Owen - Principal Business & Technology Specialist

Owen Atkinson – Principal Business & Technology Specialist

My collections and recoveries career started early

In fact, I was still studying for my A levels when I first started work at Orange Telecommunications as a collections representative.

Throughout my time there, my technical knowledge and capacity to understand and pick up business processes saw me move fairly quickly to collections dialler manager and then on to the Tallyman team. Soon we created a “Collections Systems Hub”, where our team housed the Collections system (Tallyman), dialler and all reporting and MI for Collections and Recoveries.

Throughout this period, I was part of the dialler upgrade to a new Genesys platform as well as being solely responsible for business and corporate collections strategy end-to-end. Before long, the team moved into Credit Risk where a full holistic view could be managed from in-life and pre-delinquency, right the way through to write-off and debt sale, and we were responsible for strategy, system and underlying business numbers such as churn, DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) and provision.

After telecommunications I moved into the Utility industry at Npower, where I managed the Tallyman and the Bad Debt Charge teams, carrying out much of the same activities and responsibilities as within Orange but expanding my knowledge into further industries and the regulations they face. Throughout my time at Npower I worked on a number of projects such as introducing digital into Collections and working with the newly developed Credit Risk teams on delivering the PowerCurve suite for decisioning across all aspects of the portfolio from acquisition to collections.

Why I moved to Arum

After nearly 10 years in Collections and Recoveries, predominantly in large corporate organisations, I felt it was time for a change. Arum were recruiting at the time and I had a chat with our now Managing Director, Andy. Within 30 minutes I was sold on Arum, its beliefs, the way it ran and where it saw itself in the market.

With a relatively young family, the travel aspect was a big discussion point, but we decided it was a great move and a great opportunity for my career; and I have never looked back.

What I love about working at Arum

Throughout my 4 years at Arum, I have been involved with a wide variety of projects and clients. These opportunities have enabled my growth as a consultant, allowing me to continually learn new things and progress my career in Collections and Recoveries. Forging new relationships with people is one of the biggest highlights of a consultancy career and can be extremely rewarding.

The key reason I love working for Arum is that I enjoy it. Every day is different; between business and systems consultancy, covering all aspects of Collections & Recoveries from pre-delinquency to write-off and debt sale, rarely are 2 days the same and every project I have been involved in has been different. The Arum attitude and culture is to go above and beyond whether it be for a client or to help and support Arum colleagues, and it is a pleasure to work alongside the Arum team:we truly have a great mix of people here.

What the future holds

I have recently been promoted to a Principal Consultant, extending my responsibilities within Arum further into leading teams on sites to deliver, account management aspects and pre-sales activity. This is a great opportunity in my career journey and I am already really enjoying it.

Having the flexibility to reach out to prospective clients and begin to develop relationships not only from a personal perspective but also from an Arum perspective is amazing and I welcome more of this kind of activity going forward.