Fidelis In the news
For Immediate Release
Starting From
Scratch
When a
new collection agency starts with a blank slate, technology can give
it distinct advantage over more entrenched firms.
Management guru
Peter
Drucker once wrote that a company
evaluating a line of business should ask itself, "If we did not
already do this, would we go into it now?" In collections, a better
question might be, "If we did not already collect this way, would we
choose the same technology we use now?"
John
McNamara , 20-year collection industry
veteran and most recently chief operating officer of
Asset
Management Outsourcing Inc., recently
established
Fidelis Recovery Solutions Inc. with
cofounder
Bret
Crandall, formerly director of operational
support for
Focus
Receivables Management LLC. Rare in an
industry built on legacy technology, the pair made IT decisions from
scratch with the philosophy of keeping both corporate and technical
infrastructure lean and mean. First launched with eight collectors in
mid-July, Fidelis plans to staff 50 by early 2007.
Built to
target debt buyers, the Atlanta-based shop installed the
Windows-based collection system from
Latitude Software (formerly
Global
Software Services Inc.) and a dialer from
Dial Connection Inc. that includes IVR,
text-to-speech, and digital on-demand recording. Both run on SQL
databases.
Collection Technology Associate Editor
Mike
Sherrill spoke with McNamara about the
premise for establishing the new company and his plan for garnering
business. Following are a portion of his comments.
COLLECTION TECHNOLOGY: What advantages does
technology bring to a fledgling company?
JOHN
MCNAMARA: It seems like you collect a
dollar but you need to spend most of that to cover your overhead. In
building this place, we wanted the least possible amount of corporate
infrastructure. We picked partners based on their ability to do just
that.
If you
went back 120 years ago, companies had experts in electricity — chief
electricity officers, if you will — because it was such a new thing
you actually needed executive leadership to manage that resource. If
you roll the clock forward, I think people are going to look back at
our time and say, "Isn’t it quaint and old fashioned that people
actually had a C-IT-O?"
CT:
How will your technological choices help you
win business from debt buyers?
JM:
As the debt buyer purchases from the original
creditor, each time there’s a transaction there’s a little less
margin to work with. The operation costs of collecting are the
operation costs of collecting, but what is there that we could
eliminate if we started from scratch? The elephant in the room is a
large corporate infrastructure.
CT:
If you wanted lean infrastructure, why not just
choose an application service provider?
JM:
If we weren’t planning on growing
significantly, I think we would have gone with [a] hosted [solution].
If you really want to grow and really have that optimism, I think you
want your own servers. From our perspective, [per-seat charges] can
get a little pricey. Servers these days are fairly cheap; networking
is fairly cheap. And we really like the idea of being able to grow to
a significant scale where typically our only IT need is going to be
desktop support. To me, that’s nirvana.
CT:
Aside from lean infrastructure, what else did
you want from your collection tech?
JM:
I started in this business as a collector, and
what was important to me was something easy and intuitive to teach
collectors to use. In a business where 80% annual turnover is a
decent number, you better have a system that is very easy and quick
to get your folks up to speed on.
The
system we picked here, the other afternoon, I, John McNamara the
non-tech guy, loaded 63,000 accounts myself — just drag and drop,
point and click. This is how it should be. I shouldn’t have to hire a
programmer to load business.
CT:
How else can a new system benefit your
collectors?
JM:
If you have the right dialer technology and you
have an IVR, or use a hosted IVR, you can manage more contacts with
fewer people. Not only do you not need as many collectors, you’re
driving more revenue and more pay to your collectors. That means
their chances of turning over in this high-turnover industry really
go down.
A lot of
us folks in the upper management of the industry came in on paper
cards and ledger accounts. We were excited when they took away our
ledger cards and gave us one of those green screen CRT tubes, but it
was exciting because it was new technology. A lot of the collectors
coming in today are looking at stuff their grandfathers used. How
exciting is that?
CT:
How important is it to allow debtors to self-cure?
JM:
Debtors are doing that already, but they’re much more likely
to do it on small-balance accounts. When you work those accounts, you
want to be the easiest people in the world to pay. If I could figure
out a way for people to shovel chickens or garage sale stuff into a
phone and have cash come out the other end, I’d do it.
Mr. McNamara can be reached at
770-715-9540 or by email at
jmcnamara@fidelisrs.com.
Mr. Crandall can be reached at
770-317-3973 or by email at
bcrandall@fidelisrs.com.
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