Qualco along with MasterCard aims to build expertise and differentiate its product “Qualco Collections”, offering  strategic ,value-based services and providing a true value proposition to its customers.

As the approach to debt management has changed significantly over the past few years and debt management is not limited to customers who have already become delinquent but it can also enable proactive management of a customer at risk even before he becomes delinquent, the use of an advanced collections system is now the most sophisticated way to manage customers and use it to go even further. The ultimate goal should be to bring delinquent customers back to a position where they are able to buy additional products and services and if not, then  to ensure that the collections costs do not exceed the recovered debt and ensure a positive return to the organization.

Dr. Orestis Tsakalotos, Qualco’s CEO delivered a speech (download zipped Word file) on the session "Technological Innovations - Looking ahead to 2020 - The business perspective". Qualco also participated as a sponsor.

Trust Center is one of the largest bad debt portfolio management companies with the most important financial organizations, telcos and retailers as customers.

The challenge:

Trust Center required a state-of-the art solution to integrate and optimize overdue debt management operations, setting as a main prerequisite the achievement of five operational targets:

• Agent productivity improvement.
• Standardization: Implementation of common debt portfolio management processes with the necessary adaptations per customer category.
• Flexibility: Ability to constantlydevelop and improve collection strategies, according to changes in operational needs, and the regulatory framework.
• Scalability: Ability for the solutionto follow the company’s customer growth rate.
• Monitoring: Ability to monitor processes, strategy efficiency and agent productivity.

The solution:

Trust Center selected “Qualco Collections” by Qualco because it fully met the company’s operational needs with a highly competitive cost. In particular, the flexibility offered by Qualco's solution was an important competitive advantage compared to other solutions, since it provides the overall picture of the customer and allows Implementation, Testing and Application of new strategies quite easily. “This is an important ability because we need to take advantage of our ideas fast due to the rapidly changing needs of the market. We were very pleased with our choice because we managed to lay the right foundations for standardizing and automating overdue debt management. This highly contributed to the achievement of our quantitative and qualitative goals, enhancing our reliability and our customers” said Panagiotis Roboras Trust Center’s CEO.

“The installation was successfully completed in April 2007. It is worth noting that everything was implemented within the estimated time and budget. “The proper people were involved from both sides, and the experience gained during individual implementation drastically contributed to a reduction in time for the next customer. We believe that it was a project properly managed, which enhanced our self-confidence as we moved towards its implementation”.

The results:

The portfolio management process has been standardized and automated using multiple qualitative and quantitative criteria of debt portfolio management. These criteria ensure that debtors are handled according to their payment potential, thus increasing significantly collectability indices. Agents’ productivity increase exceeded 40% and a more effective management of our customer relationships was achieved with substantially benefits on quality and cost issues. Collection managers can now easily create "flows”, prioritize accounts depending on the risk level, control costs, and determine the level at which decisions are to be taken. For every customer distinct collection strategies are applied continuously improving efficiency and profitability.

Trust Center estimates to depreciate the investment in less than a year, since it has significantly improved agents' productivity resulting in a higher amount of cases per agent, while reducing the management cost per euro paid.

The event focused on the following areas:

• Data to information and information to business results
• COO's Panel
• Compliance & Risk Management
• Banking IT systems Architecture. Banking transformation, present and future
• Business strategy and information technology development strategy for banking activities outside the Greek area
• CIO's Panel

The need for a proactive and effective risk management, and risk-related reduction, along with current quality improvement policies for the services provided, played a decisive role and raised the importance and, consequently, illustrated the necessity for debt collection departments within banks. Also, high-profile banks nowadays acknowledge that beyond the streamlining of delayed debts the opportunity for systematic improvements in profitability through efficiency increase and collection process cost cuts, as well as through the control and optimal management of the related portfolio, emerges. Furthermore, if the deadline of Basel II for the overall bad debt reduction from 6% in Greece to 3%, the European mean, is taken into account, then the need for adopting specialized IT systems to manage outstanding debts becomes imperative.

Collection systems constitute an indispensable business tool for financial organizations, which manage debts due in the order of 8-10%, and telecommunication services providers and retailers that systematically confront delays in bill or installment payments. The problem is particularly acute in developing countries where customers’ details and background data are often poor or inaccurate, and the related legislation has not been adapted yet. These systems allow debt portfolio management using multiple quantity and quality criteria, and ensure that debtors will be addressed according to debt and customer categories. In this way, a significant increase in collection indices is achieved and current customers are better retained.

Qualco has developed and markets Qualco Collections, an advanced, integrated and fully customer-centered debt due portfolio management, ideal for dynamic organizations managing multiple financial products. The product focuses both on programming and decision making needs at an administrative level, and on wide support of daily collection processes. This makes Qualco Collections a core-business system, a leader in its field.

Qualco Collections offers flexibility and large-scale functionality, supporting traditional practices and strategies, as well as new and emerging trends in collection practices. The product incorporates multiple business intelligence subsystems to directly provide precise and properly visualized information to the management in a dynamic and fully interactive manner. Finally, the system has great scalability guaranteeing the smooth management of practically infinite number of cases with corresponding settlers, and ensuring the following business benefits:

• Effective risk management at customer and product levels
• Significant collection increase
• Tangible settler productivity improvement
• Collection process optimization
• Significant collection cost reduction
• Objective and transparent evaluation of the organization's strategies, settlers and external partners (legal and collectors).

Despite its short history, Qualco Collections has been already functioning with great success at EFG Eurobank (Greece, Romania, Poland, Serbia and Bulgaria) and the National Bank of Greece, as well as at major collection companies, thus changing radically traditional collection practices.

So far, ad hoc business needs have determined which investments will be made and which infrastructures will be developed. This resulted in fragmentarily implemented complicated systems, hard to manage and extend, with high maintenance and operation costs. But, most importantly, it led to inflexible infrastructures hard to adjust to the ever-changing business needs.

Lack of every-day operational processes and new, stiff demands of organizations (new products, compliance to international regulations etc.) have raised the value of long-term strategic development planning, and investment in IT infrastructure.

International trends show the need for aligning IT to the overall business planning. This will contribute to determining the role of IT, direct decisions on actions and investment, and, most significantly, estimate the effects and the real value of decisions. In this way, architectural planning in terms both of applications and of infrastructures will ensure the interrelation of business needs with investment in IT infrastructure. Then, project implementation will be standardized through processes ensuring the effectiveness, efficiency and exploitation of the entire infrastructures. Optimum priority management of business needs and provision of related services in the time and at the level specified are crucial issues to be addressed in the years to come. This reflects the new role of IT in the field of company competitiveness.

Following international developments towards this new approach, Qualco, based on best practices, has developed an original methodology to address IT infrastructure. Using this model, every organization can identify the maturity level of its infrastructures (computer rooms, networks and telecommunications, warehouse systems, system services, IT policies and processes), and plan long-term improvements. Then, Qualco undertakes the implementation of appropriate action guaranteeing the deadlines and total costs agreed through a strict project management and monitoring process.

Qualco, aiming to address the customers’ emerging needs to comply with international regulations at the level of security and business continuity, has invested in human resources and technologies. In fact, Qualco has implemented DisasterRecovery & BusinessContinuity projects in large-sized organizations.

This new orientation transforms IT from a simple cost center into a business growth accelerator with clear objectives and measurable results in a company’s operation. The benefits from making a successful common strategy on infrastructures and operational systems are apparent and multi-faceted.