Geoff Ibbett ranks as one of the most knowledgeable and experienced people working in the field of revenue assurance. When the TM Forum selected Geoff to develop their Revenue Assurance Practitioner’s Accreditation, I knew they had chosen wisely. The results seem to bear that out. Geoff recently told me about the high demand for the accreditation course, which has run 7 times since its first outing last September. Not bad! The course can be run as a public event where anyone can enroll, and as private sessions especially for the convenience of telcos, vendors, SI’s and consulting firms. To meet the demand, the TMF has scheduled a string of RA accreditation courses as part of their training events for the coming months: in Cairo and Sydney this May, Jakarta in June, both Bonn and London in July, and Johannesburg in August. Well done, Geoff!
Last year, Geoff and I talked about the TMF Revenue Assurance Accreditation for the talkRA podcast; you can listen to it here.
One big reason to get the TMF accreditation is that not everybody passes the exam. That makes it a much more meaningful addition to your CV than those courses where everybody pretends to have a Bachelor’s qualification by the end, just because they turned up and paid the fee. A reliable source tells me that one of the people who writes training material for Papa Rob’s GRAPA actually failed the TMF exam! Decide for yourself what that says about the relative value of the training on offer.
Geoff also told me that writing the best course in RA does not mean he is relaxing or assuming he knows everything he needs to know for his job as a telecoms consultant. On the contrary, he is actively exploring the links between RA and risk management – a topic that is close to my heart and a theme I find recurring more and more amongst the advanced practitioners. If you also want to help build a bridge between revenue assurance, risk management, and the other risk silos, then come join the TMF community for Enterprise Risk Management. Our challenge is to integrate all the risk management activities into a comprehensive and robust component of the eTOM. If people like Geoff can see the connections, I know we are on the right track. Maybe one day (after a lot of hard work – professionals do not take short cuts) we can emulate Geoff’s success and deliver an accreditation program for ERM practitioners… so come join us and help make it happen!
