Roman Lenzen

In a previous post I laid out the process to create the collections database and initial collections analytics during acquisition.  This post will focus on how to utilize the database and analytics within proactive communications in order to optimize collection efforts then the ongoing tracking and enhancements required. 

1.       Treatment Strategies: Analytics alone will not enhance collections efforts.  The predictive analytics and segmentation systems must be converted into actionable treatment strategies which will 1)reduce the cost of collections and 2)ultimately, minimize the outstanding debt through increased collection payments.  Treatment examples which need to be setup and tied to each individual collections customers include (again, these are examples)

Customer insights are best delivered in a visual fashion, so the business constituencies may easily digest the information in terms they understand.  To enhance your visualizations, and bring them up to warp speed, a time dimension should be added.  Adding a time dimension to your insights allows your audience -

• To better understand current performance in context with previous performance,
• better enables the ability to identify effects on performance,  
• gets the audience more engaged allowing them to better digest the information,
• shows trends not available in static insights / reports without time dimensions and
• potentially allows the audience to visualize future short term forecasts based on previous cycles and event impacts

Adding a fourth dimension (time) to your insights is becoming easier-and-easier at reduced costs.  As an example, the Google reporting and graph API may be used to...

Online ad spend is predicted to reach $100 Billion in 5 years, up from $61 Billion in 2010.  Who is best poised to tap into that incremental online advertising revenue, other than the advertisers?

Paid search aside, which is dominated by the behemoths (Google & Yahoo), it will be those firms who can store online data, analyze it quickly and make the insights actionable within all channels in order to make the advertising more relevant to the consumer.  Those industries that are best poised include:

“When I can't see clearly, I know you’re still there.

When darkness swarms around me, I know you’re still there.”

When it comes to online footprints we are starting to see the light and it’s old technology that is slowly illuminating those footprints and tying the steps together effectively so analytic consultants like myself may convert that data into actionable insights.

Many online tracking systems predominantly use javaScript tags and cookies to track online behaviors and tie individual user’s sessions together over time.  This was a nice way to track 10 years ago when all devices that accessed the Internet were hard-lined computers with out of the box browsers with JavaScript and cookies auto-enabled.  However, many different devices now-a-days access the Internet (some of which do not handle JavaScript and cookies) and consumers are becoming more Internet and browser...