Interview: R. Fred Houston, CEO of Columbia Ultimate

A. I got involved in the collection industry in 1977 when I was managing collections for several retail stores. I joined Columbia Ultimate as a consultant in 1985 to help grow the company. That was when the collection industry started to embrace technology and great innovations were starting to take shape in the market.

A. After my initial tenure at Columbia Ultimate, I left to start The Intelitech Group. The mission with The Intelitech Group was to continue fostering innovation with systems and technology to help clients increase efficiency in their collection efforts. But we realized that systems and technology alone were not going to make them more effective. Clients needed to know how to use the information in order to make their businesses more effective. The way to do that is through analytics. At that time, there were no other firms in the market focused on helping businesses mine the data and use information to make better decisions. We saw a great niche in the marketplace.

Larry Bair approached me with an opportunity to return to Columbia Ultimate to serve as president. Because of the strong synergy between The Intelitech Group and Columbia Ultimate, it came as a natural next step in my career to return to Columbia Ultimate and help lead the company into the next stage of growth. I was also very eager to return to work with the people and clients that made such a positive impact during my initial years at the company.

A. Understanding the importance of having software support the objectives of management at collection agencies. The value-adds are the strategies and the leadership of the business. Columbia Ultimate software has the functionality for management to define the business logic vs. being driven by the software.

A. I am in a much better position to understand the challenges faced by collection agencies, which led us to develop as an example, Collector Talk. Collection agencies need to continually train their collectors and they need to be aware of compliance changes. At the ACA, I've participated in PDMS programs and continue to attend ACA classes, get involved in the committees and contribute a significant amount of time to the organization.

A. Technology has made a huge difference but at times we focus too much on technology for the sake of technology and not enough on the needs of businesses and their clients. While we have embraced the technology to serve our clients, the business world today is very much driven by the MIS staff, with the technical team driving decisions for the business rather than buying software for business reasons and having the software support the business.

We also suffer from information pollution. There is plethora of database solutions but our industry still struggles with making it work effectively to get the right information we need. We put more investment in spending on data that doesn't help speed up or enhance the recovery process.

The agency or collector really needs to understand "can they pay; can't they pay - will they pay or won't they pay." There needs to be accurate contact information but so much other information is unnecessary.

Data scrubbing is critical. There is a science of the right information in the hands of the right collector providing them the right contact that leads to the right resolution.

A. Having the right software that supports your business strategy and is flexible and feature-rich to accommodate various market compliance needs such as medical, utilities and litigation can make a significant difference in productivity and overall success of your organization. The wrong software can be extremely costly and ineffective.

A. As a leading provider of solutions and services for a wide range of collection markets; we need to continuously understand and keep pace with rapid changes of technology, the complexity of compliance issues and ever changing laws. Identity theft is also making it harder to obtain data. Our goal is to continuously find ways to help our clients better serve their clients.

A. In the next 10 years compliance and litigation will become a greater burden for collection agencies. We will see a tighter integration between the various technological tools - imaging, dialer and software. The ARM industry will also need to be more innovative and yet comply with laws to make more contacts in order to continue to be successful. There will be a greater emphasis and concern for the care of employees. It is very exciting to take advantage of technology and help our clients apply it to their business to improve results and ultimately make their jobs easier.