sense.

Riding though the tubes (subway train) all across London made the issues of the Telecoms market in the UK painfully obvious. Our hotel, the old Vanderbilt Hotel, was near the Gloucester Road subway station, and we held our training at our meeting rooms right on Trafalgar Square. (Talk about a great location.) Each day, as we took the tube to the classes, we were inundated by ads for discounted telecom services. I thought African price wars were brutal! For instance:

• Free international phone calls for life with this rate plan.
• Free SMS for 3 months.
• Free DSL, a free router, free long distance for 19.95 per month.

Unbelievable! I scratched my head, trying to figure out how any telco in the UK can make any money. Luckily, the local UK telcoms market was well represented, and we were able to look at this environment from a systematic, rationalized, profit based revenue assurance perspective.

What did we find? That margins are clearly tighter than ever, and telcos have to work hard to make their money, but there is still money to be made. However, what should come as no surprise to anyone is the fact that the telcos in the UK and Europe in general need a good, proactive revenue assurance commitment more than ever.

It is interesting the way that business, and cultures and situations parallel. Synchronicity I think they call it. Well, the synchronicity was thick in London that week. The London Tube  system is one of the most famous and reputedly, most dependable train systems in the world. However, what we found, to our dismay, was that many lines and stations were closed, due to a massive renovation project underway. It seems that to keep their city moving, and growing and changing, the city of London itself is going through some growing pains of its own.

Like the old tube lines, UK and European telcos are finding if they do not take hammers and chisels to outdated modes of doing things, and replace outdated approaches with newer, leaner and meaner approaches, no one will be stopping at their stations. Nothing could be more appropriate, and more in alignment with the GRAPA message. Telcoms is a dynamic business, and a successful revenue assurance professional has to do more than just keep up; they have to lead the telecom charge. The people attending our fourth European training event could not agree more with the message we are promoting.

We have already received a number of inquires from European telcos who are scheduling training at their locations for 2010, and we will begin plans for scheduling more European events the first half of 2010 as well. I am sure that our momentum will continue to grow as more and more European telcos discover and implement the GRAPA standards.

I am also pleased and proud to announce that at this event we successfully certified our first group of Bachelors of Revenue Assurance Professionals, including Revenue Assurance Professionals and Fraud Specialists.

For me, it was a great experience, and I look forward to meeting with, and finding out more about how our members are doing at the different UK carriers (along with the other Europeans). From here, it is off to Uganda and the first ever – National Training and Certification event, but I will talk about that next time.

Until then, this is Rob Mattison – saying….. Be Safe

Summer in Luxembourg; Christmas in Las Vegas

I really love my job! Who else gets the chance to go so many different places and meet so many different, interesting, intelligent and talented people?

For the next few weeks, I will be teaching and working in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Usually at this point, I would joke about how my American friends have no idea where Luxembourg is, but I have a feeling that the majority of our GRAPA membership may not know either.

Luxembourg is nestled in the hills between Belgium, Germany and France. It is one of the smallest countries in the world, with a population of about 450,000 people. It has a duke, and covers only about 1,000 square miles (2600 sq km). They have their own language, Luxembourgish, (a mix of German and French), and the country has recently been declared the “safest place to live in the world”. Part of this is due, no doubt, to the fact that the citizens of Luxembourg are the richest people in the world (the highest income of any nation) and also not too surprising, they have more banks per capita than any other country (with over 220) .

Luxembourg was not always this scene of wealth and tranquility. Most history buffs and movie fans are familiar with Luxembourg and its critical role in the famous “Battle of the Bulge” during World War II. In fact, I am sure that I am staying in the hotel where General Patton and Bradley stayed during a part of that battle.

So what, you may ask, am I doing in such a haven? Well, as usual, I am teaching a class in Revenue Assurance for a group of telco revenue assurance professionals and internal auditors from all over Europe. Our training class in Madrid went so well, that we decided to continue with our European coverage. By the end of this year, I am happy to say, we will have held three successful events in Europe: Madrid, Luxembourg and London.

It is clear that revenue assurance is not only thriving in Africa and the Middle East, but Europe has its own interest as well. Of course, the focus this week, while still covering the basics, has its own unique wrinkles as does every class we put on. This time, the emphasis has turned more and more to the issues of internal audit, IFRS and their relationship to the revenue assurance function.

It is amazing how incredibly complicated things get in our business. The good old days of “revenue is revenue” have been overtaken by oceans of regulations and laws that define what revenue is, what it is not and the myriad different ways that it can be computed, counted, collected and credited depending upon dozens of factors.

Yes, the simplistic revenue assurance professional of yesterday, who could simply count CDRs and let the managers worry about the rest are quickly fading to the background. Today’s revenue assurance professional must be part accountant, part I/T, part operations and part detective.

I am gratified to find that since the publishing of our 2009 standards, the financial community at large, and especially the audit community has responded with enthusiasm to the GRAPA message. Our principles of rationalization, integrity and consensus, and our insistence upon the positioning of revenue assurance as the partner and supporter of internal audit have resulted in a deluge of internal audit interest in training and certification.

In fact, over the next two months we are scheduled to train and certify over 35 internal and external auditors from a wide variety of operating companies and consulting firms across SE Asia, Africa, The Middle East, Europe and South America. This trend is one we hope to continue in the coming months and we are redoubling our efforts to gain official sanction from audit certification organizations so that auditors can get continuing education credit for their attendance at these events.

As well, I have continued my status as a member in good standing with the IIA, the Institute of Internal Auditors. No, I am not planning on defecting and becoming an Auditor. I just think that it is critical that we, as revenue assurance professionals, understand and find ways to work with and support our “brothers and sisters” in the battle to support telco financial integrity and fraud/revenue loss in all of its forms.

You can immediately tell the difference between the RA people and the IA people in the classroom. The Auditors, of course, are wearing conservative suits, ties and well-shined shoes. Their biggest concerns are fraud prevention and determining whether the correct controls and procedures are in place. The RA people are a bit more relaxed and informal, but share the same dedication to detail, completeness and getting to the heart of the problem.

The class started out, as it usually does, with many questions about territoriality and responsibility. “Who is going to be responsible for what,” and other such issues were the first thing we hashed out. After that, the tone of the class changed. We began the journey of discovering that there is more than enough work for everyone, and that territorial squabbles do nothing more than slow everyone down and distract us from the huge job that we face; figuring out how best to assure and secure telecom revenues in this crazy ever-changing world. By the end of the class, everyone agreed that there was a lot more work ahead of them and that by working together, everyone would benefit.

This process of consensus building and the development of a shared, cooperative and proactive vision of how we can all work together to accomplish our goals is a real benchmark of the training classes we deliver, and we hope to be able to continue this activity for some time to come.

For the rest of this year we have already scheduled training and certification events for London, Cape Town, Dubai, Kuwait, Mexico, and Jamaica. We will be finishing off the year with our last event of 2009 in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada.

That is enough rambling for this week. You know, I cannot help thinking about the fact that the people here have so much money, and are so safe, and that one of the reasons they have been so successful, is because they have focused on their own personal brand of revenue assurance. With that thought to inspire me, I look forward to a week of walking down cobblestone streets, passing by castles, farmhouses and picturesque rural vistas on my way to work, and feeling a real sense of safety and assurance–not just because I am in Luxembourg, but because I know that the job that we are doing is helping telcos around the world secure their revenues and improve their profit positions.

Stay safe,
Rob

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

Taking Revenue Assurance TO THE EXTREME

GRAPA staff writer Katherine B. and I sat down recently to discuss the new Revenue Assurance to the Extreme program that we here at GRAPA have just finished developing. Kathy interviewed me, and let me explain what this exciting new revenue assurance training program is all about.

K. Rob, tell us all about this new program, what do you mean by “Revenue Assurance to the Extreme” and why have you put it together?

R: Well Katherine, we have been very heavily involved for the past six months in conducting training programs, workshops and interviews with revenue assurance professionals, CFO’s, CIO’s, CTO”s and Regulators and we discovered several interesting things.

• First – it is clear that despite the economic crisis, that revenue assurance and revenue assurance teams are growing, and growing quickly.
• Second – we found that revenue assurance professionals are being pushed into an increasingly wider range of areas. Revenue assurance professionals are being asked to get involved in more and more areas of the telco, always focusing on the protection of revenues and the reduction of risk to those revenues.
• Third – while revenue assurance teams are growing, CFO’s are leaning hard on those teams to spread themselves thin in order to cover as many areas as possible.

The net result is that we found revenue assurance professionals have a need for information and training to help address these areas. The end result is the newly crafted “Revenue Assurance to the Extreme” Curriculum (RAX).

K: That’s an interesting concept Rob, but doesn’t this challenge a lot of the industry established norms regarding what revenue assurance is and how it should be practiced? After all, revenue assurance has always tended to be a relatively conservative activity, hasn’t it?

R: Yes Katherine, that is exactly the point. I really believe that the practice of revenue assurance must change to keep up with the state of telecoms today if it is going to survive. Too many revenue assurance teams have been marginalized and left feeling like they have no value to deliver, simply because that are not approaching the job from the right perspective.

K: So, does this mean that everyone that has been doing revenue assurance up until now has been doing it wrong?

R: Absolutely not. What the Global Revenue Assurance Professionals Association is doing is helping to work with revenue assurance professionals to leverage what has been done up until now and to build upon the solid foundation that has made revenue assurance as popular and critical as it already is.

K: So let’s get specific, what are the key points behind this new program?

R: It is about helping revenue assurance managers to reorganize their priorities. Because of the current economic crisis, telco executives are aggressively looking for ways to cut costs and increase revenues without incurring major headcount or CAPEX investment. Revenue assurance managers that are in tune with the top managers are therefore looking for new ways that they can offer real short term value to their management teams based upon those conditions. What the RAX program does, is provide revenue assurance professionals with some fresh perspectives on the way that other revenue assurance teams have been able to show that short term value without the CAPEX or Headcount investment.

K: So it sounds like the training is based on a lot of case studies and real world experience?

R: Absolutely Katherine, no matter what kind of challenges a student comes to the classroom with, it is guaranteed that some GRAPA member, somewhere has had to face similar circumstances. Our training simply provides an easy, efficient method for the sharing of that knowledge.

K: So are there any other “Key Points” behind this program?

R: Yes, the program is also focused on bringing to the forefront all of the latest expansions in the scope of revenue assurance. In the “good old days’, revenue assurance was about counting CDR’s , but in today’s telecommunications world the revenue assurance team is expanding its scope on a daily basis. More than ever before keeping up with the trends, approaches and methodologies is a big job, and our training brings these “leading edge” areas to the forefront.

K: So what about the old Core Curriculum, is that just being abandoned?

R: No actually, a good amount of that material has been retained, it has simply been modernized, streamlined and organized in a different way.

K: What about GRAPA Certification, will that still apply?

R: Absolutely Katherine, in fact, with the new Revenue Assurance to the Extreme program  we will be piloting two new levels of certification. An Associates IN Revenue Assurance Certification, awarded for three days of training and testing, with no work experience required, and the Bachelors in Revenue Assurance that includes all five days of training, testing and requires a verification of work experience.

K: So you get the training and an industry recognized certification all in one? What topics are covered in the class. How is it organized?

R: The newly expanded materials focus on a number of different areas, and it is organized into five focused days.

• Day 1 is called “How may CDR’s does it take to assure a Tweet”?
• Day 2 is called “Network Nitwits Need Not Apply”
• Day 3 is called “Nu Skool Breaks for The Old School Revenue Assurance”
• Day 4 is called “All that glitters is not revenue”.
• Day 5 is called “Weird Science and the Black Hole of Revenue Assurance”

K: Just to summarize then, the new GRAPA “Revenue Assurance to the Extreme” program will be offered in the 2^nd half of 2009. Courses are currently scheduled for London , in September, Capetown, in October, Dubai in November and December in Sunny Las Vegas, Nevada.

For more information, you can visit the website at www.ra-academy.org or www.grapatel.com