Have you looked at any of the recent agendas for “Revenue Assurance” conferences around the world? Have you seen any of the vendor’s websites, or the latest marketing programs and promotions for consulting firms, software vendors and systems integrators? If you have, then you may be like me, just a bit confused.

It seems my friends, that telecommunications revenue assurances out of fashion. It has lost its appeal. It is old fashioned and out of style. While most conferences and software/hardware vendors and consultants continue to give a respectful “nod” to the term revenue assurance, many seem to believe revenue assurance is not important anymore.

But don’t panic folks. These vendors and speakers have not decided to go bankrupt and get out of the business. Instead, what they are doing, is what they have always done. They are redirecting their efforts, re-branding their approaches and trying to breathe some new life into their marketing and sales efforts. Do not get me wrong. Rebirth and reinventing yourself is an absolutely good thing. It is the lifeblood of our industry, above any other, and as such, it is a painful, but necessary process. On the other hand, this need to “reinvent oneself” does not mean that we should just abandon everything we have learned, and do and run, helter-skelter into new and random directions.

What we are witnessing in the revenue assurance marketplace today, is a process I like to refer to as Revenue Mania. This process occurs in our industry every three or four years. Vendors, carriers, professionals and companies all take a look at themselves and realize, “something’s not right here”.

“The stuff we have been buying, the things that consultants and vendors have been selling us are not working. We need a fresh approach to the problems we are facing.” In addition to this ‘wake up call’, we also have the fact that in the telecoms industry three years is like several generations of operational change. We are not the industry we were three years ago, and the old ways of looking at things are not going to cut it anymore. And so, is born, Revenue Mania.

So what is Revenue Mania. I always like to begin with looking up words in the dictionary, in order to get my thinking clear. What is mania? The dictionary describes mania as:

1 An. excessively intense enthusiasm, interest, or desire; a craze: a mania for neatness.

2 A. manifestation of a mental disorder, characterized by profuse and rapidly changing ideas.

3. Violent abnormal behavior, also known as insanity.

(reference: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/mania)

That certainly helps us to put this whole thing into context. Yes, I absolutely believe that Revenue Mania is upon us. Vendors, consultants and conferences are “reinventing” revenue assurance (or what we used to call revenue assurance) in literally dozens of different ways.

• However, what “flavor” of mania are each of these sources promoting?
• Are the changes in direction a healthy ‘enthusiasm’ for improvement?
• Do they reflect an attempt to improve and build upon what worked in the past?

Alternatively, do they represent the more malignant form of mania. Just pure insanity. A mad rush to redefine yourself in whatever way will help you get ahead with no thought for consequences.

Are there are vendors and consultants out there that are making an attempt to put shiny new faces on many of the same old stories and approaches? Is someone trying to convince people that the same old, tired, illogical and unfounded approaches will work, if only we call them by different names? Are there vendors and speakers whose efforts amount to nothing more than the magician’s acts of “misdirection”?

Is there an attempt to “get out of the revenue assurance business”, by disguising it and saying that it has nothing to do with revenue or assurance, while it is exactly what revenue assurance is all about, simply because that is what they are trying to sell this week?

Are there speakers, vendors and thought leaders, who make a concerted effort to help “keep up” with the incredible rate of change in telecoms and are sincerely trying to “steer” the telecoms revenue management profession to its next ‘level of excellence?’

If you look at the many different “faces” that the media and vendors, speakers and thought leaders are putting onto the telecoms revenue landscape, you can see examples of all of them.

Allow me to share my observations on some of the patterns that I see.

Software Mania

There are the “good old boys” of revenue assurance. These guys are not just “out of touch” with change, they are actually moving backwards in time. These alleged “thought leaders” are still arguing about CDRs, KPI’s and debating about how to justify “software”. Their vision of the role of the revenue assurance professional is to justify poor software decisions made by others. Come on guys. The game is over. Revenue assurance is not about, has never been about , and will never be about software. Software is a tool that can help the revenue assurance professional and that is all.

Obsessive Neat Freaks

These wearers of the “old school tie” still believe that the absolute and annihilationof leakage and risk is the only acceptable role of revenue assurance. These guys have not yet clued into what GRAPA has been realizing for years. The telecoms industry tthrives on risk, and risk containment in a cost effective (Rationalization principle), Team Oriented (Consensus Principle) and Accurate and reliable (Integrity Principle) environment is the way that revenue assurance can actually add serious value to the process. If you want to attain zero tolerance get into the banking business.

Money Mania

These are new school groups trying to say that revenue assurance is not about revenue, it’s about anything financial. These groups will tell you that the real role of revenue assurance is to assure accounting systems, balance general ledgers, manage inventories and assure all sorts of financial transactions.

Now here we have a case where the Mania moguls may be onto something. Increasingly, revenue assurance professionals are being called upon to expand their horizons into more and more areas related to “margins” and “profits”, and I cannot argue that the directional drift this represents is probably a “for real” expansion of revenue assurance roles.

However, if this “growth horizon” is going to be managed in a way that enhances careers and adds value to the telco, it must be based upon the skills, staff, direction and efforts of the telco’s own revenue assurance staff, not a group of “cowboys” who claim “it’s easy, anyone can do it”.

(The GRAPA standards focus on Margin assurance – the assurance of different Lines of Business (interconnect, roaming, content), different asset categories (Switches, MSCs, BTSs) and promotions are good examples of an approach to issues that builds upon established foundations).

RA is CRM

By far, the most ludicrous of the pretenders to the “future vision” for revenue assurance are the ‘Revenue Assurance is really about customer satisfaction school. Customer Relationship Management, customer satisfaction and the role of customer in the entire _ telecom mix has been a hotbed of controversy for over 100 years. Unfortunately, for the Revenue Assurance “thought leaders” who are trying to steer the bus in this direction, the CRM Mania fever has cycled through telecoms every 5 years like the re-appearance of the 7 year locust.

I predict that the CRM invasion will proceed, like all locust invasions have in the past. It will come, attack, leave a path of devastation in its way, (wasted millions of dollars on CRM software, and thousands of hours of consultants and employees time) and then go back underground for another half-a-decade leaving no discernible improvement in its wake.

(This is not to say that there is No Value in some parts of the story that these advocates tell. See the GRAPA standards, or upcoming blogs and training and certification programs regarding Market Assurance, New Product Assurance and Revenue Engineering for more information about a proactive, progressive and consistent approach to these problems.)

Revenue Management

By far the most serious contenders among those with a clear, legitimate claim at moving revenue assurance forward, are the “revenue management” school. These people have begun to coin the term “revenue management” to represent approaches to revenue assurance that build upon past successes, while attempting to enhance the effectiveness to the business by changing fundamental parts.

In future blogs, we will continue in our exploration of these different issues, and we will continue to question and analyze the emerging worlds of “revenue mania” in all of its different forms. The real key, I believe, for the revenue assurance professional, is to begin to take a much more analytical and critical approach to their acceptance and advocacy of this insane mix of “flavors” or revenue assurance that is being offered by the current market. Indeed, the insanity that is represented by the many different approaches being advocated today in our industry while different than the insanity being promoted 2 years ago, it is incredibly consistent in its diversity.

The bottom line is, that if you are a revenue assurance professional, you cannot afford to simply “sign up” to any oneapproach or vendor solution. You need to analyze each product, approach and solution against the backdrop of your own experience, the needs of your organization and your own career goals, and make a decision based upon your own best judgment (not anyone else’s).

And that, ladies and gentlemen is the core of what GRAPA is all about. We do not exist to push, promote or advocate any approach or belief. Our job is to collect information about how professionals are actually doing their jobs, turn those practices into standards which can be reviewed, modified, ratified and published and then teach those ratified approaches to all who wish to learn.

If today’s “state of the industry” is any indication, we here at GRAPA will be busy for some time to come, analyzing, reporting and communicating back to our members as the “standard practices” of revenue assurance professionals continues to morph.

Well, that’s enough for today, until next time, this is Rob Mattison saying… be safe….

One of the most exciting and challenging things about the revenue assurance world as we evolve as professionals, is how the scope of our responsibilities continues to expand. Few revenue assurance professionals do not understand the process of tracking and assuring the integrity of a CDR. But many of us are finding that following CDRs is a small part of the job.

Case in point is assuring sales channels. Not long ago people would tell you revenue assurance had no business poking around in the sales channel area. Indeed, Sales Managers did not want anyone else looking “under the covers” of their operations, and for many organizations accounting and internal audit was assumed to be “in control” of those areas.

Unfortunately, what happened to a lot of telcos was…well, what always happens. New sales channels sprang up overnight. Instead of managing one internal sales force, the telco now must manage dozens of teams along with partners, brokers, agents, pseudo-employees and mega channel partnerships. Creative, cost effective and incredibly complicated sales tracking and compensation plans were suddenly created.

In the wake of all of this change came leakage and fraud. In no time, telcos inadvertently invented dozens of ways to lose revenue, use sales tracking to give false information, give sales credit where it wasn’t earned and most critically, to fail to accurately and honestly report revenues.

When this happened, it wasn’t long before the CFOs came to realize the skills and capabilities of the revenue assurance team were the best available to address these issues. And so the “morphing” of the definition of revenue assurance began.

Early RA Efforts in Sales Channel Assurance

The first documented cases of allocating the responsibility for “leakage” in sales channels can be found in the South East Asian carriers. In these markets, the rapid expansion of the role of sales channels to fuel prepaid became the impetus for change. Over the past decade, the trend has grown to where the majority of telcos now include “sales channel assurance” as at least a part of the scope of the revenue assurance team.

Given that sales channel assurance has worked its way into the charter of many revenue assurance groups, what are the details behind it? Luckily, the GRAPA standards spell out the principles and approaches key to sales channel assurance and the GRAPA certification training classes review the standard controls and assurance points in detail. For those who have not had the chance to review those standards, or take the training, we will provide an overview here.

Assurance of Sales Channels – Domain Fit

The first issue for the revenue assurance professional faced with the job of sales channel assurance is to identify which domain it falls under. This is critical, because only by mapping a situation to our standards and body of knowledge can the revenue assurance professional gain any leverage or support for the areas they cover.

When you determine which domains a problem touches, you gain access to the standard controls, approaches, benchmarks and knowledge other revenue assurance professionals have gathered over time. Under the GRAPA standards, sales channel assurance can be positioned in several ways.

First – Channel Assurance is one of the four major domains required to assure the prepaid line of business. It is impossible to assure prepaid billing systems and the entire Prepaid LOB without assuring the company that the sales channels are tight, leak proof and feeding the voucher management system with integrity.

Second – Sales channel assurance fits under the subject of CRM assurance and assuring the different CRM value chains:

a) Sales

b) Customer Service

c) Marketing

Either way, sales channel assurance is critical, and definitely “in scope” according to the standards. When is the assurance of channels part of the charter of the revenue assurance group?  As for all revenue assurance domains, the domain comes “in scope” when:

a)      Management identifies it as a domain of concern.

b)      The operational team invites the revenue assurance team to help.

c)      The losses or risk of loss become pronounced.

When the domain is added to the revenue assurance group’s charter the revenue assurance manager must:

a)      Perform an initial forensic analysis of the domain to rationalize and quantify the extent and nature of the revenue risk and loss.

b)      Prepare a set of recommendations and relate them to specific quantified risk areas.

c)      Review the recommendations with top management and the operational teams concerned.

d)      Implement actions based on management decisions.

Channel Assurance – Objectives

What are we supposed to accomplish when we assure this area? After all, there are no CDRs in a sales channel. What leakage are we trying to address? Experience has shown that when a CFO wants the revenue assurance team to “assure” a sales area, they have some specific problems in mind.

The nature of revenue leakage and revenue loss protection when sales channels are involved has taken a couple of major forms:

1. Inventory and “virtual inventory” related losses – When top-ups and sim cards are not adequately accounted for (revenue producing assets are mismanaged, resulting in the false accounting of revenues, or the “giving away” of services) There are three operational sub-domains to consider in these cases:
   1. Outbound Asset Management Failure – Faults in the process of accounting for the creation and delivery of revenue generating assets (virtual and physical) to the point of sale.
   2. Boundary/Exchange Failure – Fraud or error in execution of exchanges of value with sales persons – when sales channels (internal and external) accept responsibility for revenue producing assets, and they are not accounted for properly.
   3. Inbound – Accounting Failure – Failure to get funds collected properly allocated to the Account Management System and the bank account.
2. Post sales accounting – Inaccurate sales reporting/commission pay out – When the payment of commissions or the allocation of sales credit becomes part of the overall profitability of a service area, then the accuracy of the sales tracking and commission payment domains fall under the charter of revenue assurance as well.

How is this Revenue Assurance?

So now we get to the heart of the controversy for some carriers and CFO’s. How can we justify the inclusion of the assurance of these areas as part of the mission of revenue assurance? After all, these are not direct revenue issues are they? At this point, we are forced to go back to some basic definition of revenue. Under the “Old School” Revenue Assurance definitions the term revenue is used to refer to the monies received for the delivery of a service. Revenue is the money we receive from the customer.

In the good old days of telecoms, when all revenues were postpaid, we provided a service to the customer, we collected CDRs that we used to make a bill, and the customer paid us. In this revenue management chain scenario, revenue assurance was ensuring the CDRs are collected, processed, billed and monies collected from the customer.

The Prepaid “Spin” On The Definition Of Revenue

In the modern telecommunications world, revenue is not that simple to understand. In a large number of carriers, the primary form of business is not postpaid but prepaid. In the prepaid world, monies are collected far in advance of service delivery.

I get client money and they receive a “token in exchange” (i.e.: a top-up card), that is used to top up their online account. When they use the service, an amount is deducted from the account management system. In the prepaid world, in the “purist” sense, revenue assurance is a very trivial process, making sure the account management system decrements the balance correctly. There is no long revenue stream or CDRs, just a brief, instantaneous online transaction. That should mean the revenue assurance job is small and specific. However, it is not that simple.

In the postpaid world, losing money because you didn’t collect from the customer reduces your company’s revenues. Errors in collections come “out” of the revenues counted. Because of that, most people consider the job of revenue assurance to be the assurance of the real revenues, not the legalistic definition of revenue under accounting principles. Whether I am worrying about the “watering down” of my full revenue realized from a failure to collect from a postpaid customer, or a breakdown in the collection of prepaid monies, it amounts to the same thing.

The question is not whether this is a problem, nor is the question whether this has a negative impact on revenues. The question is whether the CFO should include that within the scope of revenue assurance, and is a decision they need to make based upon need, skills and the depth and breadth of the problem.

Once that decision is made, it means revenue assurance must concern itself with the integrity of the process of getting the money from the customer and getting it into the Account Management Systems intact as well as making sure  the “moment of truth” that occurs at the point of revenue recognition is accurate.

And so the “channel assurance” domain of Prepaid Assurance is born.

Objectives of Channel Assurance

The mission of revenue assurance when it comes to channels is fundamentally no different than it is anywhere else. The GRAPA standards specify the particulars. Our job is to:

a)      Identify any and all “risks to the loss of revenues” that the domain represents to the company.

b)      Quantify that risk, both in terms of the amount of money at risk and the probability of that loss occurring

c)      Recommend remedies to management (recommend changes to procedures, or the implementation of controls)

d)      Implement the recommendations that management chooses based upon their appetite for risk.

That’s enough I think for this installment. We will continue to explore these issues by taking a closer look at a couple of the sub-domains under channel assurance, namely, Prepaid Time Assurance and Sales and Commissions Assurance.

Until then, this is Rob Mattison saying… be safe.

I like to watch television. I know a lot of people may think that is not a good thing. In fact, many people may even think it lowbrow. However, I was born at a time (the 1950s) when we believed television and drugs would make the world a better place to live. And eventually they did.

Television programs about the police and crime have always been popular whether it is the old Dragnet series with Detective Joe Friday, or the new CSI shows. Crime dramas are fun and exciting to watch. In fact, I was so influenced by these programs I earned a college degree in Law Enforcement and got a job working for a Police Department. I know, scary thought–Rob with a gun and a nightstick.

For a lot of reasons, I stopped doing that job, but the urge to “solve a crime” and “catch a bad guy” still runs deep. Anyone involved with Revenue Assurance should be able to identify with this tendency. Revenue assurance people are basically detectives who solve crimes, identify offenders and make things right. In fact, it is almost impossible to deal with revenue assurance without running into issues of fraud, security and crime regularly.

For over the past two years, we at GRAPA have been working hard to research and determine exactly what people felt was their biggest need in terms of additional training and education. Of course, the core curriculum and certification are great (over 3,700 members, 700+ students and more than 150 people with GRAPA certification prove that). But, the one thing people keep clamoring for is more help with fraud.

I know there is a large overlap between revenue assurance and fraud domains and issues, but in the final analysis, there is still much to talk about, learn and do even when you focus solely on fraud. So, we set out to do something about that.

The first thing we did is find an expert to help us drive the process. Louis Kohr, our Director of the Fraud Programs brings years of experience in military training, telecom research and of course Fraud. He is a member of the ACFE (as an academic member) and has been working for over a year on the new Fraud program.

The second thing that we did is identify some of the best and brightest from the GRAPA community with experience in Telecom Fraud such  as Ade Banjoko who is Fraud Manager for Zain and member of the GSMA Fraud Committee. Garry Brown I have known personally for several years since we met at MTN Nigeria where he was the fraud manager. Pamela Noriega is a well known authority around the world. Jan VanDerSteen is our Consulting Fraud Expert from Ernst and Young in Belgium and Badee Awwad is from Palestine and MD Faizur Rashid from Malaysia.

These people make up our Fraud Committee and have provided us with direction and insight, and reviewed the curriculum as it has been prepared. The result is a comprehensive five day certification and training program that I will be talking about quite a bit for the next couple of weeks. Please understand that we are doing nothing to weaken or take away from the incredible momentum that we have started with GRAPA. The registrations and certification candidates for 2010 are already double of what they were in 2009, and we are offering complete programs as quickly as we can in as many venues as we can manage.

We want to start another initiative we hope will equal the GRAPA – Revenue Assurance initiative. There is a lot of overlap between revenue assurance, Internal Audit and Fraud, so clearly, there are a lot of training and approaches that can be utilized by both.

The Fraud program will offer a unique superset of skills, knowledge and approaches that are focused specifically on the needs of the Telco Fraud Officer. (I will talk about this job title in a future blog). For now, this blog is our first official announcement of the new Telco Fraud Officer program, and I hope our members who are forced to do both jobs (revenue assurance and Fraud), will find it useful and helpful in their careers.

For those who are not involved in Fraud, I hope that you will let your co-workers who specialize in the Fraud area know about the program, so they can check it out for themselves.

I am very excited about our new fraud program, and I hope you will see the incredible amount of work that has gone into its development, and the immense value it will deliver to our fraud focused members.

As I said, I’ll be writing more about this program soon, but for today, I think that covers it. Until next time, this is Rob Mattison saying…be fraud aware and be safe.

Revenue Assurance in the Carribean

R Mattison’s Podcast

Do I have this right? You want me to fly to a small Caribbean island with clean white beaches, palm trees, steel drum bands and teach a course in Revenue Assurance. Are you kidding? When do I start?

Yes, I truly suffer in my job, but working in Trinidad must be placed on the “Man, Do I Love my Job” list. The invitation to teach our Xtreme Revenue Assurance for TSTT was an honor, and frankly, I could not wait. The hotel I was in was on the beach, with beautiful scenery, steel drum bands and passing cruise ships. Even more phenomenal was the training facility itself. Chaguaramus is an amazing national park facility with tropical birds, flowers and trees.

In this idyllic setting, where it seems one’s biggest concern is remembering to put on sunscreen, it is easy to dismiss that telcos in Trinidad face the same issues as every other telco on the planet. Carriers in the Caribbean face a unique combination of geographical, regulatory, technological and market conditions that keep them very busy. Like everyone else, these carriers are facing challenges with interconnect, bypass fraud, roaming leakage, and an incredibly high rate of new technology deployment (3G, 4G, Wimax, IPTV, GPRS, and tonnes of content offerings) while working on their own unique set of service offerings as well. The result is a tremendous need for revenue assurance.

I was impressed by the level of professionalism and expertise exhibited by the team. Many people wanted to pursue certification in Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management, and so they had to take the standard tests. We found is that as a group, the Caribbean Islanders scored an average of 5 points higher on the tests then the global average. (I would love to take the credit, and claim that my teaching was responsible for these scores, but I think that a more realistic theory is that these people are very sharp and very dedicated.)

So, how can you explain this? Several things come to mind. I think living and working in an environment like tends to motivate smart people to stay and make a career. What “smart person” would not choose to work on a Caribbean island given the choice of options?

Because the islands are relatively small and somewhat geographically isolated, it is critical for the telcos to cross-train everyone into many different jobs. This means everyone has a much better understanding of the overall picture than someone working for a bigger telco who may be limited in his or her experience. Perhaps most importantly, these managers clearly place a high premium on ensuring employees continually upgrade their skills and knowledge.

Whenever I come upon a situation like this (a group of highly motivated, and above average people), I think it is important to take a step back and really understand why. The better we understand how this happens, the easier it is for us to understand how to get other telcos to learn from the experience and duplicate the critical conditions.

While it is unlikely we will convince our CFOs to move revenue assurance departments’ headquarters to Hawaii, Bali or the Seychelles, I think the commitment to cross training and continuing education is one that all managers should pay attention too.

If dis-enfranchisement, “silos of information”, cultural and operational isolation create an environment for the propagation of revenue assurance leakage and fraud, then re-evaluating our HR values and organizational policies and approaches can certainly deliver major improvements in our overall organizational risk at minimal cost. Even if we cannot get the HR department to embrace these policies for the entire organization, we can take heed and utilize them in our own staffing and management decisions.

Interestingly this issue came up recently in our Capetown Training. One of the attendees kept asking me to tell him if revenue assurance people should be finance, IT, network or operational people. I believe the correct answer is all of the above. The best revenue assurance person is the one with the most well rounded view of the telco, the environment and the financial risks. No single person, with a single background can do that as effectively as a person, or group, with a clear understanding of all the different aspects of the problem.

So, if you want to get a job in revenue assurance in an environment that is friendly, challenging and well rounded, then my advice is that you check out the carriers in the Caribbean. And if you get the job, do not tell me, I will be much too jealous.

Until next time, this is Rob Mattison saying “be Safe”.

We are more than half finished with the year 2009 and it has been an exciting and dynamic year for GRAPA. The biggest single event of 2009 was the publication and distribution of our first officially ratified set of standards. In just a few short months, we have distributed over 2000 copies of these standards, and the reports are overwhelmingly positive from every region and segment of the industry.

While the 2009 standards are certainly a positive step in the right direction, there is still an incredible amount of work to do. Already we are working on the development of a set of proposals for inclusion in the standards for 2010 and I thought I would share some of our thoughts about this here.

First of all, while the 2009 standards are nice, there is some ‘fine tuning” and clarification that is required to solidify them. Feedback from the field has indicated several needs:

First – Expansion of the Body of Knowledge

The Body of Knowledge is the foundational cornerstone of any professional organization/certification effort, and as such, it is here where we will always place primary focus. While the majority of our principles, methodologies and structures have met with overwhelming acceptance, there are several corrections, additions and clarifications currently submitted for consideration. This includes the following:

1. Expand the core body of knowledge to include a basic understanding of both financial accounting and managerial accounting concepts and applications. Since most revenue assurance groups report to the CFO, the inclusion of this requirement makes sense to me, and it will definitely be proposed for 2010.
2. Expand the core body of knowledge to put more emphasis and be more explicit regarding the analytical skills and techniques required. Again, I agree and support this enhancement whole-heartedly, and we will work up a draft for inclusion in the proposal for 2010.

In addition to these two “clarifications”, three areas call out for a much bigger effort on our part. I have categorized these as the follows:

1. Revenue Assurance Governance (RAG) – Many have cited, and rightly so, that the GRAPA standards currently leave a great deal of latitude regarding the way revenue assurance should be managed and governed. We include the following topics under Revenue Assurance Governance:
   1. Management Direction and Prioritization (Steering Committees, Management Oversight, etc….)
   2. KPI development and assignment
   3. The formal publication of standard controls for each domain and methods for the handling exceptions.

In response to this demand, we will be publishing a proposed framework and initial set of standards for Revenue Assurance Governance. In this draft document, we will propose a comprehensive structure for the governance of Revenue Assurance including management oversight, management synchronization, KPI alignment, domain and scope management, compliance and the publication of the first official standard controls document. This is going to be a massive effort, and you are invited to participate in the work. Stay tuned for more information about this new “standards draft.” We then plan to launch an enhanced “Master of Revenue Assurance Management” curriculum to provide people with training in the new Governance framework.

1. Fraud And Risk Management (FARM) – While GRAPA standards show that many fraud management teams are part of the revenue assurance function, and even though there is a large body of knowledge with an expertise overlap between the two, the membership has made it clear that the issues of Fraud And Risk Management require an additional specialization, body of knowledge, and procedural base.

We are in the process of recruiting Regional Chairpersons to head up the Fraud and Risk Management Standard development process around the world. While still anchored to GRAPA, we will initiate the launch of Fraud and Risk Management Chapters in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and anywhere else where the interest appears. If you are interested in participation in the process, please contact Chris@grapatel.com or send an email to info@grapatel.com expressing your interest.

A new, separate addendum to the Body of Knowledge specific to Fraud and Risk Management, and a specialized Standards Document will be developed and corresponding training and certification offered.

1. Margin and Market Assurance – “Broad Spectrum Revenue Assurance.” Finally, the other area requiring major development work (and possible splintering from the GRAPA core) is in the Margin and Market Assurance areas. As with Fraud and Risk Management, we find that while there is an underlying core of body of knowledge and expertise, the Margin and Market Assurance area may need to be handled as a separate specialized “sub-set” of the main GRAPA core. What we have been calling Margin and Market Assurance has already expanded into areas where the name is not inclusive enough, so we have started to call all the areas of “non-traditional” revenue assurance functions “Broad Spectrum Revenue Assurance.”

We are currently trying to figure out how best to leverage, blend and accommodate this critical aspect of revenue assurance within our overall structure. At a minimum, you can count on a draft set of standards and a proposed treatment for these disciplines early in 2010, with corresponding training and certification activity.

So, just in case you thought that the Revenue Assurance business was going to get boring, or that you had it all figured out–just hold on, there is a lot more to come. In 2010, you can look forward to, and participate in:

1. Enhancements to the current standards and body of knowledge.
2. Expansion and formalization of the Revenue Assurance Governance Discipline, providing KPIs, standard control lists and other critical tools for the expansion of your revenue assurance department.
3. Expansion and formalization of the Fraud and Risk Management Discipline – specifically for Fraud Management and Risk Management professionals.
4. Examples and formalization of greatly improved margin, marketing, new product development and network utilization assurance disciplines under the proposed “broad spectrum revenue assurance” label.

For 2010 there will be more standards, more training, more certification and more chances for you to participate in the professionalization of the revenue assurance discipline than ever before.

Please volunteer early and often.

I look forward to meeting with many of you in the coming months and until that time; this is Rob Mattison saying “Be Safe.”

Revenue Assurance Reboot – Convert KPIs to Clarity

R Mattison’s Podcast

Have you noticed there are some people who are good with computers, and other people who are not? At least for me, it is funny to watch somebody who does not get it when it comes to computer use get angry and frustrated when the computer doesn’t do what they think it should.

My mother is a perfect example. She is one of those people who never really liked computers, and who only uses it to check email and FaceBook entries for family and friends. For her, the computer is an ugly, mean little box that is there to torture her. She sits, punching keys, typing things into the screen and in general trying to force the computer to do what she thinks it should be able to do.

Often what she is doing is not something that the computer was programmed to do. I tell my mother repeatedly “the computer will only do what you tell it to do,” it cannot read your mind. It does not know how you feel, and it certainly does not know what you mean by that. A computer just follows instructions.

Recently, as I finished my little speech to my mother and helped her reboot her computer for the third time in a day, it occurred to me that a lot of the problems CFOs and management teams have with revenue assurance can be boiled down to this same issue.

Like a computer, the revenue assurance team is a tool at the disposal of management to help solve problems and get information. Like a computer, the revenue assurance team is capable of doing many different things–if you give it the chance. And, unfortunately for most CFO’s and managers, a revenue assurance team, just like my mother’s computer, only does what you tell it to do.

Yes, it is ironic, but if the CEO and the CFO are not clear about what they expect to get from a revenue assurance department then the results are going to be equally unclear. If management changes its mind about what the priorities are on a week-by-week basis, then the revenue assurance department is not going to be effective. It is actually logical and obvious when you think about it.

Of course, in telecommunications today priorities constantly change, and what managers need actually do change frequently. The solution is not for management to stop asking questions and changing the direction. That is ridiculous! This is telecoms after all! Change and chaos is what we do! No, what is required is that, just as I keep coaching my mother, managers need to learn where the ‘keys’ are, and what, realistically, can be done.

Of course, a revenue assurance department is not really a computer, and it does not have a keyboard. So, what is the equivalent of the keyboard and instruction set? How do you set up the structure for communicating with and getting the results you want from your revenue assurance team? Yes, it’s those dreaded KPIs. The KPI, or Key Performance Indicator.

KPIs are much more than irritating numbers that show up on your reports each month. The KPI is the one, pure, clean, unadulterated thing by which management communicates to the revenue assurance team exactly what is expected of them. Is it any wonder that requests for help and training on setting up the right KPIs have lately become the top demand from the GRAPA membership? Yes, members used to ask for Standards and Certification, and now that we have been able to satisfy the professional community with those two things we are seeing KPIs emerge as the new top hot button. And appropriately so. KPIs are the one thing that managers seem to understand least.

The KPI defines your expectations. They communicate what, at the end of the day, the effectiveness of your revenue assurance. So of course, if your KPIs are wrong, if they are not in alignment with what you are doing, or with what management expects, then you are going to be in trouble.

Some of the “other standards bodies” out there have generated some of the funniest KPIs I have ever seen. They issue KPIs regarding the percentage of rejected CDRs issued by a mediation system, and other such highly technical things. Unfortunately, while these KPIs might be interesting for an I/T guy, or a Software Salesmen they are worse than meaningless for the revenue assurance team.

Around the world, in pursuit of often ridiculous and meaningless KPIs, naïve revenue assurance professionals fight to reduce the percentage of rejected CDRs from .001% to .0001% (yielding a cost savings of only a few dollars a day). And, they do this while their organizations continually launch products and rate plans that generate negative margins (selling things that cost more money than they make), lose millions to fraudulent partners and SIMBOXes, and in general rush toward the doors of bankruptcy.

I do put some of the blame on the revenue assurance professionals themselves for this phenomenon. Certainly, a revenue assurance professional that knows what he or she is doing will understand that they have a responsibility to ensure that they:

• Rationalize their efforts – ensuring that they deliver maximum value for their investment.
• Perform with Integrity – ensuring that they work on what they really believe is the highest priority.

Ultimately, the revenue assurance manager can only advise top management. If top management decides that the best way to measure the effectiveness of a revenue assurance team is by how many CDR’s they can “shave off of the reject bucket”, then that is exactly what they are going to get.

Unfortunately, the most common scenario I have witnessed is when management and the revenue assurance team set up leakage and CDR based KPIs that neither truly believes has value (but are the KPIs that they believe they should use). In the meantime, the CFO sends the revenue assurance team into situation after situation having nothing to do with those silly KPIs.

Revenue assurance teams around the world are involved in user acceptance testing on new products, new technology assurance (making sure that new network components generate billable transactions), fraud detection and margin assurance. Each time the revenue assurance team “helps out”, they are given a “thanks for the good job”. But at the end of the year, it is not the “good job” that dictates the status of the revenue assurance team, it is the KPIs. Since those KPIs are only vaguely related to the job the revenue assurance team is actually doing, everyone is dissatisfied.

So, the long and the short of the story is this: if you are unhappy with your revenue assurance team’s performance, then maybe the first place you need to look is not software, hardware or personnel changes. Maybe the first thing you need to do is to take a good hard look at your KPIs and determine if they are really providing the desired results. If you don’t, then you are going to be just like my mother, sitting there constantly re-booting the revenue assurance “computer” while you try to get it to do what you think it should do..

Until next time, this is Rob Mattison saying … be safe

Revenue Assurance – Global Village or Isolated Isle?

R Mattison’s Podcast

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

That is an old saying that keeps proving itself in the world of telecommunications. For decades now, telecommunications have grown, expanded and developed into one of the largest and most profitable and influential industries in the world.

When I worked at AT&T back in the good old days, everyone was trained to understand all of the different aspects of the technology and the business. We could hook up the phone line, work as an operator, string the lines on the poles and even troubleshoot a circuit. For the telecom employee back then it was about making sure that one had an integrated view of the technology and kept their eye on the ball, the ball being the profits that were being generated.

Unfortunately, in order to grow and expand, individuals and professionals in corporate cultures have had to adapt in order to accommodate the incredible rate of change and sheer volume of continuously updated knowledge that has to be dealt with. Because there are so many different things to know and so many things to keep track of, the telecom has changed from a single global village type of view, where all of the people work together on the same thing at the same time, to a huge collection of separate islands of knowledge and influence.

In telecoms today, it is literally impossible to understand it all, and understand how it all works. It takes dozens of specialists to make something work, and over time, these specialists tend to pull up their gangplanks and isolate themselves. So was born the revenue assurance function. Revenue assurance was created as a fill-in or stopgap function. But, revenue assurance were the people who brought the complete view of the products and services back into focus.

Over the years revenue assurance teams have proven repeatedly that their single-minded focus on the sanctity of the revenue resulted in big returns for telcos. And the reason is clear, it is because revenue assurance brings back the integrated single village view. Unfortunately, as revenue assurance grows in popularity and acceptance, I am sensing a seriously damaging trend. What is this trend? Revenue assurance is turning into yet another island of expertise. More and more revenue assurance professionals are digging in and specializing, creating yet another isolated function.

I know its human nature to try to seek out the comfort and tranquility of a specialized, isolated set of tools and functions. I know that it is counter-intuitive for many people to actually seek out chaos and confusion, look for conflict and disparity and try to interject a sense of order and priority into the mess. However, this is exactly what revenue assurance has always been about. As we move forward and we continue to struggle with ourselves and our profession, I think that it is critical to keep this at the forefront of our thoughts.

When revenue assurance becomes too specialized and isolated, it nullifies itself as having any value. In fact if you are a revenue assurance professionals and you are beginning to suspect that management and the operational teams are questioning the value of your services then maybe you could do a little soul searching in this area.

I am reminded of what I was told by a revenue assurance management team for the TelNor Group, a few years ago. They told me that their mission was to make revenue assurance everyone’s problem. What a concept! Their goal was that every area of the company— customer service, to sales to marketing, and everyone else, include their KPIs as a revenue assurance component. What a powerful idea! When you think about it, it is pretty much spot on.

The job of the revenue assurance team should never be anything but the proactive, aggressive search for risks to the company’s revenues and working with the company’s operational teams to make them aware of problems and help correct them. Our mission should not be to offload risk and problems from operational managers, but to focus on techniques for helping those managers optimize their activities. We should not try to function as a telco police force that goes around finding fault and putting bandages on broken systems and processes.

In an ideal, albeit less than realistic world, I think the revenue assurance team could be like of small team of revenue cheerleaders or team of revenue advocates; people who specialize in making sure that everyone in the company, and all of those isolated pockets, have an awareness of and a dedication to, maximizing revenues and profit. What a concept! The job of revenue assurance therefore is to eliminate the need for revenue assurance. Will it ever happen? Probably not! At least not for a few more years. In the meantime, it offers us a very refreshing and potent goal for our revenue assurance activities.

Revenue assurance is not a specialization that should be isolated from the other operational areas; revenue assurance should be a generalization. Revenue assurance should be injected into the DNA of all the operational groups, whether those groups be marketing, sales, new product development, network, billing or anything else.

Maybe there is potential here than we realized. Is Revenue assurance about helping the telco to return to the global village model or is it about creating islands of isolation? That is a decision each of us has to make for ourselves. What do you think? I would like to hear your thoughts about this.

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.

Not long ago, if someone suggested it was part of a revenue assurance department’s responsibility to assure what happens in the GSM radio network, or to assure BTSs and BSCs, I would have said they were crazy. However, in the relentless pursuit to optimize the network and maximize revenues, carriers across Africa are starting to dramatically change their billing models.

So, far from being followers, or part of a me-too approach to telecoms, trying to catch up with the northern hemisphere and the western world, Africa turns out to be on the cutting edge of both telecoms and revenue assurance practice. This should not surprise anyone, when you consider that unique regional problems and issues lead to ever more specific and focused solutions. However, regardless of where an innovative solution comes from, they always contain lessons for professionals throughout the industry.

One of the biggest changes in billing has started to spread across Africa, where in certain areas carriers have started to experiment based on how busy the BTS is. For those not familiar with GSM architecture, BTS stands for the base transceiver station, the unit that controls the antennae and manages the traffic between the handset and the switch. When BTS utilization becomes low, the carrier sends an SMS to customers, announcing the opportunity to make discounted calls during the lull. This is the equivalent of using peak and off-peak rates to ensure increased and optimal utilization rates for otherwise underutilized equipment, but targeted down to a minute level.

This practice is working well to drive customers to make calls when the BTS is not at its peak, and has a short-term positive effect on the market. However, as with most changes, there are unintended consequences, since it also creates many issues for revenue assurance to address. How can the billing on these calls be assured? Now revenue assurance has to be aware of radio network traffic and how busy the BTSs are in order to know if the right rate is being applied at the right time. Suddenly we have a new universe of technology we have to learn, as well as data we have to interpret and subsequently apply to the revenue stream and assurance process.

At the same time, this type of pricing will inevitably change customer’s attitudes and behaviour. Now customers who would have made a call at a more expensive time will wait until the less expensive time, perhaps with a net loss to the telco. When we consider assuring these activities and the concepts of revenue maximization, the question becomes—are we making money by doing this or are we ultimately decreasing revenue? Is it bringing us customer loyalty to an extent we had not anticipated before? How do we measure this and how does it ultimately affect our bottom line? What happens when our competitors follow suit?

These are the incredibly complicated issues that increasingly drag revenue assurance professionals into more complicated and multidimensional situations. It will be interesting for us to track this phenomenon, and others like it, as it moves forward. For some of you this will be crucial, since you are on the front lines and need to make these systems work, but even for others who do not face this immediate problem, you have to realize it will eventually affect you in one way or another because the discipline of revenue assurance does not keep still for anybody. We know when one carrier in a market starts to do something like this, the others have no choice but to compete. And with the breakneck pace of change in our business we can be sure we will be seeing more of these radically different and incredibly complex scenarios fall into the domain of the revenue assurance manager.

I am hoping that those reading this article will send us information about their experiences with radio side revenue assurance. Let us know what you are doing and what you are finding. The GRAPA steering committee is working on plans to initiate our first round of GRAPA User Groups. GRAPA User Groups will be regional conferences for revenue assurance pros to meet and work on the development of standards as well as approaches for dealing with unique problems such as this. We look forward to your participation in GUG planning sessions and we hope you will get back to us with your experiences with radio side revenue assurance.

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.”

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.