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 was a bit surprised last week when I had the faculty team assemble a study to review the GRAPA memberships and training attendance demographics. Several patterns emerged, but one of the most striking was the high number of consulting organizations filling the seats in GRAPA training events.

I was not surprised that consultants are involved in GRAPA. Many of the consulting firms that I mentioned have been staunch supporters of GRAPA from the beginning. Consultants fill many of the key roles on GRAPA committees, and also provide strong support for the GRAPA standards in the real world. However, what surprised me were the numbers of consultants getting certified is growing, exponentially.

Yes, consultants are coming to learn that GRAPA makes sense for them as well. Being a curious and questioning kind of guy, the first thing that I wanted to understand is why? Why have consultants started to flock to the GRAPA training and certification events?

I think there are several reasons for this. First, we have started to hear of more and more carriers placing a requirement, or at least a preference for GRAPA certification as a criterion for the assessment of job candidates. This makes sense when you think about it. With over 3500 copies of the GRAPA standards downloaded around the world, it is natural that carriers would take the next step, and ask that consultants conform to the same standards that they are practice.

Obviously, once a revenue assurance manager, CFO or auditor recognizes the value of the approach, it is simply the next step to prefer vendors who see things the same way. But, while this tendency certainly helps to explain the phenomena, I think there is even more to it than that.

There really is only one reason for any consulting company to do anything–to gain a competitive advantage. Business in general, and consulting more specifically, is an intensely competitive, highly leveraged activity. Consultants are in a constant state of  re-inventing themselves to get an edge on the competition, re-educating themselves, trying to get the advantage through advanced knowledge and skills, re-evaluating themselves and constantly working to improve their team’s and their own approaches any way they can.

Sounds exhausting, right? I worked for many companies as a Revenue Assurance and Business Intelligence practice leader for many years, and I assure you, it is all that and more. Why then, should consultants develop a preference for GRAPA and the GRAPA standards? Well actually, there are quite a few reasons.

Consultants, just like carriers, need to be concerned about whether their teams have the skills and knowledge needed to do the job and the GRAPA Body of Knowledge (an industry wide, consensus based definition of scopes) makes it easy for consulting companies to benchmark and assess their own people. The GRAPA Body of Knowledge provides a key guideline that everyone can use.

Once the Body of Knowledge was established, it was possible to put together a comprehensive Testing and Certification program. The GRAPA Training, Testing and Certification program is the largest, most pervasive and most respected revenue assurance, telecom fraud and telecom internal audit specific program in the world, as evidenced by the hundreds of people that have certified, or are in the process of certification.

But the benefit GRAPA offers consultants does not end there. In addition to the help GRAPA provides in the assessment and credentialization of their staffs, GRAPA’s industry  Practices (Principles, Methodologies and Standard Controls Based Assurance) make it easy for consulting companies to quickly step into complex situations, and conduct insightful and effective analysis and solution design, with a minimum of fuss and “start up time”. The GRAPA standards provide a common frame of reference, vocabulary and approach making it easy for consultants to step deliver value quickly and effectively.

But I think the real reason that consulting companies are finding lots of reasons to love GRAPA, is the GRAPA core philosophy. GRAPA believes and promotes that the most valuable asset  a company can have, and the best way to solve any problem is through the professionalism of the revenue assurance professionals themselves.

It is the revenue assurance professionals themselves that make the difference in any revenue assurance engagement (a philosophy that aligns perfectly with what consulting companies are selling…the professionalism of their consultants). The only real surprise is that so many consulting companies have not taken advantage of GRAPA. But that’s okay. I’m not worried. The momentum that GRAPA has established is clear. They may not be in our classrooms and taken testing yet, but they will be, or they may have to get out of the telecom business altogether.

Well, I think that’s enough for this week. Until next time, this is Rob Mattison saying. … be safe….

With the beginning of a fresh new year, we are seeing a lot of new exciting growth for GRAPA and for revenue assurance professionals around the world.

Revenue Assurance Professional Staffs Growing At Astronomical Rate

The biggest single landmark for revenue assurance has been the almost continuous growth in the size of revenue assurance departments around the world. As the latest generation of entrant telcos staff up, and as companies continue to see the incredible benefits of revenue protection, risk amelioration and new product development support that professional revenue assurance teams can offer, CFOs around the world are saying, “I need more people to do this job”.

Scope of Revenue Assurance Expanding and Maturing

While it is great to see the increased numbers of revenue assurance professionals, more significant is that these teams continue to see an expansion in the scope of what the revenue assurance professional is expected to do. New product development support, margin and market assurance, network asset utilization maximization: the list continually expands as companies (and revenue assurance professionals themselves) become more systematic and mature in their approach to the biggest problems telcos face.

Formalization of Roles and Responsibilities Continues

GRAPA is not standing at the sidelines during these exciting and critical times. We continue to work aggressively with members from around the world to understand better what people are doing, how they do it, and how we can help formally define these functions, roles and responsibilities and integrate them into our standards/procedures and standard controls libraries.

New Certification Programs For 2010

While the certification program in 2009 was a huge success, (much better than expected), there are several positive suggestions for critical improvements that we need to make. The biggest change is the use of the term “Bachelors”. Our piloted 40-hour programs will no longer include the word “bachelors”, but there will be no change to the critical aspects of market value of the certification. At the same time, we will discontinue a few that did not see a lot of demand, and we will submit a final report to the membership for ratification and formalization.

New Telco Fraud Officer Program Launched

While the progress of revenue assurance has been phenomenal, feedback from the membership indicates a serious fraud management training and certification program is badly needed. Most telcos face a huge risk of fraud, and while good revenue assurance practices can help, ultimately, the fraud management job is much bigger and quite different in many key areas. 2010 will see the launch of our new Telco Fraud Officer initiative, geared towards the aggressive, systematic and comprehensive addressing of this much-needed addition to the revenue assurance arsenal.

Standards and Benchmarks Work Continues

We know the real value and core of the service GRAPA delivers is our ability to poll the membership, gather meaningful, accurate and independent information about how things can and should be done, and report that information back to you. Our standards and benchmarking committees continue to work at this critical job, and the information continues to be gathered and distributed.

Social Networking Programs

One of the big surprises for 2009 was the success of several of our social networking efforts. The GRAPA Blogs (English and Spanish Language), podcasts, newsletters (Consensus and Voices) and the LinkedIn group are a huge success. If you have not looked at these yet, try them. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Overall, 2009 was a fantastic year, and 2010 promises to be a true adventure in terms of the places we will be going. Stay tuned!

Until later, this is Rob Mattison, President of GRAPA wishing you a Happy New Year.

No matter where I travel in the world, what airport I happen to be in, or what hotel I am staying at, one thing is guaranteed to be on every television or radio in a public place; sporting events. Football, cricket, golf, Formula One Car Racing–the world is obsessed with sports and competition. And why not? Competition is a good thing…right? What can be more exciting than competition? What else can get your blood pumping and your spirit soaring?

Look at the good things that come out of it. Who is going to be motivated to run faster; a person running alone, or running with others in a race? Why, the person in the race, of course! Seeing a competitor catch up spurs you on to try harder and accomplish more. Of course, competition does not always get us the results that we want. In Germany recently, the big news is the football fraud. Gambling houses have been successfully bribing dozens of football stars to “fix” matches. Competition has also lead to the football violence, and the recent stoning of FIFA players in Egypt. Competition that gets out of control, can result in negative consequences.

Does competition have a role in our professional lives? I know for many people it does. Many of us are in competition for our jobs. Especially in these hard economic times, the world is full of bright young people chaffing for the chance to take our jobs. Obviously, we need to stay aware of what our competition is doing and be competitive to stay in the game. We also have competition within the organization. Different departments, managers, and co-workers are constantly competing for budget, attention from management, to expand their departments, to make things easier for themselves or just to be able to win by making other people do things their way. And as if that wasn’t enough, there is the pressure from the outside. Software vendors, consultants, and others claim they can fix the company and do our jobs better than we do. Man… talk about competitive pressure.

So, the question then is, what do we do about it? Denying competitive pressure in the workplace is a set up for disaster. To go our merry way and pretend competition is not out there is the best way that I can think of to make it easy for others to take advantage. On the other hand, we do not want turn into professional sycophants either. (A sycophant is a person who is professional at “kissing up to the boss” and agreeing with everything he says. In the US, we call them “yes men-or women”.

So how do professionals manage these situations? One strategy is to develop an attitude of aggressiveness–attack before they attack. Being aggressive might win you a few battles, but I think ultimately, it will cause you to lose the war. After all, who wants to deal with a person that is always pushing and insisting they are right. For some revenue assurance professionals, the lack of guidelines, support and the competitive environment results in an attitude of bravado and bluster that may seem arrogant and bossy. In other words, sometimes, RA professionals can be pedantic and didactic. What do those words mean? They mean that the person tends to be “narrow minded with an often tiresome focus on or display of learning and especially its trivial aspects.”

Then we have the other side of the coin with the sweet faced, non-confrontational revenue assurance person. This person does not make many enemies, but at the same time, can be exceedingly ineffective because of their unwillingness to face up to difficult and often emotionally charged situations. As I discussed in one of my earlier blogs, the key here comes in the manner in which the revenue assurance professional perceives the situation and their ability to adapt. Sometimes, the iron fist in the velvet glove is the best approach. Other times, however, especially when serious revenue losses or fraud are involved, the more assertive “in your face” approach is best.

It all boils down to two basic ingredients. First – revenue assurance is primarily about politics. It is about people, their situations, their idiosyncrasies and the limitations they face in so many high- pressure-impossible-to-win situations. Secondly – it is about sensitivity and being aware of, and sensitive to the nature of the problems, the severity of the challenge and the conditions that generated the problem in the first place. But, in the chaotic ever-changing world of telecoms, how can the professional hope to walk this thin line between gentleness and firmness?

This is where competition and standards come in. What makes it possible for people to enjoy sports? What makes a sporting event interesting, without becoming a free-for-all, gang war each time two teams meet on the field? It is the rules and standards of professional conduct to which athletes, coaches and referees adhere. Every enjoyable and engaging sport has its rules, and only when people follow the rules can the sport be well and fairly played. It is surely the same way for us Revenue Assurance professionals. The GRAPA standards, and specifically the principles and ethics guidelines, provide the professional with a clear set of guidelines that make it easy to relax and “play by the rules”.

Some of the more critical standards that come to mind include:

1.    The Sovereignty principle – The primary responsibility for operational integrity lies with the operational manager and his team, not with the revenue assurance team. We are here to assist them, but ultimately the decisions, the failures, the successes and the consequences are something they must live with.

2.    The Rationalization principle – Foremost, the revenue assurance professional bases his actions, and sense of urgency and priority in proportion to the amount of revenue actually at risk in a given situation. We apply the dual filter of “how much revenue is at stake” and “what is the probability of the loss reoccurring” as our primary yardstick for defining our “level of excitement” regarding an issue.

3.    The Integrity Principle – We must always strive to be accurate, efficient and realistic in our dealings with top management, operational managers and operational support teams. It is unproductive if we insist on making claims without proof, or “shop for guilty parties” before we even fully understand the situation.

If I was to summarize the GRAPA standards in light of competition, I would say the standards dictate the only competition that the RA professional is in, is a competition with themselves.

The revenue assurance job:

a.    can never be done perfectly.

b.    will always require that the revenue assurance professional take risks both professionally and interpersonally.

So ultimately, the only person there is for us to compete with is ourselves. In my opinion, that is a trademark of a true professional. The true professional knows that what he or she does is valuable but also unique, and knows ultimately that the only competitor worth comparing to you is yourself. If you doubt me on this, check out some of the blogs, or articles about the truly great professionals of our time and read what great football players, cricket players or other professionals and athletes have to say about their competitiveness.

I hope that what we have talked about today has given you a little bit to think about. I know for me, it is important to stop worrying about what others say, or do,  focus instead on the job that I am trying to do. A great man once said, “It is none of my business what you think of me. It is what I think of me that is important.” I think that quote provides all of us with something to think about.

Until next time, this is Rob Mattison, saying … BE SAFE.