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Archive for ‘January, 2009’
Jan
25
2009
Welcome to the Telecom of the 21st Century! Posted on 01:30, January 25th, 2009 by Rob MattisonThe large, slow moving, highly profitable incumbent wireline and long distance companies of the 19th and 20th century has become the new, lean, mean, highly flexible (and loosely assembled) telecom of the 21st century. But the modern telecommunications company is also a chaotic, confusing, pressure cooker of change: changing technology, changing markets, changing consumer attitudes, changing competitive landscape. In the modern world of telecommunications, competitors can become partners in the blink of an eye as companies struggle to balance, risk, revenue, capital outlay and expertise against each other. In the midst of all this mess we find, the humble revenue assurance practitioner (that’s you and me, my friend). Given this background, the chaos, confusion, profit and loss that typifies the telecommunications company today, where exactly does the revenue assurance job fit in, you might ask. What do managers expect from a revenue assurance department? How are revenue assurance groups measured? How are they organized? How do you know if you are doing it right or not? These are all extremely difficult questions. Revenue assurance, like everything else in telecommunications today, is typified by a wide range of different implementations and interpretations depending upon where you go and who you ask. I think that’s why GRAPA is such an important key component to revenue assurance professionals today In telco’s around the world, the revenue assurance professional is being asked to wrestle with all of these issues and more. As the old telecom model falls further and further into disuse and disgrace, the new, modern telco executive has discovered that in the lean, mean world of 21st century telcoms, having a team of sharp, revenue, technology and operation savvy professionals who focus on the bottom line can be an incredibly useful, and in many cases, a critical component of success. It is into this wild, crazy, confusing world of conflicting missions, objectives and operational assumptions that most modern revenue assurance departments find themselves. While almost every telco on the planet today has a revenue assurance department, the disparity in staffing, mission, responsibility and charter can be immense. Even in multi-national telcos, where one parent corporation oversees dozens of subsidiaries, the mission , make up and role of the revenue assurance department can be quite disparate. But this is where an organization like GRAPA has undertaken the task of developing a consensus across the industry defining exactly what the scope, depth and breadth of the revenue assurance job should be. With GRAPA, we can begin to further revolutionize the field of revenue assurance and work with other professionals to improve inconsistencies and standards within the field. After all, if we don’t do it, who will? -Rob Friends, I’d like to take some time and look back at what GRAPA has experimented with over the past year. There were a number of different activities and initiatives; some initiatives were extremely successful, while others were less than effective. As time goes on however, we continue to improve in our approach and effectiveness. Let’s take a look at some of the more successful activities of 2008 included: GRAPA Standards Committee – The official GRAPA Standards Document was by far the single biggest success, and the more critical aspect of activities in 2008. The completion of the primary mission and the establishment of this document helped create a solid foundation for GRAPA. I’d like to give many thanks to the committees that pulled together to develop this timely document for the continued success of our association. GRAPA Fraud Contest – In our continued commitment to the creation of a “community” of professionals, we conducted our first ever GRAPA Fraud Contest. The contest encouraged members around the world to submit their best and most interesting fraud cases, and submit it in order to enhance the GRAPA fraud practices library. The contest saw participation by dozens of members and an esteemed panel of GRAPA Fraud Specialists judged the cases and awarded prizes (Ipods, PDAs etc) to the winners. GRAPA Certification Committee – Over the past year, several GRAPA certification committees have applied their knowledge and insight to help develop a certification that will most effectively support our membership. With the ratification of the standards, GRAPA will be launching the first version of the certification program based upon these inputs. GRAPA Benchmarks – I think one of the more prominent and useful of the GRAPA activities in 2008 was the GRAPA benchmarks. These benchmarks consisted of a number of different questionnaires designed to help the GRAPA organization and members to understand exactly what are the current revenue assurance practices around the world. The rules for GRAPA benchmarks are simple. If you participate in the benchmark, you get to see the results. Over 300 members participated in our benchmarks in 2008 and several dozen are planned for 2009. GRAPA Town Hall Meetings – One of the most exciting and successful activities that GRAPA initiated in 2008 were our Town Hall Meetings. Town hall meetings, held in real time in different locations, provided a forum for GRAPA members to come together and share ideas and insights with each other. A series of four standards based town hall meetings were held in many locations around the world (Africa, Asia, Europe and the US). I’m happy to share that more are planned for 2009! The Revenue Assurance Academy – Of course, no mention of the activities of GRAPA would be complete without giving credit to the Revenue Assurance Academy team for the amazing job they did in 2008. With only a few short months of preparation, and no experience to speak of, the Revenue Assurance Academy was able to hold dozens of training classes in cities around the world, providing high quality training at affordable prices to GRAPA members in every region of the world. So with that short look back, I’m excited to say that we are definitely moving forward in strengthening the association and heightening the awareness of revenue assurance professionals around the world! I hope you all are looking forward to the sharing this journey with me and the GRAPA team in this new year! -Rob  Tags: GRAPA 2008Greetings GRAPA Members! Welcome to Mattison Avenue, a place where you can gather information about GRAPA and get an inside view about what’s in store for us this year. Today, I was sitting at my desk, thinking about all that we’ve accomplished in the past year. With our sights set high on taking revenue assurance professionals to the next level, I’d like to discuss where we are headed in the year 2009. For starters, I’ve implemented this blog, as a way for you to get inside my head (just a bit) and discover my ideas, hopes and thoughts about our organization. This blog will serve as my sounding board to you about GRAPA and the initiatives we set to accomplish this year. I’m also looking to utilize another online tool, LinkedIn, which will give revenue assurance professionals a place to network with one another and stay in the loop about the great things GRAPA is doing. Well, I’d like to start by saying that in 2009, we’ll see a number of improvements and re-commitments to many of the things that worked well in 2008. More importantly, we’ll continue with our innovation by initiating a number of new activities as well. I think the biggest single event and the most important GRAPA activity in 2009 will be the final ratification, publication and promotion of the GRAPA Standards. The formalization and ratification of these standards and their promotion around the world signals the maturation of revenue assurance as a professional activity and GRAPA as the agent of that professionalization. We will see a recommitment of GRAPA to the Town Hall meeting venue. Although there were some false starts and challenges in 2009, we are sure that our more experienced team members will be able to make Town Halls a foundational component of GRAPA member activity in 2009.
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