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.

I don’t know how many of you have been following politics in the US the past couple of months, but there is a new “revolution” happening called the Tea Party movement. Now, what the “Tea Party” stands for in the US is open to a lot of debate, and we certainly don’t want to talk about that here, but the concept that these people are building on is one that I think is very appropriate for revenue assurance and GRAPA.

When we started GRAPA back in 2007, there were many things that we thought would happen. However, one thing we were sure of was that the wire line incumbent telcos would not be high on our list of members.

It is not because we did not like them, or we did not want them to join, it was just that for many decades, the revenue assurance teams at the incumbent wire line telcos were the stalwart, hardcore, heavily experienced revenue assurance people who were out there showing everyone else how it should be done. The place of honor earned by many of the telco revenue assurance pioneers who started our profession within the halls of the monster incumbent telcos is well earned, without a doubt.

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 again (happily) found myself providing training for another corporate, multi-national revenue assurance group. The room was full of revenue assurance managers and team members all working for the same corporate group, but traveling from a dozen different countries around the world. It fills me with a sense of respect and admiration where I see the incredible level of sophistication, dedication and enthusiasm that these professionals exhibit.

What do Ernst and Young, Protiviti, Infosys, PWC, Deloitte and IBM all have in common? Is it that:

a)      They are some of the largest, most successful consulting organizations in the world today?

b)      Each has a large, viable commitment to providing professional consulting services to telcos in the Internal Audit, Fraud and Revenue Assurance domains?

c)      Each has sent several of their consultants to GRAPA Certification and Training Events?

The answer is, all of the above.

I survived the great volcanic ash cloud of 2010. Like many travelers around the world, I too was stranded in a place I did not want to be when Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull Volcano decided to do its thing.  We had an event scheduled in Rotterdam, and we had to cancel it while people scrambled to get transportation from once place to another.

I once again found myself conducting GRAPA training in the pretty little country of Luxembourg. In my world, ending up in the same city twice in the same year is a real bonus. I did not even have to buy a new SIM, I still had top-up on my “Tango” SIM from the last trip. I think Luxembourg with its castles, cobblestone roads and grand homes in the French royalty tradition, more than many European countries, brings to mind the “olden days”. Yes, Luxembourg clearly speaks to the grandeur of old. It would be easy to imagine fine women in billowing gowns, and aristocratic men in powdered wigs walking the streets.

There are those who feel there is no place for these two words in the same sentence. After all, why would regulators care about revenue assurance, and why would revenue assurance people care about regulations and regulators?

There is an old saying; if you talk before you think, you will probably end up with your foot in your mouth. This is certainly the case when it comes to our experiences talking with Regulators around the world about revenue assurance.