I spent last week in South Africa with a team from Cell C and Virgin Mobile. They were a great group to work with and I was pleased to receive feedback from J. Walters, the Cell C team manager, not long after the training ended:

“Rob, on behalf of the entire Cell C and Virgin Mobile teams in South Africa, I would like to thank you for the past week of training, starting May 18. The week proved to be much more than just educational. All the topics
covered were highly relevant and interesting, and the sessions interactive and focused. On top of that, the presenter (ie: Me!) was very entertaining and kept the audience on their toes.
Well done and thank you Rob! We hope you enjoyed the training and that you
learned a bit about our company culture, our approach to revenue assurance and the challenges we face—that are probably relevant to the entire industry.
Good luck with GRAPA and keep those revenue assurance standards coming. We are looking forward to seeing you again in South Africa and please give our regards and thanks to Enid.”

A lot of thoughtful and insightful discussion took place during the Madrid training. Thinking about it now, one discussion has stuck in my mind, and it is about revenue assurance management and positioning. One of the attendees asked why traditional, long existing (usually incumbent) carriers were so far behind the rest of the world in revenue assurance. This really surprised me. I had never really considered this before, because the common perception has always been that these older, more traditional telecommunications companies were actually long time leaders in revenue assurance and technology.

Because they have been around for so long, we assume that older companies have already figured everything out, that it is only the newer firms who have to “re-invent the wheel,” and gradually find out what others already know. But after I thought about this for a while, I realized that this assumption might very well be wrong. The real leaders in the field of revenue assurance may not be who we think they are.

Here is the irony in assuming that those telecoms firms who have been around the longest are the ones who know the most about revenue assurance. When you look at who is really stretching the limits and pushing the boundaries of revenue assurance, you will find it is really companies in Africa and the Middle East.

The best way to demonstrate the effect of this is to ask who is suffering the most from the current economic crisis? It is the companies who have over-extended their credit, have inefficiencies in their operations and conservative or limited in their understanding of what cutting edge revenue assurance can contribute.

In contrast, who is weathering this economic climate the best? The companies that are leveraging what revenue assurance can do for them. It is telcos who are running lean operations, supported by revenue assurance staff able to pick up the slack, who are not just riding out the storm but thriving in it.

In many ways this validates GRAPA’s belief in revenue assurance, that it is a key strategic component to the success of any telecommunications company. Older, more traditional carriers tend to lack a centralized revenue assurance decision making chain. So you have to go through committees just to negotiate with different departments about who is responsible for assuring something. You have to be mindful of the internal politics and find out whose territory it is before you even discuss how it is going to be assured.

Leaner and meaner running telcos just hand the job to their revenue assurance staff and it gets taken care of. That is what revenue assurance is all about: maximizing the revenue your company makes by minimizing the risk of revenue loss, but also doing it in a way that is both time- and cost-efficient.

GRAPA’s three key principals are:

• Rationalization: making sure that every revenue assurance activity pays for itself.
• Consensus: ensuring that solutions fit into the operational model, avoiding territorial battles, politics and blame.
• Integrity: Performing all functions while maintaining and reinforcing the integrity of each of the operational units.

That is why GRAPA’s motto for revenue assurance is “The Profit in Keeping What’s Yours.” A company doesn’t actually make money until it successfully retains the revenue it collects, and rationalized revenue assurance ensures that the returns of assurance are always greater than the cost of controls.

Clearly this approach works. And this is why revenue assurance departments are springing up and flourishing all over Africa and the Middle East, while at the same time revenue assurance staff in other parts of the world are left sitting and scratching their heads, not understanding what’s going on.

I credit the Madrid trainees with a phenomenal and counter-intuitive insight with which I can only agree. I think the industry has had it backwards. If you want to see what revenue assurance is all about and what it can do, go to Africa or the Middle East. Look at what the smaller, leanly run telcos are doing—the start-ups and the companies that are forced to be creative in order to get on the map and stay there. They are the companies that are forging trails here. These companies embody what GRAPA is all about.

Yet another topic our training group spent hours talking about is 3G and GPRS. There is a lot of confusion surrounding these technologies. Carriers in North America are already claiming they are 4G—surprising because when done properly, full implementation of 3G can take years. There are also carriers who claim to be 3.5G and 3.75G. Claims like these make it difficult to determine how a technology is implemented and used, not least because of the sharp contrast with how it is marketed. This makes formulating a revenue assurance strategy challenging at best.

Often the network operations department does not tell the revenue assurance department what it is doing, and then marketing people start making claims that do not necessarily reflect the reality of the technology. In this gap between “creative” marketing and opaque operations, the revenue assurance staff gets left behind. The revenue assurance staff cannot be sure they are doing the right job of assuring billing systems when they are not kept abreast of the changes.

For example, two years ago, carriers swore they would not do CAMEL or pre-paid roaming because it was too expensive and technically infeasible. Now the majority of telecommunications companies use CAMEL. Because the shift occurred so quickly, the billing and assurance on this new system is extremely lax—creating a great deal of revenue risk. And when looking at 3G, the exposure is many times greater even than with CAMEL. It is hard to keep your finger on what is happening because it usually happens in the back room. Regardless it is clear that what gets laid out in published standards is not what is actually happening. This always leaves revenue assurance staff in a wait, see, then scramble situation.

Our mediation benchmark is complete. The Mediation Benchmark is a definitive study of how revenue assurance mediation is carried out around the world. The information collected is from one hundred GRAPA members spread across the world, contributing what they understand about their situation. From this benchmark, we get a snapshot of standard practice around the world. These benchmark studies are crucial to understanding the challenges, changes and disciplines of revenue assurance professionals.

In the past, only the GRAPA members who participated in the benchmark survey were provided with access to the results. However, this time we are distributing it to all GRAPA members (with a sample to non-members) so they can see what these benchmark results are all about.

Contribute to the Next Benchmark Study: Prepaid

Our next benchmark will be on Prepaid. We need two hundred GRAPA members to contribute. The more people who contribute, the more accurate our snapshot of current revenue assurance practice in the area of prepaid will be. In the future, we will move ahead and look at CAMEL and 3G. We are hoping that GRAPA members will be excited to participate and ultimately get information of high value.

I would say the biggest surprise coming out of the Madrid training is the growing importance of Revenue Maximization. Revenue assurance for churn, rate plan assurance and new product development seems to have become standard procedure for RA departments almost overnight. Everyone coming to the trainings agrees that most telcos are now intent on moving toward this kind of revenue assurance. This is quite a revelation, because a very short time ago people were insisting that these things would never be in the scope of revenue assurance.

Yet in such a brief period, things have turned around and revenue maximization is a discipline nobody questions. When we added this information into the standard last year, it was speculative. However, this new insight and shift in practice makes it clear that the scope of revenue assurance is growing rapidly. We are constantly running a race to ensure there are standards and procedures to deal with emerging trends, as well as the expanding scope of revenue assurance practice.

Back in March I talked about how 2009 would be the year of the revenue assurance professional. I talked about how revenue assurance professionals were becoming the ‘go to resource’ at telcos, evolving from an informally assembled group with disparate skill sets (Operations, IT, Marketing), to a staff that is focused, specialized, trained, professional and credible. GRAPA, and the standards we developed, was an integral part of that evolution.

As training continues in Madrid we are also developing even more exciting changes to the certification process. As you may already understand, our trainings are also a chance for us to consult with our membership. What has evolved from our discussions in class is a situation where individuals and small telecommunications companies will be able to tailor GRAPA’s curriculum to their own needs. Yet at the same time, the GRAPA program remains flexible enough that it can be adapted to the different ways multinational telecommunication companies want to train and certify their revenue assurance staff.

We are currently working with the revenue assurance departments of eight different multinational telecommunications groups around the world. For the first time, we are designing programs that certify the staff of these multinational companies across all of their countries. It is particularly gratifying that these companies are looking to GRAPA for standardized and specialized training. Some of these companies have even set a goal of training and certifying all their revenue assurance staff, in order to create standardization across the board and bring about greater synergies.

As we develop the new certification program, we will be considering the training needs of the very small telecommunications companies as well as these multinationals. We will be able to adjust and customize the program to accommodate the broader needs of very small one or two person revenue assurance departments, and offer very targeted training to the staff of companies with specialist certification in categories like Prepaid or Interconnect. These programs are currently being negotiated and we will be launching them in the second half of 2009.

Training in Madrid is moving into its second week, which always means some new faces. As always, trainees hail from around the globe: Sweden, Jordan, UAE and Ireland—just to name a few. Several have interesting stories regarding their travels to Madrid and you will be reading those soon. Rumours of ‘swine flu’ and other travel hindrances have certainly not dampened anyone’s resolve. Perhaps this is just an example of the tenacity and perseverance required to be a revenue assurance professional!

When you are in Spain, you have to experience the bullfights, and those who stayed over the weekend did just that. The tradition of bull fighting is a controversial subject, even among Spaniards, so it is no surprise that there was a mix of reactions depending on the attendee’s cultural background. But regardless of each person’s response, it was a chance to get outside the training room and spend some time together socially. Many used the free time to enjoy a host of other tourist attractions, some even had the chance to enjoy time with family and friends.

Exciting Firsts for GRAPA

For the attendees who are still here, this week of Manager Training is already their second week, which means certification is getting ever closer. And as people move towards accumulating 80 hours of class time after last week’s successful Core Training, we are looking forward to certifying three more GRAPA members as Masters of Revenue Assurance. Our trainees tend to come from different areas of the telecommunications world–from management to IT.

So it is even more exciting that we will be certifying our first revenue assurance professional in Information Technology (IT) as well as our first revenue assurance consultant. I think it is significant that this is the first time our Manager Class is larger than the first week’s core training. That more people are seeking this type of advanced training and high-level certification indicates a pent up desire for revenue assurance professionals to be viewed with ever greater credibility and stature.

In the previous post I talked about the "un-conferences " we are thinking of holding. While that is a big and exciting thing, a more fundamental shift is occurring with development of a new GRAPA certification program. Specialist certificates will now be awarded for two to three day trainings in specific functions and technologies such as post-paid, pre-paid, interconnect, roaming, churn management, margin assurance, new product development assurance, 3G and WiMAX. We have talked to a lot of people and found that though they want certification, it is difficult to pack it all into one time frame. Revenue Assurance Professionals are busy people after all!

So in response we are going to segment things down so GRAPA members can get certificates in shorter spurts, yet move towards full certification over time.One of those existing full certifications is the Certified Master of Revenue Assurance Management (CM-RAM), and we will be unveiling others for those who specialize in Forensics, Operations, Revenue Optimization, Revenue Maximization, Fraud Management and IT. These different Master Certifications allow us to recognize and help support professionals in the many different specialized areas in which they work.

This change in certification structure is a huge challenge for us, but people we have talked to seem very excited about the approach. In the near future we will also offer a major new churn curriculum, as well as certifications for Internal Auditors and Regulator Compliance, to be taught over several days. We will be offering these new courses and certification trainings around the conference event.

And if we were not convinced already about this change, being here in Madrid and hearing our attendees talk about assuring next generation technologies  like 3G would be enough to change our minds.

With the Madrid training underway, we’re already looking forward to the upcoming Cairo and Kuala Lumpur trainings as well as some changes for the second half
of the year. We’ve even put up a tentative calendar for dates and regions in 2010.

For the next half of the year, we’re looking at holding ‘un-conferences’; no vendors, no booths–just training and information. Unusual, we know. At these regional events we’ll be having vigorous discussions of GRAPA issues in town-hall style meetings, in particular about how to improve the professional standing of RA professionals across the specific region.

The first of these regional meetings will be held in São Paulo, Brazil. For that event we’ll be offering translation in English and Spanish. This will be a chance especially for our Spanish speaking membership to get together. With GRAPA membership approaching 2500, we’re becoming a true force, so we can start really moving forward with some initiatives.

Miami may be the location for the U.S. conference.  We’re probably also going to be in Capetown, South Africa and we’ll consider doing Nairobi and Dubai possibly towards late autumn. We have a minimum number of people we need to register for these venues, otherwise they cease to be viable. GRAPA is non-profit and we won’t have commercial backing, so we need people to commit if there’s interest. Learn about upcoming events at RAA Upcoming Events

Greetings from the Madrid GRAPA Certification Event. Myself and the attendees were greeted by beautiful weather; warm, but not too warm. We have just completed Day Two of our training schedule, where we touched on Network Operations, Billing Architectures, and Controls.

Photo Luis Brito

In their free time the participants are enjoying Madrid. This is the start of spring bull fight season, so a lot of people from the training are going to the bull fights. We have watched a parade going into the arena with lots of pageantry; men on horseback and women in carriages in beautiful Spanish traditional costume. Our trainees are also enjoying the shopping; clothing, beautiful textiles, electronics and souvenirs.

The training is going really well and we have people who are looking forward to getting certified. There is a little bit of good-natured complaining though, due to the amount of information that gets packed into each day, and because the tests are pretty challenging.

The participants reflect out global membership. We have a good mix of people from around the world: Sweden, Ireland, Brazil, Lithuania, Spain, Kuwait, Nigeria and Uganda. We will likely be coming back to Madrid, if only because our surveys show that Madrid is the #1 choice for training locations.