Viva Las Vegas – Revenue Assurance Las Vegas Style

R Mattison’s Podcast

As we come to the end of yet another great year, it seems appropriate to sit back and reflect on what GRAPA have accomplished and what is in store for the next twelve months. Our last event of the year was I believe, at the most appropriate place I could imagine for a revenue assurance class–beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada.

Revenue Assurance and Internal Auditing – Training in Kuwait

R Mattison’s Podcast

Recently, we finished yet another breakthrough-training event for GRAPA. I was privileged to provide our core curriculum class to a room full of experienced telcom internal auditors from around the world.

This event, sponsored by Protiviti, Internal Audit provider to telecoms across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, saw 30 IA professionals certify in Revenue Assurance, with many opting for the special training and testing verifying their expertise in IFRS, GAAP, FRAUD and Internal Audit.

Cape Town – My Kind of Revenue Assurance Town

R Mattison’s Podcast

There is a famous Frank Sinatra song that goes something like this:

This is my kind of town…
My kind of town,
My kind of people, too.

When it comes to revenue assurance, Cape Town is definitely my kind of town. Our second annual GRAPA South Africa Revenue Assurance Training and Certification event was held at the base of the famous “Lions’ Head” rock. The weather was typical of Cape Town: rain, cold, sunny, warm, windy, foggy, and then sunny again. Cape Town is famous for its erratic weather changes, but that did not stop us from having a productive and intensive five-day dosage of revenue assurance. We had participants from many of the South African telcos including MTN and Telkom, and we had quite a respectable representation from other African companies as well.

I really love my job! Who else gets the chance to go so many different places and meet so many different, interesting, intelligent and talented people?

For the next few weeks, I will be teaching and working in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Usually at this point, I would joke about how my American friends have no idea where Luxembourg is, but I have a feeling that the majority of our GRAPA membership may not know either.

GRAPA staff writer Katherine B. and I sat down recently to discuss the new Revenue Assurance to the Extreme program that we here at GRAPA have just finished developing. Kathy interviewed me, and let me explain what this exciting new revenue assurance training program is all about.

K. Rob, tell us all about this new program, what do you mean by “Revenue Assurance to the Extreme” and why have you put it together?

R: Well Katherine, we have been very heavily involved for the past six months in conducting training programs, workshops and interviews with revenue assurance professionals, CFO’s, CIO’s, CTO”s and Regulators and we discovered several interesting things.

While mulling over the  problems common to revenue assurance professionals, it became clear to me that there was no real logical reason why we shouldn’t be able to establish a set of standards, structures, guidelines and knowledge sharing that would make it possible for the industry to attain a decent “economy of scale” for the investment in revenue assurance. While revenue assurance might be needed more in some places than others, the core challen
ge to the establishment of revenue assurance as a profession, was to develop a set of standards that can support everyone. This set of standards that would allow everyone to benefit from, the shared mission , goals and challenges, while at the same time recognizing and adapting to the differences that are the heart and soul of the industry.

The large, slow moving, highly profitable incumbent wireline and long distance companies of the 19th and 20th century has become the new, lean, mean, highly flexible (and loosely assembled) telecom of the 21st century. But the modern telecommunications company is also a chaotic, confusing, pressure cooker of change: changing technology, changing markets, changing consumer attitudes, changing competitive landscape.

In the modern world of telecommunications, competitors can become partners in the blink of an eye as companies struggle to balance, risk, revenue, capital outlay and expertise against each other. In the midst of all this mess we find, the humble revenue assurance practitioner (that’s you and me, my friend).