Recently, the 500th student went through GRAPA Revenue Assurance Academy core training and this milestone inspired some reflection. Certain myths about the function of revenue assurance continue to prevail. I would like to open up the dialog in an effort to demystify  the twelve most common myths of revenue assurance.

Myth 1:

Recently, the 500th student went through GRAPA Revenue Assurance Academy core training. Reaching this momentous milestone inspires some reflection.

In meeting revenue assurance professionals from China, South East Asia, Australia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Africa, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Chicago a few things have become apparent:

• The practice of revenue assurance is moving in a consistent direction no matter where you go, being helped to no small degree by the GRAPA standards and other consensus building activities
• Revenue assurance professionals are alike wherever they practice. They are highly intelligent, risk takers, good negotiators, take pride in their work and work tirelessly and diligently.

It has become the nature of telecommunications where accelerated development and deployment of a constant stream of new products and technologies has become de rigueur. And more often than not, it is the revenue assurance (RA) professionals who end up dealing with the hard and unglamorous work of actually monetizing these offerings and ensuring revenue maximization. This is already happening with GPRS, 3G, WiMAX, content delivery, and any number of other new business models that have sprung up just in the past few years. As if that wasn’t enough, African and Middle Eastern carriers are now attaching billing functions to the radio side of the network.