Madrid: Multinationals and Certification

Back in March I talked about how 2009 would be the year of the revenue assurance professional. I talked about how revenue assurance professionals were becoming the ‘go to resource’ at telcos, evolving from an informally assembled group with disparate skill sets (Operations, IT, Marketing), to a staff that is focused, specialized, trained, professional and credible. GRAPA, and the standards we developed, was an integral part of that evolution.

As training continues in Madrid we are also developing even more exciting changes to the certification process. As you may already understand, our trainings are also a chance for us to consult with our membership. What has evolved from our discussions in class is a situation where individuals and small telecommunications companies will be able to tailor GRAPA’s curriculum to their own needs. Yet at the same time, the GRAPA program remains flexible enough that it can be adapted to the different ways multinational telecommunication companies want to train and certify their revenue assurance staff.

We are currently working with the revenue assurance departments of eight different multinational telecommunications groups around the world. For the first time, we are designing programs that certify the staff of these multinational companies across all of their countries. It is particularly gratifying that these companies are looking to GRAPA for standardized and specialized training. Some of these companies have even set a goal of training and certifying all their revenue assurance staff, in order to create standardization across the board and bring about greater synergies.

As we develop the new certification program, we will be considering the training needs of the very small telecommunications companies as well as these multinationals. We will be able to adjust and customize the program to accommodate the broader needs of very small one or two person revenue assurance departments, and offer very targeted training to the staff of companies with specialist certification in categories like Prepaid or Interconnect. These programs are currently being negotiated and we will be launching them in the second half of 2009.