Global Revenue Assurance Professional Association Returns To Its Roots

After several years, it was good to return to the global city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to hold a South East Asian revenue assurance training and certification event. Kuala Lumpur has changed a lot in the last few years. It has become unbelievably modern, sophisticated and more comfortable then ever before. It was a real pleasure for those people attending the revenue assurance training event to get around and see the many tourist attractions such as the Masjid Negara, Kuala Lumpur Tower and Batu Caves .

Especially popular with many of the attendees was the opportunity to shop. Shopping centers abound in Kuala Lumpur and the city is the fashion and retail center of Malaysia. One attendee from Ghana actually spent the entire weekend between the two weeks of revenue assurance training to clothes shop for her family. We all accompanied her on her shopping trips and she bought so many clothes that it took two of us and two taxies just to get everything back to the hotel. We have now set a new standard for what a revenue assurance person does during the off hours when they go to training…they go shopping!

Other than the shopping experience, most of the GRAPA members were able to visit the famous Starbucks. For those of you who are not familiar with the history of GRAPA, the very concept for and the point of birth of GRAPA was the Starbucks coffeehouse at the base of the famous  Petrona

s Twin Towers. In 2007 a group of people sat down over coffee and discussed the type of association to be created. It was almost poignant to come back and have the members sit around that coffee shop and discuss how GRAPA has grown over the last few years.

Coincidently we held this revenue assurance training event at the same point as GRAPA welcomed its 2500th member. This is a clear benchmark showing that GRAPA has grown much stronger than we had ever thought possible. When we first formed GRAPA we envisioned a maximum of 1000 members. Right now, we have over 2500 members and that increases by dozens as each week passes.

Having reached this significant number we have analyzed our membership and found that although we have a large number of non-carrier members and consultants who participate in GRAPA, the vast majority of our membership works directly with, or are employees of carriers. This is very much in keeping with our intention that GRAPA be a carrier standards based organization.