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.

While mulling over the  problems common to revenue assurance professionals, it became clear to me that there was no real logical reason why we shouldn’t be able to establish a set of standards, structures, guidelines and knowledge sharing that would make it possible for the industry to attain a decent “economy of scale” for the investment in revenue assurance. While revenue assurance might be needed more in some places than others, the core challen
ge to the establishment of revenue assurance as a profession, was to develop a set of standards that can support everyone. This set of standards that would allow everyone to benefit from, the shared mission , goals and challenges, while at the same time recognizing and adapting to the differences that are the heart and soul of the industry.

The 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).

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.

Greetings 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.