The Many Faces Of GRAPA

In Greek mythology, the Hydra was a beast with many heads. Cut one off, and two would grow in its place. Rob ‘The Guru’ Mattison has a similar affliction. The Global Revenue Assurance Professionals Association (GRAPA) is one face of his campaign to profit from revenue assurance. His consultancy XiT, which seems to share marketing data with GRAPA, is another face. After previously claiming that only telco employees were allowed to join GRAPA – conveniently ignoring that neither Rob Mattison nor any of the admin ‘volunteers’ from XiT happen to be employees of any telco – it seems that rule has been scrapped and now commercial organizations will be allowed to join. I wonder if they will get treated the same as the commercial organization that runs GRAPA. So what is the first commercial organization to join? No, not XiT. It is the ‘Revenue Assurance Academy’. According to GRAPA’s website the Academy is:

“a company dedicated to the development of training and certification standards for revenue assurance professionals and will be working closely with GRAPA to help standardize and raise the quality of available training to consultants, revenue assurance engineers and managers.”

But there is another way to describe the Revenue Assurance Academy. The Revenue Assurance Academy is just another name for XiT, Rob Mattison’s consultancy! No wonder the Academy will be working closely with GRAPA, given that the person who profits from the Academy is none other than the unelected President of GRAPA. What bothers me is that anyone believes this hogwash about being dedicated to anything but making money for Rob Mattison. Lest we forget, Rob is a serial guru. According to his own hype, and his own books, Rob has previously been an expert on object-oriented programming and business intelligence. Which is probably why he is so confident that he is the right man to hand out certificates to those deserving to be considered revenue assurance professionals… and willing to pay him for them. In the style of Rob’s Academy, here is my own blurb for GRAPA, the Academy, Mattison Consulting, XiT and all the other businesses run by Rob and his family:

“another business front dedicated to Rob Mattison’s quest to rule the world of revenue assurance, that will be working closely with other Rob Mattison businesses to mislead honest professionals into giving Rob their money as tribute to his self-proclaimed expertise.”

Do you think if I paid the US$75 fee for corporate members I would still be allowed to join? ;) To be fair to him, by setting his price at a modest 75 bucks, Rob knows not to price himself out of the market…

Eric Priezkalns
Eric Priezkalnshttp://revenueprotect.com

Eric is the Editor of Commsrisk. Look here for more about the history of Commsrisk and the role played by Eric.

Eric is also the Chief Executive of the Risk & Assurance Group (RAG), an association of professionals working in risk management and business assurance for communications providers. RAG was founded in 2003 and Eric was appointed CEO in 2016.

Previously Eric was Director of Risk Management for Qatar Telecom and he has worked with Cable & Wireless, T‑Mobile, Sky, Worldcom and other telcos. He was lead author of Revenue Assurance: Expert Opinions for Communications Providers, published by CRC Press.

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1 COMMENT

  1. Yes it is RA Manager again, and for once I agree with you. This is just another of these cheap organisation that take money from individuals new to the area and will give RA a bad name…I will contribute to your membership fee if that is ok.

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