Next week we'll be heading out to Las Vegas to attend the 13th annual DBA International conference. While preparing for this trip it seemed like a great time to address the subject of outsourcing collections. So over the next couple of weeks we are going to dedicate several entries covering specific operational processes associated with outsourcing agency and legal collections.
For many debt purchasers and original creditors outsourcing accounts is a large portion (or their entire) collection strategy. With the right attorney firm & agency partners and the correct procedures in place this can be a very effective and profitable approach to collecting on a portfolio of accounts. However, if the process is not managed well, it can be quite costly and labor intensive eating into the overall profitability of your portfolios or collection efforts.
Beginning with this initial entry on Assignment of Inventory the key operational processes we want to focus on in this series are:
Today management of your entire available inventory at all times is vital to driving revenue. As more debt enters the marketplace management of the available Statute of Limitations is critical to maximizing your collectable inventory. First of all how to identify which accounts within your inventory should even be outsourced to begin with. This varies from organization to organization and may even vary depending on which client or business entity they are collecting on behalf of. Depending on your staff's skill set this is usually accomplished through a series of data queries or manual spreadsheet reviews. Once the accounts have been identified they need to be assigned out to your attorney firm partners. There are several factors that influence which partner attorney firm an account should be placed with. Some of these factors include the geographical coverage area of the firm, balance range, how many total accounts are currently placed with the firm, how many accounts have been placed with the firm in the curare currently placed with the firm, just to name a few. Trying to manage this process manually has two impacts on an organization - additional costs and delayed placements. Depending on the volume of accounts that need to be placed and the number of attorney firm partners that you are placing with these costs and delays can be very high.
An organization can avoid these delays and costs by applying automation to these processes. Cogent's Enterprise Forwarding Manager (EFM) allows an organization to build rules at both the firm and client level that let's your software regularly evaluate your inventory of accounts and identify what should be placed with either an outside collection agency or attorney firm. Using a GUI based rule wizard non-technical resources can build and maintain this logic and execute the evaluations either on-demand or on a defined schedule ensuring a consistent and efficient result.
After identifying which accounts should be outsourced to either legal or agency channels, EFM will systematically assign these accounts to your attorney firms and agency partners based on detailed Receiver profiles that define attributes of accounts that can be placed to them. For instance, the geographical coverage area, balance range, debt type, age, SOL, score, maximum volume, and several other factors in a matter of moments. Once the initial assignments have been made you have the capability of reviewing the assignment results as well as details of the accounts assigned to each receiver. All or portions of the assignments are accepted by the user and at that point, placements files are ready to be generated. After the accounts are placed, EFM workflow rules drive the life cycle of the account righ on through the PIF, recall and close process capabilities.
EFM helps organizations receive revenue sooner and increase their bottom line by reducing the length of time and number of resources needed to identify and assign accounts to outsourcing partners. The objective of these functions is to give the debt buyer or creditor the ability to get accounts that should be outsourced out the door and working sooner.
This is one of many examples of how EFM can make your outsourced collections more effective and profitable. In our next entry we will focus on the value of EFM's Receiver import & export tools that enable you to create placement, and maintenance files and import data results from your outsourced partners. To find out more about Cogent and EFM contact us today to schedule a demo and see it in action.