Having your debt collections cake and eating it, too

Banks, telcos, utilities and other industries striving to maintain a competitive edge face an ongoing dilemma—how to scale their debt collections capabilities and improve success rates without the lengthy traditional technology deployments and operational investment models. Not an easy thing to do. In fact, it’s a bit like having your cake and eating it, too.

Modernizing the debt collections function is a case in point. Companies are looking for solutions that deliver the following advantages:

• Rich functionally and flexibility, along with fast implementation
• Scalability to meet current and future business needs based on increasing or decreasing collection volumes
• Superior customer experience, delivering robust data, analytics and visibility across product line accounts to help customers avoid defaults and default outcomes
• Multi-channel capabilities, so that companies and customers can establish preferred modes of interaction and, in the process, build greater loyalty and longer-term relationships
• Compliance with frequently changing government regulations and rules

In addition, companies want the icing on the cake—a business case that justifies their budget outlays while avoiding added infrastructure costs and the risks of technology obsolescence.

Functionality and flexibility. Implementation simplicity and low cost. Tall orders, indeed, but not impossible.

Open technologies, like Java, are making today’s debt collection solutions more flexible and adaptable to specific customer needs. In addition, cloud platforms facilitate rapid solution deployment and scalability. Add a robust help desk to the mix and you have a solution that delivers all of the advantages above, creating strong competitive advantage.

Other important capabilities to look for include:

• Pre-defined workflows to get collections operations up and running quickly—and to quickly begin seeing a return on the technology investment (these “fast to market” initial strategies can be refined as business needs evolve)
• Standardized approach to service desk support, combining support levels, hours of service, contact routes and more (this eliminates the need for lengthy engagement service negotiations, streamlining a potentially cumbersome process and cutting the time needed to “go live” with a collections solution)
• Predictable costs based on a single stand-up cost and monthly run cost

Having one’s cake and eating it, too remains one of life’s persistent challenges. However, more businesses are getting a “taste” for what it’s like to achieve this in the collections space through new advanced end-to-end collections solutions. The above recipe for the ideal solution is a start to success.

CGI, a global leader in technology solutions for default management, collections and recoveries, invests in innovation and partnerships to develop collections-focused roadmaps for the future. We designed our CACS Cloud collections solution, in particular, with the above requirements in mind. This managed services collections solution can be quickly deployed and easily scaled and has a low investment entry point. If you want to learn more, let’s have a conversation to discuss what’s possible.