The big news this summer has been the release of the last Harry Potter movie. I am not ashamed to admit, that I too, fell in love with Harry Potter and the magical world of Hogwarts. It wasn’t hard for that to happen. I have always been a huge fan of science fiction and sword and sorcery stories.

Those of you of my generation might remember a series of books about a teenager named “Tom Swift”. Tom Swift was the scientific genius son of a scientific genius millionaire father, who went around the world inventing, creating and using dozens of fantastical, futuristic devices.

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.

Yo Ho, Yo Ho, The Pirate’s Life for me!

Who among us can resist the attraction, excitement and glory of the pirate’s life? Amusement parks, kids’ shows and even the movies glamorize the life of the swashbuckling buccaneer. Indeed, there are some very attractive things about the “pirate’s life”.

1. Sailing the seven seas. Traveling around the world, seeing exotic ports and locations.
2. Freedom to go wherever you want, nothing to hold you down to the rules of one location.
3. And of course, the whole reason that anyone becomes a pirate – the search for the buried treasure.

As the president of GRAPA, I’d like to tell you about one of the three new and exciting training and certification programs being launched in 2011. The Program is called “Revenue Assurance Foundations.”  I hope that you come to believe, as I do, that this will be the best, most effective, career building, paradigm shaking, awesome revenue assurance event that anyone has ever heard of.

So what is the history and background for this program? The Revenue Assurance Foundations program is the third in the series of what we call our core curriculum for revenue assurance professionals. The core curriculum is an intense five day crash course in the fundamentals of the practice of professional revenue assurance as advocated by the GRAPA standards.

Well, another year has come and gone, and as revenue assurance professionals, I think it appropriate at the beginning of 2011, that we ask the same question that my grand kids were pestering  me with this past week. The question is, as Revenue Assurance Professionals…are we there yet?

When you take a look at everything that has happened in the past year, it is certainly a valid question to ask. 2010 saw a large number of major indicators of the continued expansion, professionalization and standardization of the practice of revenue assurance and fraud management around the world.

I love Karate movies. Like many people, my memory of Ninja, Kung Fu, Karate and Taekwondo movies goes back for decades. When I was growing up, it was Bruce Lee in “Enter the Dragon”, and most recently my current favorite is Jackie Chan. Who wouldn’t love to be a Ninja, flying through the air breaking bricks with your head and disarming the bad guys faster than they can blink? (ZZT7BZ7FMHT8)

Batman, Superman, Aquaman or The Flash: What Kind of Revenue Assurance Hero do You Want to Be?

During our annual Cape Town Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management certification event, we enjoyed the company of participants from across Africa.  Participants included people from MTN, Vodacom, Zain, Net One (actually two different Net Ones – from two different countries,) as well as Mobiliy (Saudi Arabia) and others. It is always such a great experience when revenue assurance and fraud professionals from so many different operators come together and compare notes on the state of their organizations.

We recently saw the conclusion of our annual GRAPA Southeast Asia training and certification event. No matter how many times I come here to visit my friends in Manila, Hanoi, KL, Singapore, Bangkok and Jakarta/Bandung, I always come away humbled at the way these guys practice telecoms. K6Y4T9TB4RWA

It is really no accident that GRAPA claims Kuala Lumpur as its birthplace. If you want to experience telecommunications in the fast lane, first hand, you don’t have to look any further than here. Because of its reputation for being the leaders in so many areas, we usually choose the South East Asian market as a key launching point for new programs, initiatives and standards activities. KL was a landmark event for GRAPA in many ways, including:

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.

I’ve been in the telecommunications industry for a very long time. My first job after university, back in the ancient times, was with ATT in Chicago. Since then, I have been privileged to work for many different telcos in a lot of different capacities.

What most people don’t know is that even though I have degrees in Statistics and a Masters Degree in Telecommunications, my original career was in IT. For more than half of my career, although I was working for telcos, I was doing that work as a telecoms IT guy. I am a true IT geek.