Debt collection is a challenge for many businesses and a ‘squeezed’ economy can further impact organisations and their efforts to recover monies owed to them. TransUnion is addressing this challenge with the launch of their Collections Manager solution.
In collaboration with Precision Collect, TransUnion has created a solution for businesses to optimise debt collections, increase profits and address critical business issues.
“Collections Manager is ideal for any business with a credit book. Bad debt can damage the business and impair its ability to stay competitive, so it’s important to equip your collections team with the tools to find the right balance between a consumer’s ability and willingness to pay,” says Jarrod McElhinney, director of decisioning business development at TransUnion. “This is crucial when collecting as resource wastage on uncollectable debt is extremely high. Conversely, a great collection strategy can result in reduced write-offs and improved recovery rates.”
“An effective debt recovery solution is not possible without data, and this solution integrates directly with data held at TransUnion,” said Wayne Penny, manager at Precision Collect, “Without this kind of data, the cost of collecting could well exceed the amount of debt collected. By combining the latest credit data and collection information with advanced analytics, robust decision-making and sophisticated workflow tools into one easy-to-use hosted management application, Collections Manager makes it easy to create a focused collections strategy.
“It enables businesses to locate debtors faster within the collections lifecycle and improve the bottom line by determining which debtors are most likely to pay and where to focus collections efforts to recover more with less expense.”
The availability of high-quality data enables informed decisions on how to optimise collections processes for efficiency. “Based on the collection models, scores and credit indicator data from TransUnion, it is possible to prioritise an organisation’s collection strategy and manage workload,” says McElhinney. “By segmenting the overdue book into risk categories using a combination of consumer affordability, bureau commitment, and past payment behaviour, Collections Manager can provide a clear view of high, medium and low priority prospects to tailor a collections strategy that will provide the best results.”
“Smaller credit providers have previously gone un-serviced as the majority of available solutions are sold by international vendors, charged for in dollars and require expensive integration and hardware investment to take live,” McElhinney continues. “Given that Collections Manager is a locally hosted solution, it’s possible for organisations to go live with the solution very quickly and cost-effectively without major capital outlay. It’s also seamlessly integrated, and all of the data necessary for segmentation is already in the system. Furthermore, it’s professional and easy to use.”
“Collections Manager also enhances organisational productivity within the collections team by offering more effective reporting,” notes Penny. “With Collections Manager it is possible to track the outcome of every single call placed, the duration of the call as well as monitor the length of time between calls to ensure agent productivity.”
Available as a cloud-based hosted module from TransUnion, no servers are required. Integrated with third party cloud based service providers, this solution enables virtual or field agents to work remotely with a tablet or smartphone, as well as call centre agents working on a dialler, thus offering multi-sided collections capability, which means that a number of agents can work on the same collection, seamlessly. Along with the ability to transfer debt books to an external party, and a self-service login for consumers to check their account balances and payment details, there are also future plans to update Collections Manager to enable consumers to log into their profiles and arrange payment of their debts without having to wait for a collection call.
