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.

How Do you Certify an Entire Country?

R Mattison’s Podcast

I have got to tell you, no matter how long I am in this business, and the longer I am associated with GRAPA the better it gets.

You just never know what is going to happen, or what is possible when a group of sincere, intelligent, honest and well-intentioned people put their minds to the accomplishment of a monumental task. I had the privilege and honor or working with such a group of revenue assurance professionals in Uganda recently.

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).