The selection of a software solution for an agency with 1,000 seats or more is probably one of the most important decisions a collection agency management team can make. Not only must the selection team pick a solution that meets the demands of the type of debt they collect but consideration must be afforded to workflow management, product usability, and product support. Here is a checklist that can help the software selection team make sure that software in question offers some of the numerous functionalities available in today’s top products.

____ Can automate routine tasks that will maximize staff productivity.
____ Allows the establishment of a comprehensive disaster recovery infrastructure.
____ Features an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) that simplifies collection tasks for the organization, resulting in lower training costs, reduced trouble-shooting, and greater overall efficiency.
____ Features configurable business rules allowing the change of processes when desired to react nimbly to changing business requirements.
____ Features visual flowcharts making design and the deployment of collection processes easy.
____ Features a system that allows the user to determine which debt to outsource, to whom to outsource it, and then compare productivity throughout the recovery process.
____ Features real-time visibility at multiple levels, giving the team the power to track statistics relative to goals and quota. A dashboard can then define statistics against remaining working days and provide figures required to meet goals as well as month, year, and inception to date figures.
____ If debt is bought and sold, the entire debt purchase and receivables sales cycle can be tracked and managed.
____ Provides tools for managing geography specific restrictions such as: call times, state specific bad check fees, and state or local sales tax.
____ Includes a bundle of management reports that provide real-time data needed to develop strategy and monitor overall performance. Reports can be customized while their creation and delivery can be automated.

____ Provides a comprehensive view of operations and agent performance.
____ Features a secure web portal that provides stakeholders visibility into operational metrics and service-level agreements while administrator authority lets the user control the parameters of what stakeholders see.
____ Provides the ability to process check and credit card transactions in real-time. Payments can be processed during the collection call while providing the account representative with a real-time approval or decline.
____ Features management-driven work queues that allow the establishment and prioritization of multiple queues for each account representative. The work queues can also be updated based on collection productivity.
____ Letter generation can be automated. Letter printing intervals can be established for each letter based on pre-structured business rules and all letter distributions are automatically noted to the debtors account.
____ Features bankruptcy tracking to ensure applicable bankruptcy data is up to date. Accounts are automatically updated based on credit bureau data to ensure compliance. Manual notation is also possible at both the collection and management levels.