The more things change, the more they remain the same. That is an old saying that keeps proving itself to be true, and nowhere do we see more change than in the telecoms and revenue assurance area. Since GRAPA’s founding in 2007 there have been several major revolutions in the practice of revenue assurance. We have seen revenue assurance move up in status and importance in many organizations around the world. We have seen revenue assurance teams grow quite rapidly in most telcos. We have seen the role of revenue assurance expand to include dozens of new domains and areas as CFO’s and CEO’s have come to appreciate the real value that revenue assurance can deliver to the bottom and top line of the company’s financial statements.

We have even seen the revenue assurance professional move up to an almost C-level type standing in some of the more progressive and innovative telecoms. So, as the president of GRAPA, I have to ask myself a very serious question. Where do we go from here? How can we, at GRAPA continue to support the growth and increase in status of the revenue assurance professional, and how can we get even more creative in figuring out ways to help expand the reach of revenue assurance, as well as the effect?

I cannot tell you the complete answer to this question, because I just do not know. But I do know that we are redoubling our efforts in several areas. There seems to be a pattern emerging that we are going to try to develop, and that is in the area of specializations.

Clearly revenue assurance has greatly increased in scope over the past few years. Revenue assurance professionals are working less on “leakage” and more on “top line revenue delivery” as we get better at the fundamentals of our craft. Unmistakably, the skills and knowledge developed while securing revenue streams is not the end of the value delivered, but only the beginning. By leveraging, good core understanding of telco technologies, operations and revenue management activities, revenue assurance professionals are expanding and applying their knowledge in a myriad of other arenas.

What is beginning to emerge, I suspect, is a number of different specialized revenue assurance clusters which fall under the general heading of Revenue Assurance. Some of the specializations include the following:

Margin Assurance: (Revenue Optimization)

Of interest most often to CFO’s, controllers and heads of operational units or lines of business. Margin assurance focuses on ways to take an existing line of business, product line or revenue producing assets like Switches and BTS’s and increase their profitability by changing the way they are managed or offered to customers. We have seen a large surge of interest in these areas in recent months, and an entire “sub category” of specialized terminology, tools and approaches are being developed to make it easier, faster and more dependable as an approach.

Market Assurance (Revenue Driven Marketing)

While everyone will tell you that marketing is all about increasing revenues, the reality is, that in the end, the revenues they focus on tend to be only those measured in the short term, and under the most strained of interpretation. The dream of almost every CFO/CEO team is to come up with a way to impose clear financial controls on the marketing process without stifling their creativity and effectiveness. The Market Assurance methodology that is emerging offers a lot of promise to financial managers in this regard. By combining the revenue assurance principles of rationalization and integrity to the marketing process, and by supporting it with an innovative new “revenue based control and alarm” structure, many CFO’s and marketing teams, are exploring these new wrinkles in the practice of revenue assurance.

Revenue Management (Integrated Revenue Stream Management)

While managers around the world have appreciated the results that revenue assurance professionals have been able to deliver to their organizations, many realize that what is really needed is to clean up and fix the revenue streams themselves, eliminating the need for a revenue assurance function in many areas. While the wholesale application of revenue management disciplines often meets with unanticipated problems and flaws, the strategic implementation of a revenue management approach can greatly decrease the cost of managing revenues, while containing risks at the same time. What we see is an emerging group of revenue management specialists who work with the results of revenue assurance analysis and turn those results into effective and well run revenue streams.

Traditional Revenue Assurance (The Identification, Quantification, Reporting and Addressing of Risk to Revenue)

While the new and exciting “spin offs” of the core revenue assurance function will undoubtedly continue to expand, the same tried and true core revenue assurance functions will continue to play a key role in telecoms. The ability to deploy teams of experts with the ability to analyze, diagnose, recommend and operationalize corrections and controls across the full range of telco revenue operations is a core skill that will not be leaving us for some time to come.

Revenue Engineering (Using RA to Develop and Integrate New Products, New Services and New Technologies)

the most advanced, and most powerful of the new emerging revenue assurance disciplines is revenue engineering. Revenue engineering is the science of applying the principles of revenue assurance (margin optimization, market assurance, revenue management, and revenue assurance) and losing their focus on the challenges of new product development, new service line development and the assurance of new technologies brought into the telco. What innovative companies are learning is that the application of core revenue assurance principles can do a lot more than simply “protect revenue streams”. What revenue engineering shows is that the proactive application of these principles can actually help to drive the entire value creation process, the real heart of the telco innovation engine.

Revenue Governance – (Unified Framework for the Management of all Revenue Related Functions)

What is also badly needed, and quickly emerging, is a framework for the governance of all of these different functions within the tactical, operational environment of the telco. Revenue governance prescribes techniques and guidelines for the allocation of responsibility for the different risk and issues facing telecoms revenue management, including the coordination of efforts, and setting of operational boundaries between internal audit, revenue assurance, fraud management , security, revenue engineering, revenue optimization and revenue management. The upcoming revenue governance framework promises to simplify and organize the telcos management of this entire operational space.

Over the next few months, I hope to see the GRAPA organization further develop and enrich these areas, and provide members with options for training and certification in one, or all of them.

As always, the only way that GRAPA will be successful, is if you, the membership , participate in this process. In the near future you will be seeing many blogs, webinars, surveys and other ways get feedback from our members about these approaches. Please feel free to participate, and to tell us what you really think.

Well, that’s about enough for today. Until next week, this is Rob Mattison saying … “be safe”.…

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.

I was a bit surprised last week when I had the faculty team assemble a study to review the GRAPA memberships and training attendance demographics. Several patterns emerged, but one of the most striking was the high number of consulting organizations filling the seats in GRAPA training events.

I was not surprised that consultants are involved in GRAPA. Many of the consulting firms that I mentioned have been staunch supporters of GRAPA from the beginning. Consultants fill many of the key roles on GRAPA committees, and also provide strong support for the GRAPA standards in the real world. However, what surprised me were the numbers of consultants getting certified is growing, exponentially.

Yes, consultants are coming to learn that GRAPA makes sense for them as well. Being a curious and questioning kind of guy, the first thing that I wanted to understand is why? Why have consultants started to flock to the GRAPA training and certification events?

I think there are several reasons for this. First, we have started to hear of more and more carriers placing a requirement, or at least a preference for GRAPA certification as a criterion for the assessment of job candidates. This makes sense when you think about it. With over 3500 copies of the GRAPA standards downloaded around the world, it is natural that carriers would take the next step, and ask that consultants conform to the same standards that they are practice.

Obviously, once a revenue assurance manager, CFO or auditor recognizes the value of the approach, it is simply the next step to prefer vendors who see things the same way. But, while this tendency certainly helps to explain the phenomena, I think there is even more to it than that.

There really is only one reason for any consulting company to do anything–to gain a competitive advantage. Business in general, and consulting more specifically, is an intensely competitive, highly leveraged activity. Consultants are in a constant state of  re-inventing themselves to get an edge on the competition, re-educating themselves, trying to get the advantage through advanced knowledge and skills, re-evaluating themselves and constantly working to improve their team’s and their own approaches any way they can.

Sounds exhausting, right? I worked for many companies as a Revenue Assurance and Business Intelligence practice leader for many years, and I assure you, it is all that and more. Why then, should consultants develop a preference for GRAPA and the GRAPA standards? Well actually, there are quite a few reasons.

Consultants, just like carriers, need to be concerned about whether their teams have the skills and knowledge needed to do the job and the GRAPA Body of Knowledge (an industry wide, consensus based definition of scopes) makes it easy for consulting companies to benchmark and assess their own people. The GRAPA Body of Knowledge provides a key guideline that everyone can use.

Once the Body of Knowledge was established, it was possible to put together a comprehensive Testing and Certification program. The GRAPA Training, Testing and Certification program is the largest, most pervasive and most respected revenue assurance, telecom fraud and telecom internal audit specific program in the world, as evidenced by the hundreds of people that have certified, or are in the process of certification.

But the benefit GRAPA offers consultants does not end there. In addition to the help GRAPA provides in the assessment and credentialization of their staffs, GRAPA’s industry  Practices (Principles, Methodologies and Standard Controls Based Assurance) make it easy for consulting companies to quickly step into complex situations, and conduct insightful and effective analysis and solution design, with a minimum of fuss and “start up time”. The GRAPA standards provide a common frame of reference, vocabulary and approach making it easy for consultants to step deliver value quickly and effectively.

But I think the real reason that consulting companies are finding lots of reasons to love GRAPA, is the GRAPA core philosophy. GRAPA believes and promotes that the most valuable asset  a company can have, and the best way to solve any problem is through the professionalism of the revenue assurance professionals themselves.

It is the revenue assurance professionals themselves that make the difference in any revenue assurance engagement (a philosophy that aligns perfectly with what consulting companies are selling…the professionalism of their consultants). The only real surprise is that so many consulting companies have not taken advantage of GRAPA. But that’s okay. I’m not worried. The momentum that GRAPA has established is clear. They may not be in our classrooms and taken testing yet, but they will be, or they may have to get out of the telecom business altogether.

Well, I think that’s enough for this week. Until next time, this is Rob Mattison saying. … be safe….

With the beginning of a fresh new year, we are seeing a lot of new exciting growth for GRAPA and for revenue assurance professionals around the world.

Revenue Assurance Professional Staffs Growing At Astronomical Rate

The biggest single landmark for revenue assurance has been the almost continuous growth in the size of revenue assurance departments around the world. As the latest generation of entrant telcos staff up, and as companies continue to see the incredible benefits of revenue protection, risk amelioration and new product development support that professional revenue assurance teams can offer, CFOs around the world are saying, “I need more people to do this job”.

Scope of Revenue Assurance Expanding and Maturing

While it is great to see the increased numbers of revenue assurance professionals, more significant is that these teams continue to see an expansion in the scope of what the revenue assurance professional is expected to do. New product development support, margin and market assurance, network asset utilization maximization: the list continually expands as companies (and revenue assurance professionals themselves) become more systematic and mature in their approach to the biggest problems telcos face.

Formalization of Roles and Responsibilities Continues

GRAPA is not standing at the sidelines during these exciting and critical times. We continue to work aggressively with members from around the world to understand better what people are doing, how they do it, and how we can help formally define these functions, roles and responsibilities and integrate them into our standards/procedures and standard controls libraries.

New Certification Programs For 2010

While the certification program in 2009 was a huge success, (much better than expected), there are several positive suggestions for critical improvements that we need to make. The biggest change is the use of the term “Bachelors”. Our piloted 40-hour programs will no longer include the word “bachelors”, but there will be no change to the critical aspects of market value of the certification. At the same time, we will discontinue a few that did not see a lot of demand, and we will submit a final report to the membership for ratification and formalization.

New Telco Fraud Officer Program Launched

While the progress of revenue assurance has been phenomenal, feedback from the membership indicates a serious fraud management training and certification program is badly needed. Most telcos face a huge risk of fraud, and while good revenue assurance practices can help, ultimately, the fraud management job is much bigger and quite different in many key areas. 2010 will see the launch of our new Telco Fraud Officer initiative, geared towards the aggressive, systematic and comprehensive addressing of this much-needed addition to the revenue assurance arsenal.

Standards and Benchmarks Work Continues

We know the real value and core of the service GRAPA delivers is our ability to poll the membership, gather meaningful, accurate and independent information about how things can and should be done, and report that information back to you. Our standards and benchmarking committees continue to work at this critical job, and the information continues to be gathered and distributed.

Social Networking Programs

One of the big surprises for 2009 was the success of several of our social networking efforts. The GRAPA Blogs (English and Spanish Language), podcasts, newsletters (Consensus and Voices) and the LinkedIn group are a huge success. If you have not looked at these yet, try them. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Overall, 2009 was a fantastic year, and 2010 promises to be a true adventure in terms of the places we will be going. Stay tuned!

Until later, this is Rob Mattison, President of GRAPA wishing you a Happy New Year.

Viva Las Vegas – Revenue Assurance Las Vegas Style

R Mattison’s Podcast

As we come to the end of yet another great year, it seems appropriate to sit back and reflect on what GRAPA have accomplished and what is in store for the next twelve months. Our last event of the year was I believe, at the most appropriate place I could imagine for a revenue assurance class–beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada.

What, you may ask, Las Vegas? Sin city? How does that rank as an appropriate location for a meeting of revenue assurance professionals? Take a moment, and think again, about exactly what revenue assurance and telecommunications is all about. If you believe that revenue assurance is a staid, conservative financial and janitorial function or revenue assurance is about is being conservative, tedious, boring and uninteresting and most critically eliminating risk, then you are right, Las Vegas should be the last stop on the revenue assurance training tour.

However, if you believe, as I do, that revenue assurance is not about eliminating risk, but learning how to mitigate that risk, then Las Vegas suddenly looks different, doesn’t it? Where better to have a serious discussion about risk taking then the city of Las Vegas?

Interestingly enough, our time in Las Vegas coincided with several other events. (No, GRAPA training was not the biggest event of the season.) Actually, while the training went on, we also saw glimpses of the Las Vegas marathon and the National Finals Rodeo competition. It was quite an interesting bunch. But, venue and environment not withstanding, the real action was neither out on the “strip” nor in the casinos. No, the real rousing good time was right inside of our classrooms.

We had quite a great assortment of students in this class. We hosted regulators from Haiti and the US, consultants from Ericsson, Ernst and Young, and several other firms, a couple of CFO’s, and revenue assurance professionals from cable, VOIP and wireless telcos in Africa, Latin America and the US. As you might imagine, with such a diverse group of people, we had many things to talk about, and many new insights to share.

If you would ask me to describe this last event of 2009 with one word, I would have to say exciting! Maybe it was the hotel (the Monte Carlo hotel was very nice, possibly the best venue we ever had for our events). Maybe if was the environment, being in the midst of all of that positive energy; marathon runners, rodeo cowboys and the crowds of people out to have a good time. Certainly, a big part of it was the people themselves. This group of people just seemed to click–identify, and communicate with each other in a way that was truly gratifying to witness and participate in.

While we reviewed the usual subjects and topics, the greatest emphasis and interest focused on the “leading edge” role that the revenue assurance teams are playing in more and more telcos. What we found, across the board, was that every telco represented was:

a) Investing heavily in new technology and new product and service offerings.

b) Is experimenting heavily with newer, riskier and more creative service offerings

In other words, the real telco operations model that we talk about and teach about in the class is alive, well and thriving everywhere you turn. It was amazing to see that the excitement that people had carried over from the classroom discussions to the breaks, lunch and the after class over dinners.

By Friday I was sure of one thing, that the new insights, positive energy and empowerment that the students felt would be creating big changes in the way their companies will perform in 2010, and that revenue assurance people will be a big part, and often a driving force in that process. I cannot think of a better or more appropriate way to put a cap on our 2009 year.

Consider how the year started with the doom and gloom that typified that “great crash” of 2008/2009. Now look at exactly how empowered the majority of the telcos are, and how critical the role of revenue assurance is going to be to the success of these companies in 2010. It is actually quite awe inspiring and humbling to see.

With this, our last blog and podcast of 2009, I will end on that note–a note of enthusiasm and gratitude to all of the GRAPA members that have helped us succeed in 2009, and awe and excitement about just how incredible 2010 is going to be for all of us. We will end this particular podcast, as we started it, with a short sound clip of the entire Las Vegas Revenue Assurance Choir, singing their rendition of VIVA Las Vegas.

Until next year, this is Rob Mattison saying … have a great holiday season and …. be safe.

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.

That’s why, it’s our hope that you find our efforts to create these standards interesting, informative and helpful in your understanding of Telco operations. Your appreciation for the incredibly complex and interesting job of revenue assurance, and in the creation, staffing and training of your own revenue assurance team is why we do what we do.

As with all of these efforts, the standards that the committees have developed are considered a “work in progeerss” rather than a finished product. The teams and individuals involved in the creation of these standards, and in the practice of revenue assurance around the world, work everyday to increase, modify, perfect and impprove the definition of revenue assurance and its many arts and skills.

With that said, I feel our commitment is not to consider the publication of these standards as the end of a process, but more as the beginning of the real work. Now that the standards have been formalized and approved, it will be possible for people to examine them, and the revenue assurance job itself, with a level of scrutiny not before possible.
Will these standards be the final word in revenue assurance? Absolutely not. But we hope they represent a really good start on the road.
-Rob
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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).

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
website and web designer developer
Chicago Medical Spa for Botox and Smart Liposuction
Chicagoland Smart Lipo
Egg Donor Network in Chicago
Naperville Web Designer
Raleigh Graphic and Web Designer
Revenue Assurance Training
Revenue Assurance Blog and Training
Weightloss and Weight Loss program in Chicago
Chicago Dental Lab
Dr Conrad Magno Naperville Dentist Office
Coffee Shop in Warrenville Illinois
Sculpture in Naperville Illinois
Chicago Criminal Defense Attorney
Chicago Shares and Cares Vouchers
Chicago Trial Lawyer Office
Dorris Clark Home Decorations
Naperville Business Directory
Chicago Door Replacement
Chicagoland and Naperville Custom Doors