Enterprise Contact Management: One Place for All of Your Data

The FTC in late October 2010 levied a large fine against a collection agency for continually calling wrong phone numbers in attempts to collect debt (“FTC Settles Charges Against Collection Agency for $1.75 million,” Oct. 22).

In the agency’s response to the fine, it said that it had identified the need for a more robust data management system to avoid calling wrong numbers, and that they had begun implementing that system before the news of the settlement hit. This is a very large collection operation across multiple call centers across the world.

I can’t help but think that the LexisNexis® Enterprise Contact Management solution might have helped this agency update its records in a more efficient way.

The concept of master data management is nothing new in IT circles. But we’ve identified a need in the ARM industry for a data solution that will allow agents in multiple locations to access the most up-to-date information, especially contact data. And I’m not talking about data from information providers like LexisNexis Risk Solutions; I’m talking about an organization’s own data.

In the LexisNexis Enterprise Contact Management solution, an organization’s contact data is hosted on our servers. But it is not comingled with any other data. So companies that subscribe can access and, more importantly, update the data at their discretion.

This means that a credit card collector working an account from Michigan for the second time might find different contact information for the same consumer they worked just two months ago. Why? Because a skip tracer in Georgia found the debtor’s updated information when they were working a telecom account, and updated the data in the ECM accordingly. In theory, nearly all enterprise-wide contact databases work this way, even across multiple sites. But in practice, users, training, and even interfaces specific to the location can create a lack of symmetry when updating information.

A hosted solution, with a singular interface, can help solve this problem. Add to that a uniform training procedure and all of the agents with access to the database will be updating information in real time in the same way.

This solution is probably best suited for medium to large size ARM firms; organizations that have multiple locations using the same data and a high volume of accounts across many different debt types.

We designed our solution to save clients money on, ironically enough, skip tracing. When attempting to collect a debt, a company should not have to skip locate every single time. With an effective enterprise contact management solution, ARM firms can rely on work already done by someone else in their organization.

David Noll is a Product Manager responsible for developing Batch Solutions for the Collections and Recovery Industry in the LexisNexis® Risk Solutions group. Having worked at LexisNexis for over 19 years, David has worked in all three areas of the business from Legal Data to News Data to Public Records Data. David has worked almost exclusively with Batch Products since moving over to LexisNexis Risk Solutions in 2000. David is responsible for the product lifecycle of several key Batch Solutions in Waterfall Phones, Possible Litigious Debtor and Enterprise Contact Management.