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”.…

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

It can be especially dangerous and difficult to choose a role model within telecommunications and revenue assurance.  For the majority of the people I talk to in telecoms and the people clogging the speaker conferences and producing marketing material, the message is simple and clear: To be the best, emulate the big boys.

Do you want to exercise best practice in billing? Find out how ATT does it. Do you want an example of the best at long distance? Let British Telecom be your guide. Conference after conference, vendor after vendor and speaker after speaker the same song is repeated. Since the big telcos do it this way, you should do it this way too. Since the biggest and richest telcos in the world do things a certain way, then copy them, and you’ll become bigger and richer.

Wait a minute! Let me really think about this. The claim is that since the big, successful people do things a certain way, I should too. Their way is the way to success. I have a real, big problem with that logic. Here is the reason.

Let’s look at the ‘big telco’ style of revenue assurance.

‘They’ say:

1. Revenue Assurance is about IT Systems – It is about putting in lots of systems and automating controls. The more computer-run controls, the better your revenue assurance.
2. Revenue Assurance is about doing things the right way, even if it is expensive. In this mode of operation, revenue assurance is like an avenging angel. An agent of change who a) cleans up dirty data b) corrects policy errors c) smoothes out operational problems without regard for the cost. The accomplishment of order is the only goal.
3. Revenue Assurance is about leakage – it is about finding, monitoring, and being absolutely focused and obsessed with little tiny errors in great big systems. Perfection is the order of the day.

But how are those telcos are doing?

1. ARPU’s – Dropping like a stone
2. Market Share – Shrinking
3. Reputation – Eroding rapidly

It seems to me that those are the last models I want to emulate. I am amazed that anyone still gives these people the time of day.

We need to look at the history of telecoms in the past ten years. Who are the carriers we should be emulating? Should we take direction from the dinosaurs behind this thinking and pay to build these systems and engage in never-ending, mind-numbing and meaningless debates? Should we perpetuate the thinking generated by carriers that are so cumbersome and bureaucracy bound that they cannot do anything without a six month study? Do you, in your telco, have time for that???

Maybe we should look at the new market powerhouses around the world: The Zains, MTNs, Vodafones, TIGOs, Orascoms, Qtels, Movistars and the Digicels. Even China Mobile and Airtel Bharti have huge lessons to teach us about how this business can be run profitably.

I propose that these are the companies to be emulated.  These are the people who don’t have time to be obsessed with IT systems. These people know they cannot afford to stand still long enough to have the silly, bureaucratic, political battles about leakage and triple redundancy and the obsessive pursuit of three cents worth of leakage. In other words, in my opinion, these are the carriers who practice telecommunications in the style that has always driven the winners in telecoms:

• Innovation.
• Break neck speed to market
• Change, change , change

It is the commitment to innovation, change and risk that makes a telecom something to be admired, not the size of their IT budget and certainly not hours logged in theoretical discussions about “drip models”. I would not claim that the big cumbersome carriers out there who are bogged down with massive legacy systems, 25 layers of I/T, and enough political process to govern a country do not need to practice revenue assurance the way they the do. On the contrary, I emphatically agree. They really do need to function that way. It is the only way that they can keep up.

What I am also saying, is that the last thing any smaller, leaner, meaner and more effective telco, or revenue assurance team should be doing, is trying to figure out how to do the same thing. Basically, you would be trying to learn how to do the wrong thing.

There is an amusing television commercial put out by Accenture. The commercial shows an elephant crossing a huge chasm by nimbly dancing on a log that goes across the gap. Their message is, you too can be a giant elephant, but we can teach you how to be nimble despite your size. Maybe teaching elephants how to walk across logs sounds like a good idea to you, but I think the chances are good that an elephant is going to be falling to the bottom of the chasm pretty often.

Even more critical, why do you want to be an elephant? Yes, the real key for the revenue assurance professional is not to seek out the worst examples of revenue assurance, and then try to copy them, but to look at your own company, your own situation and your own capabilities, and create your own image of best.

Well, that is about enough time for this week, so I’ll just leave you with this thought. If you want to fly, don’t take lessons from an elephant.  If you want to fly, start learning how the birds do things instead.

Until next week, this is Rob Mattison saying…. Be Safe.

This week we had a break in our training schedule, so Brigitte and I spent a week in Germany visiting family. I love Germany. That should be obvious, since I married a German. Brigitte was born and raised in Augsburg in the Southern part of Germany known as Bavaria.

With its beautiful countryside, rolling landscape, forests and farms Germany is a pretty place and always a treat for me to visit. We called on my in-laws, helped my niece Anna with her English lessons and trigonometry homework, and visited the famous Augsburg Christmas market.

However, whenever I visit Germany, I always take the time to engage in my favorite pastime. What I love to do more than anything else is a little game I like to call Autobahn Hanne (Chicken in German). The way you play is simple; you get a rental car, get on the Autobahn (the German highway system) and see how many times you can get your car going over 200 KPH before Brigitte screams in terror.

That is right! In my opinion, the most brilliant thing the Germans ever invented is the Autobahn, the highway system with no legal speed limit. Yup, in Germany, you can drive as fast as you want, and nobody tries to stop you. Moreover, unbelievably the Germans  have a lower accident rate than many, many other countries in the world, with much more stringent speed and traffic laws.

Now, I know what you are thinking. How did the Germans make this miracle happen, and how can I get in on it? Is it because the Germans are genetically better drivers? Do they have better coordination or cars ? Firstly, the Germans are impatient people. They don’t like to wait, and have no tolerance for people who get in their way and slow them down. Trying standing in a queue at the airport with Germans in line and you will see what I am talking about.

The way that they make the autobahn safe is simple. They have figured out the best places to put the roads. They have organized their laws, rules, highways, on ramps, off-ramps and everything else in ways that make the autobahn not only possible, but also safer than roads without that kind of comprehensive engineering.

However, remember, the Autobahn is much more than just a road and some asphalt. It works because of all the different parts of the process work together. It requires the coordination of disciplines: driving, engineering, law and more than anything else, an attitude adjustment.

On the Autobahn, they have laws and rules–lots of them. In fact, they have rules and laws that you do not have in other countries. For example, when you are on the Autobahn, you must always get out of the way if someone behind you is going faster than you. For the Autobahn to work, people have to learn how to get out of the way. Also, on the Autobahn, you can only pass on the left, never on the right. You see, it is not magical at all. The Germans have a structure and rules that allow them to accomplish their speed without compromising on safety. However, who within the telco environment is qualified to figure out how our product and marketing Autobahn should look?

What are some of the things that get in the way of new product developers and slow them down? Network engineers telling them that the product cannot be supported by the existing infrastructure. Billing systems people telling them that the products can’t be billed the way they want it to be billed. Actually, just about everyone involved in the delivery of services.

This new product development Autobahn requires someone who is expert not at any one aspect of the delivery of services, but who understands how all of it fits together, and how it can be “tweaked” in order to get to where you are going with the least obstructions possible.

Let’s see now. Where can we find someone like that? A person who understands the intricacies of network elements, switches and CDRs, billing and customer service. For many, many telcos, the new “hero of the hour” has been, repeatedly, the Revenue Assurance professional. What? Revenue assurance perceived not as “the guys who slow things down”, but instead as “the guys who speed things up?”

Actually, yes I have personally heard dozens of stories of situations where frustrated CFOs, product developers and market executives have turned to the revenue assurance team to help figure out how to “get around’ design and operational problems and help make things work better, faster and safer.

If you to ask me to identify the one thing that presents the biggest opportunity for revenue assurance professionals, and for telecoms overall, it is the identification and inclusion of revenue assurance as a critical component of every product development team. For those telcos who have figured it out, revenue assurance represents the “backbone” of the new product development operation, with new product development support making up to one half of the entire RA team.

So, the next time you listen to a marketing person, CEO or a product developer talk about creating some insane project and launching it much faster than anyone thinks is possible, take a step back and think about the Autobahn for a minute. Is there a way that your expertise, insight and unique set of skills and knowledge can help them get to their destination?

If so, maybe you are ready to join the ranks of more and more revenue assurance professionals who are finding this to be one of the most interested, exciting and challenging aspects of their jobs. And after that, how long before you to start to develop a taste for Autobahn Hanne (Autobahn Chicken). Why not see how fast you can go before you make your CFO scream in terror? It is an interesting thought isn’t it?

Well, enough for now, until next time this is Rob Mattison saying “Be Safe”.

Recently, the 500th student went through GRAPA Revenue Assurance Academy core training and this milestone inspired some reflection. Certain myths about the function of revenue assurance continue to prevail. I would like to open up the dialog in an effort to demystify  the twelve most common myths of revenue assurance.

Myth 1:

Search ‘revenue assurance’ on the internet and you will find many websites, including major standards organizations and conferences, still defining the role of revenue assurance as the management, counting and accuracy of CDRs. It is frustrating for those involved in revenue assurance to constantly deal with the myth that the revenue assurance job is the task of CDR rustlers. CDRs were the only way to count revenues in the bygone days of the incumbent, wire line, post paid companies. It worked because telcos only had one product and service, and billing was the process of counting CDRs and creating bills.

But, having arrived in 2009, we see the biggest sector is no longer post paid voice, but prepaid. In a prepaid billing situation, there are no CDRs. A prepaid billing system works directly with the switch, allowing you to place a balance up front and subtract from that balance. CDRs have nothing to do with the billing process. So how can the statement ‘revenue assurance is about CDR counting’ be true when the majority of the carriers make 95% of their money from prepaid? Is revenue assurance only about post paid, but not prepaid business? The big revenue is in prepaid and that is the revenue that needs protection. Over the last five years, billions of dollars in revenue have been lost because of the inadequate assurance of prepaid billing systems.

While revenue assurance groups continually boast about their phenomenal CDR tracking systems and the intricate reports that they can generate, companies lose millions of dollars to fraudulent, defective, incomplete or confused assurance practices in channels, roaming revenues, and interconnect. CDR management continues to play a role in revenue assurance albeit a rapidly diminishing one. The majority of telcos have only started to understand that the real risks to revenue come in areas other than CDRs.

Even more critical is that good CDR counting does not prevent revenue loss. Prevention of loss comes through proactive revenue assurance with the use of change management, synchronization and other control techniques. We are seeing the scope of revenue assurance expand dramatically with additional challenges in the areas of sales channel assurance data, GPRS, SMS, credit fraud, risk assurance and new product development. However, as long as the myth of CDR counting prevails, companies will leave themselves open to unnecessary risks in these areas and will continue to waste resources on reactive rather than proactive assurance measures.

The CDR myth conflicts with the GRAPA standards and principles, the most important being rationalization: ensuring the time and money you spend on assuring an area is equivalent to the amount of revenue risk it represents. According to GRAPA standards, the mission of revenue assurance is to attain the maximum containment of risk to the company’s revenues, at the lowest possible cost. Spending your entire revenue assurance budget on CDR counting will not accomplish that objective.

Recently, the 500th student went through GRAPA Revenue Assurance Academy core training. Reaching this momentous milestone inspires some reflection.

In meeting revenue assurance professionals from China, South East Asia, Australia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Africa, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Chicago a few things have become apparent:

• The practice of revenue assurance is moving in a consistent direction no matter where you go, being helped to no small degree by the GRAPA standards and other consensus building activities
• Revenue assurance professionals are alike wherever they practice. They are highly intelligent, risk takers, good negotiators, take pride in their work and work tirelessly and diligently.

However, regarding the actual function of revenue assurance, certain myths that the industry has come to accept continue to prevail. These myths are often based on falsehoods created by vendors, special interest groups, or antiquated ideas that no longer apply as we face new technology and services. In our training classes, we spend much of our time teaching people that these standard myths are not de facto, and that they may actually inhibit the revenue assurance manager from performing their role and getting the success and recognition they deserve.

I often hear these myths quoted and I have decided to do something about it. On the event of surpassing 500 students, I would like to explore and dispel these “myths” and open up the dialog in an effort to demystify the twelve most common myths of revenue assurance.

New technology is the lifeblood of the telco. It is estimated that major improvements and technological innovations are invented daily at labs and sites around the world. Clearly, if the revenue assurance professional is going to be effective, they need to be aware of how all of these different technologies work. In this series we will attempt to provide the membership with insights into the concepts, vocabulary and issues associated with assuring a wide range of different technologies.

We will be looking at new technologies like 3G and WIMAX, and not so new ones like ADSL, Cable, Satellite and Microwave. Our objective is to help the membership increase their working knowledge of these areas, encourage others to get involved and get excited about the opportunities that these new technologies represent.

Our format for these areas will be as follows:

1.    Background – what is it? Why was it invented? What does it offer?
2.    Architecture and Terminology – Basically, how does it work?
3.    Revenue Assurance Issues – what are the major risks that this technology represents and what can you do about it?

Our goal is not to make the reader an expert in the technology, but to help ease them into the area by familiarizing them with the concepts, terminology and issues associated with them.

…Continued – A 3 G Primer…

When it comes to revenue assurance there are a number of areas of concern.

We need to be aware of our organizational positioning and the way that we integrate revenue assurance into the overall operational framework of our companies. We need to worry about the technology, the systems, the organizations and the environmental factors that make up our environment, and that make revenue assurance easy or hard. We need to understand that in the final analysis, what most people want to know is: how exactly is it done? What are the standard practices that people follow in order to do revenue assurance in this area? How do I know if I am doing too much, too little or just the right amount? This is where Standard Practices come in.

The GRAPA standard practices library attempts to pull together a complete inventory of the various methods that people use to assure particular areas. After collecting the information through benchmark studies and interviews we pull together the best approximation possible of a Standard Practices portfolio. This portfolio provides GRAPA members with an understanding of key areas to watch, and what the standard approaches are to assuring them.

In this series, we will share with you the different perspectives that the membership has on the standard, best and worst practices reported. Our objective in this case is to let everyone know what our current knowledge of standard practices is, and to give everyone a chance to “weigh in” about whether the practices:

1.    Make sense – Is this framework logical.
2.    Are realistic – Are these practices realistic and applicable in their cases.
3.    Are comprehensive – Have we missed anything important that you are aware of.
4.    Are followed – are they actually followed by your organization?

Our practices track will couple an online benchmark survey encouraging all members to let us know how they practice assurance in the area under review, postings to blogs, with commentary, feedback and insights provided by our panelists and townhall (live webinar) and recorded (YouTube) presentations which will help illustrate the points.

We hope that you find this series informative and helpful.

The standard format for the lead article will be:
1.    Background: A definition of the area, the functionalities and issues surrounding the area.
2.    Context: A review of the current operational environment typical for the area.
3.    Controls Inventory: An inventory of the standard controls most commonly found associated with the area.
4.    Range of Practices: A review of some best, worst and standard practices experienced by the contributor.
Please feel free to review, comment upon and make use of what we hope will be a very informative and useful series.

Continued – Standard, Best and Worst Practices in Mediation Systems Management

Will 2009 be “the year of the revenue assurance professional?” It’s funny how things work out. Since the earliest days of telecommunications there’s always been someone, some small group of people, who kept their eyes on the revenue stream and fought to make sure that the telecommunication company realized as much revenue as possible. Back in those olden days the job wasn’t given much credit and it certainly wasn’t formally defined. In those days it was just expected that everything would and should be working without those pesky “leakages”.

Of course over time, things changed. The complexity of the technology went up astronomically and exponentially. We went from a world that we thought was really technologically sophisticated (the world of circuit based voice telecommunications), to a world that makes those technologies look simplistic and childish.

The simple 1:1:1:1 business model of the telco (one product, one market, one price and one sales channel) has been replaced by a cacophony of products, technologies, market segments, price schemes and sales channels. Yes indeed, telecommunications has grown up. The level of service delivered today is a thousand times greater, of higher quality and reaches billions of people, while at the same time delivering at a lower cost and lower margin. So for this industry, the economic hard times of 2008-2009 are nothing new.

Telco teams are no strangers to credit crunch, budget cuts and the need to do more with less. Heck, for most of us it is more than “business as usual”– it’s the challenge that got us hooked on working for telecoms in the first place.

So what is so different about 2009? Why do I believe that 2009 is going to be a banner year for revenue assurance as a serious professional endeavor? Well, it’s really just a matter of timing.

RA  Pros Becoming the ‘Go To’ Resource

For the past decade or so, the once small and dedicated (and informally assembled groups) of revenue assurance professionals have been gaining momentum. More and more, the revenue assurance team is being turned to as the “go to guys (and gals)” for an ever widening circle of telco operational and financial challenges.

When GRAPA first surveyed of the scope of revenue assurance in telcos around the world, the vast majority of the groups were relegated to the traditional “switch to bill”, CDR policing role. Over the past few years, this scope has exploded. Larger and larger numbers of telcos are turning to the revenue assurance team to address and solve some of their toughest problems.

Telcos asked, “How do I make sure that new products are released with the right price, and with the right infrastructure to guarantee financial success ?” Increasingly the answer is, “Let the revenue assurance team tackle that one; who else is better qualified?”

These are only a few of the questions:

• How do I determine the actual loss of revenue represented by radio network failures?

• What do I do about these losses?

• How can I maximize my revenue stream by making my pricing plans sensitive to the regional, metro, MSC or BTS level?

That’s the kind of puzzle that those RA guys should be able to handle. Yes, management’s respect, or at least tentative, wary and provisional hope for big gains from the revenue assurance teams has been on the upswing for some time now.

The reason why is clear. Revenue Assurance people are Darned Good at what they do. I have met hundreds of revenue assurance professionals and managers from around the world, and there are several characteristics we all seem to share.

1. Curiosity: A natural desire to understand how things work, or why they have gone wrong.

2. Stubbornness. Revenue assurance people just won’t let go until the puzzle is solved and the problem is resolved.

3. Mental acuity: (In other words, the ability to be very flexible in our thinking). Revenue assurance people can take a problem and simultaneously review and understand it from a technical, logical, operational, political and market perspective and weave all of those perspectives together into an optimum solution.

4. Creativity: Revenue assurance people are good a “patching together solutions” that nobody has ever thought of before.

So, over the past couple of years, the revenue assurance teams at hundreds of telcos have been earning their stripes. They have been earning respect, recognition and the attention of quite a few CFO’s and CEO’s.

So what is so special about 2009?

Well, from one perspective, nothing at all. It is just business as usual, and I am sure that the majority of revenue assurance teams will continue to do what they have been doing, building up their credibility in an ever widening circle of influence. But from another perspective, I think that there is something else happening here.

You see, as the RA teams continue to grow and expand (evidenced by our benchmarks), the very culture of the telco is changing. Revenue assurance is becoming more than just that “weird concept” or that “receptacle for miscellaneous finance and leakage issues”. It becomes legitimate.

Yes, we as a profession, and so many of the hundreds of teams that I have met with, are coming of age. And with that maturity come some benefits, but also some responsibilities. You see, when you have managed to “score so many goals” in such a short time management comes to expect this as a matter of course. They expect a goal every time you get onto the field. And therein lies the risk.

I believe that 2009 will be the pivotal year for revenue assurance because if we are going to survive as a profession we are going to have to figure out how to make ourselves viable and valuable players every day. Oh, discovering and bringing in the “big win” is gratifying, but sooner or later all of the long hanging fruit has been harvested. This then, is the real challenge of the revenue assurance team.

Positioning RA Professionals as Part of the Team

How do we position ourselves as the group that provides this kind of value every day. In other words, how do we formalize, normalize and make ourselves a truly functional part of the team, and not just the “one hit wonders”. That’s what I believe the challenge of 2009 is really going to be all about.

I believe we’re going to find there are two situations that revenue assurance teams will find themselves in this year.

The first group will be those who are just getting their “feet wet” in the serious game of revenue assurance. These teams, if they execute well, will find ample opportunities to deliver big value to their companies as the current economic crunch forces management to make cuts and try to figure out how to do more with less. Indeed, these teams are sitting in the perfect position right now. They have the chance to deliver high value gains to management just at the time it is most needed.

The second group will be those RA teams that are more mature. These teams have harvested all of the “quick wins” and are now faced with yet a new set of challenges: how to expand their scope and expertise, allowing them to gain insight, access and understanding of an ever broader range of operational areas that badly in need of assurance activities.

For both teams I think that there are several imperatives that they need to take into the year of 2009.

First – focus on rationalization. Make sure that everything that you work on and invest in results in a clear return on investment that management can see. This is not the time to be trying to “clean house” and “make things nice”. It is the time for bold action and serious cost savings, revenue recovery or loss prevention.

Second – focus on the expansion of your domain. Crisis = Opportunity. The RA team will find more areas than ever where operational teams have “dropped the ball” on key revenue chain integrity issues. The chances of the existing operational teams to suddenly discover leakages is low. The chances of these teams “cutting corners” and allowing vast, new risks to revenue streams to appear are great. A vigilant RA team will deliver more value than ever during times like these.

Third – focus on the expansion of your knowledge and skills. You are not going to be able to expand your domain without a concomitant expansion of expertise.

1. You need to hire people who can quickly add expertise in those areas where it is most badly needed. Are you light in the network operations knowledge area? Then find someone who knows that domain. Are you short on business intelligence, forensics and analytics depth? Time to start looking in uncommon places for uncommon skills.

2. You need to make more partnerships with more operational teams. Beg, borrow, steal and “wheel and deal” to get the inside access to the information that will make it possible for you to do your job.

3. You need to commit yourself and your team to continuing education. No one can do this job without training, knowledge and access to education. No network engineer would pretend to be viable without a continuous commitment to learning all of the latest technologies. No internal auditor can maintain his professional standing without meeting the industry’s continuing education requirement, and no revenue assurance professional can hope to keep up without the same commitment.

I am sure that if you pursue the new year with these key perspectives in mind, you will create for yourselves and your department a much stronger, more respected and more formally recognized revenue assurance role in your organization.

So, will 2009 be ‘The year of the Revenue Assurance Professional?’ I think, that yes, it will for Revenue Assurance Professionals who take advantage of the incredible opportunity that has been presented to us.

Rob Mattison

GRAPA