Introduction To Working With Collect!

Once you have you have your Company Details, Operator IDs, Client info and debtor accounts entered, you may be wondering what to do next. This is one of the most common questions new agencies ask. This Working With Collect! section is aimed to restructure the general question into the specific, component parts it actually translates to.

What job functions do you want teams of your staff to be responsible for? This will define your user levels.

Who will be the Systems Administrator, responsible for configuring, updating and maintaining system settings and processes?

Who will manage data entry/clerical and will they also be managing data entry for financials/accounting/client statements?

Who will be in charge of daily processes like printing letters, batch processes and reports?

What company standards, i.e. structured audit processes, portfolio workplans/inventory management, contact attempt minimums, collector performance/metrics, client performance/metrics and analytics, etc. do we want to set now that we have a system that can implement, manage and track these standards?

The first priority should be to get your collectors working. They are your bottom line and interrupting their routines as little as possible is going to allow your conversion onto Collect! to be smooth and stress free. Once your collectors are satisfactorily navigating debtor screens and accessing their WIP lists, you can turn your attentions to the other operational decisions that need to be made for maximum benefit of the system to be realized.

Training operators to use Collect! is the easiest of your tasks if you keep the steps simple. Because the Operator setup and Operator Level Access Rights control user permissions directly, you don't have to bombard your staff with a lot of rules of what they can and cannot do. This has already been addressed at the system level. They will be free to do exactly what you permit them to do and nothing else. Collectors moving on to a new system all want to know the same things;

• Where are my files?
• How do I get to my New Business? my Money files? my Broken promises?
• How do I move around this screen with the least amount of keystrokes and typing?
• How do I make notes?

• How do I diarize my account for the next work date?

Our experience has shown that best results come from keeping training sessions to an hour or less, then let them work with what they've been shown. As their comfort and confidence levels rise, you can add in the advanced class topics that maximize efficiency.

Working With Collect! topics are arranged according to the types of operators you may have working for you. Everyone needs to know how to use the WIP List, to find debtors, to make notes and schedule a follow-up contact. Accounting, collection management, operations management, systems administration and executive management tasks are more specialized and require separate, specialized training.

Accounting/data entry tasks may belong to users who will never speak to a debtor. Their tasks should be trained separately from the rest of the office. Upper Management and Systems Administration should be included in this training at least in the overview stages so that the output from this critical department is fully understood in terms of how it is gathered and what inferences should be made from the direct output. These tasks include the Client entry/impact of the Advanced screen settings, Transaction Type Payment Hierarchy and how these decisions affect payment transactions, Flat Commission Rates, Commission Rate Plans, production of Daily Totals versus Daily Cash Reports, Company and Collector Commissions, Statements, and accounting/ analysis of outside agency costs and charges.

Depending on the size of your organization, Management topics may be speaking directly to a small core group of individuals OR, may span across many department heads in Collection, Operations, System Administration/IT and Executive Management. No matter your size or number of department heads involved, area managers should become conversant with those aspects of the system which are utilized specifically by their employees and have reasonable familiarity with the processes and features utilized by related departments where said related departments' work has direct impact on their own areas.

It can be this simple; accounting/clerical staff look after inputting the debtors and accounting for the revenue, collectors make contact with the debtors to generate the revenue, and management analyzes the performance from whole-company to per collector and makes the strategy adjustments that are necessary to continue to increase revenue and competitive edge.

See Also

- Quick User's Guide
- Access Rights - Default Settings
- Training Manual Main Index
- Setup Topics
- Using the Help System
- Data Entry Topics
- How to Enter a New Debtor
- Management Topics
- Topics Collections
- WIP List Topics
- How to Group Debtors