In this, our second session in the “beginners guide to revenue assurance” series, we will tackle one of the biggest and most pressing questions that managers have when it comes to revenue assurance: “Why should the manager choose to use revenue assurance at all?”

As we have already established, the telecom industry is unique. While other industries like banking, manufacturing and retail naturally seem to integrate the integrity of revenue streams into their operational models only telecoms seems to need to make a specialized function out of it.

I don’t know how many of you have been following politics in the US the past couple of months, but there is a new “revolution” happening called the Tea Party movement. Now, what the “Tea Party” stands for in the US is open to a lot of debate, and we certainly don’t want to talk about that here, but the concept that these people are building on is one that I think is very appropriate for revenue assurance and GRAPA.

When we started GRAPA back in 2007, there were many things that we thought would happen. However, one thing we were sure of was that the wire line incumbent telcos would not be high on our list of members.

It is not because we did not like them, or we did not want them to join, it was just that for many decades, the revenue assurance teams at the incumbent wire line telcos were the stalwart, hardcore, heavily experienced revenue assurance people who were out there showing everyone else how it should be done. The place of honor earned by many of the telco revenue assurance pioneers who started our profession within the halls of the monster incumbent telcos is well earned, without a doubt.

I recently had one of those “million dollar moments”. You know, when something happens that just makes you feel good about yourself. A moment that validates all the work, pain, and struggle that we go through and sometimes question; is it worth it? What happened?  Simple. We were putting on a Revenue Assurance training event for an incumbent wire line telco in South America.

Once again, we finished another great week of running our Core Xtreme Revenue Assurance training class in Cairo. With fifteen people from Africa and the Middle East, it was another fantastic session for everyone involved.

A I have mentioned before, it always amazes me how each time we teach this class, we end up focusing on different issues than in previous sessions. This week, it seemed that the biggest issues were surrounding issues of margin assurance, specifically in areas of content and interconnect margins, as well as the margins for BTS’s and MSCs. We also had some in-depth discussions about the roles of regulators, and their stake in revenue assurance issues (due in no doubt to the fact that we had three regulators attending the class).

As many of you know, I am American. And as many of you know, in America, we in general do not really appreciate what the rest of the world knows as football, or what North Americans call soccer. As most who know me personally know, I am not a typical American. For years,I have been an avid follower of “real football “ through my loyalty to a couple of German teams (Dortmund BVB and Bayern Munchen), both cities where I have lived and have family connections.

I again (happily) found myself providing training for another corporate, multi-national revenue assurance group. The room was full of revenue assurance managers and team members all working for the same corporate group, but traveling from a dozen different countries around the world. It fills me with a sense of respect and admiration where I see the incredible level of sophistication, dedication and enthusiasm that these professionals exhibit.

What do Ernst and Young, Protiviti, Infosys, PWC, Deloitte and IBM all have in common? Is it that:

a)      They are some of the largest, most successful consulting organizations in the world today?

b)      Each has a large, viable commitment to providing professional consulting services to telcos in the Internal Audit, Fraud and Revenue Assurance domains?

c)      Each has sent several of their consultants to GRAPA Certification and Training Events?

The answer is, all of the above.

Having goals is wonderful. That is how set up measures for ourselves and assess our progress. However, goal setting can create problems, especially when it comes to choosing role models. What happened to those who regarded Toyota as the example of how to run a car company? What about those who chose Tiger Woods as a role model for the professional and ethical behaviors of “winners”?  Yes, the business of setting goals and selecting a role model to follow can have some serious backlash.