Concept Owner: Testing the Mission of Revenue Assurance

Anneli is a concept owner for a large multi-national telecommunications company. GRAPA staff writer Kathy B. was curious to learn what a concept owner was and, Anneli, who attended training in Madrid, was good enough to take time during the training to explain her role; a title she believes is unique in the industry. Anneli has been working with the same company for more than twelve years. “I started with finance and then accounting for other operations internationally. I have had many different positions within that area: accounting, account manager and key account negotiating with other operators.” Anneli has been involved in revenue assurance for about four years.

Anneli herself says she has never heard of anyone with this title and she defines her role as a concept owner; “We are an organization that has many operations in many different countries so there are central functions and there are local functions. The concept owner defines the requirements for revenue assurance, what we are going to assure and areas we should focus on.” Anneli clarifies, “It’s more than being a coordinator as you are creating a vision of what the desired outcomes are and creating benchmarks within the different operations. I am not involved with the operational end of revenue assurance. The concept owner tests the requirements and mission of the revenue assurance within the company.”

Anneli attended classes during the Manager Training week in Madrid. “I am enjoying this training. There has been lots of interesting discussion and information exchanged. I will be taking what I have heard here, and re-thinking a lot of things,” she explains. The most intriguing outcome of the training for her is seeing everyone suddenly grasp techniques and ideas that they would like to try. “Now we need to go back and discuss some new ideas with our management,” she says.

Anneli felt the biggest challenge, and something that the trainees talked about, is the basket of disparate tasks often handed to revenue assurance staff. “In our company, we have many different organizations and services. We cannot cover everything all at once.” She sees the challenge as setting goals in a measured and detailed way and developing (sometimes small) steps to reach them. She also sees delegation and providing support for the operational teams as part of the strategy. Anneli found discussion about budgeting, revenue assurance systems and tools for revenue assurance interesting and useful.

“The most important thing I’ll be taking back from this training is a framework of standards. We can then decide to work according to the standard or adapt the standards to the individual situation,” she says. “Perhaps we are not exactly deciding on the process of revenue assurance, but developing a basis for what it could be. And what it could be is very different from how my organization is doing things presently,” she reflects.

Anneli was very interested in hearing the other trainees’ ideas and experiences. She plans to earn her GRAPA certification with a focus on network controls, as she is able to attend trainings in other parts of the world. “But right now, I’m looking forward to going home and redoing everything,” she laughs.

The GRAPA Blog features profiles of attendees of GRAPA training and GRAPA members.