Businesses achieve a sustainable advantage over their competition by adapting to Information management systems for an intelligent view of the data. These systems and methods have evolved to what is now known by the broader term “Business Intelligence” or “BI”.

Business Intelligence (BI), also referred to as “decision support,” allows organizations to better understand, analyze, and even predict what’s going to be the future of business units. Business Intelligence (BI) helps the organization turn data into useful and meaningful information and then distribute this information to those that need it, when they need it—so they can make timely and better-informed decisions. It allows organizations to combine data from a wide variety of sources and create an integrated, up-to-date, and 360-degree view. Business Intelligence (BI) enhances communication between departments, coordinates activities, and enables companies to respond more quickly to changes (e.g., in financial conditions, customer preferences, supply chain operations, etc.). In addition, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) helps companies develop consistent and “data-based” business decisions-producing better results than basic decisions on “guesswork.” When an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) system is well-designed and properly integrated into processes as well as decision-making, it results in improvement of the enterprise’s performance.

Evidences of the competitive value of BI and EPM are growing. Fact-based decision making is spreading throughout the enterprise. Good decision making and performance management are keys to business value generation. In the current market conditions there is added pressure on business units to show clearly how and where they are creating or adding value to the enterprises. Furthermore, the corporate focus on IT costs is often driven by the enterprise-wide mandate to ‘do more with less’ and growing demands for compliances. BI and EPM solutions help enterprises with all these aspects of business. They enable answer three key business questions: “How are we doing?”, “Why are we doing this?”, and “What should we be doing next?”. BI and EPM provide operational managers and employees with actionable business intelligence, i.e. information that is both relevant and timely. BI and EPM help enterprises to rack up impressive ROI figures, identify cost-cutting ideas, uncover business opportunities and roll ERP data into accessible reports.

Using Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) tool throughout the enterprise, allows success and improves the quality of business decisions. It enables businesses to quantify corporate performance measures and identify & overcome issues linked to monitoring & control. This tool also provides alert mechanisms to achieve effective performance management. Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solutions can identify the cross effect of performance of one level, activity, or process, to another level or process within the organization. Direct correlation allows for accurate analysis and problem solving. By using this solution, enterprises can establish corporate strategy and effectively communicate and monitor related activities to ensure that the entire organization is focused on the Performance Matrix.

With BI and EPM, enterprises obtain more specific view of corporate data and perform data mining, which helps to uncover relationships and patterns present in data gathered so far. Secondly, BI and EPM efficiently support management processes, also making information collection and dissemination faster and more efficient, which increases flexibility and accelerates enterprise’s adjustment to market demands.

e-Zest’s dedicated unit (SBU) of BI & EPM consultants, Stractive Consulting www.stractive.com is focused to offer Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solutions. It helps our clients to achieve the optimum value from their investment in legacy systems from a management view and then drill all the way down to the granular view. With proven methodologies, in-depth expertise, and industry specialization, Stractive Consulting delivers actionable and measurable business results that simplify decision-making, optimize IT efficiency, and improve business performance.

Global Technologies, India’s leading Business Magazine has covered e-Zest’s fourth time consecutive and successful participation in CeBIT 2010 at Hannover, Germany. The article has spotlighted an exclusive interview by Ashish Gupta, Director & Founder and the success story of e-Zest Solutions Ltd. till date.

Cloud computing has opened the world of new opportunities for Information Technology Industry. The enterprises are quite optimistic about this new buzz. Cloud computing as a “computing model”, has changed the way enterprises used to look into accomplish their IT hardware and software requirements.  

We know that Cloud computing is a style of computing that uses the Internet to deliver various IT-related services. The core advantage of Cloud service is, it directly eliminates the extra cost and cuts downs the time involved in buying, selling and setting up the software. Cloud computing provides a quick way of adding new servers and hosting new Web based applications with little upfront investment. It enables enterprises to focus on innovation as they no longer have to own or manage their IT resources. One has no need to put extra money to hire skilled & trained manpower or any equipment other than an Internet-connecting device to use Cloud computing services.  Cloud is a way of better utilization of limited resources. The utility of all server, storage and network resources gets maximized as it is shared by multiple users, thus cuts down the waste on global level.  It is environment friendly and energy efficient way to meet the enterprise’s IT needs.

Cloud computing has a lot going for it – has all the attributes and potential to support a global outsourcing environment.  Cloud provides much better scalability of computing the resources (both hardware and software) to meet demand in an unpredictable global market. It allows enterprises to contract their costs in direct proportion to the needs. In simple words, it is like how you consume traditional utilities such as electricity, “pay for what you use and pay till you use it”. This is a revolutionary paradigm and a boon for companies, dealing into outsourcing businesses.

When we look at the other part of the Cloud computing, it is a win-win situation for both provider and customer with competitive cost options to access technology. Cloud computing has the ability to shift the risk from enterprises to the Cloud computing provider. This concept refers to the fact that, since it’s up to the cloud provider to handle the computing processing load and the enterprise will pay by use, then it’s possible to reduce the risk that user will run out of capacity to support the customers and core business processes. The risk functionally shifts to the cloud provider who is better suited to accept that risk and capable of managing it.  So for the provider the turnaround time to solve issue might be equal or less proportionate to the problem occurring in traditional environment. 

The Cloud provides the advantage of elasticity or the ability to rapidly scale up cloud computing-based systems, rapid provisioning of Cloud computing assets, such as storage and database services and a much more cost efficient model than on-premise systems. For companies, that have a seasonal business or product lines, having the mentioned capabilities, are very valuable to accommodate peak demand periods without having in-house servers sitting idle at other times.

Cloud computing is a platform for enterprise customers to build up a complete outsourcing relationship with more in-depth customized options as well as security. 2010 is not only a year of recovery from economical downfall, but one where businesses need to balance Capex (capital expenditure) and Opex (operating expenditure) more than ever. It’s a demand of time to manage these expenditures and Cloud computing makes a great deal of sense for many enterprises, regardless of size, to overcome & sustain on a long run.

e-Zest is poised to provide innovative and efficient cloud computing services in a strategic shift from traditional outsourcing trends. Key aspects of this strategy are to provide successful & proven cloud computing solutions in a cost effective manner, tailored for specific customer needs and reduce overall IT risks & complexity.

Enterprise customers looking to adopt or extend their Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Apps platform utilization can jumpstart their efforts by leveraging e-Zest’s Competency Center – a dedicated team of experienced experts with a deep understating of Cloud computing business model.

Creating a customer centric email strategy in the collections process

Use of email as a communication channel in the collections process can provide following benefits -

• Increate the customer engagement
• Reduce the cost of operations/cost of collections

Challenges for collections organization

Growth:

Retail organizations (Banking, Insurance, Telecommunications, Retail and Utilities etc) are growing rapidly in terms of volume of customers and size of business, and thus increasing the number of accounts getting into collection cycle (delinquency) and rolling into arrears.

Operational workload:

Increasing number of collections account are generating additional workload for organizations service channel (call centre, service centres) and more importantly on DAC management team. They have more number of accounts falling into 30-60-90 DPD cycle.

Competition:

Every month at the same time many lenders are chasing the same debtors. Unless you have good knowledge of your customers, and strong relationships with them, you won’t be able to hit success.

Regulations:

Regulators which include government, central regulatory bodies and industry regulators, in every country have strong restrictive practises for collections organizations. Since collection is extremely sensitive area, there is a reputational risk associated if you stretch and go little beyond the boundary in the collections process.  There are cases in countries where organizations have hired goons to collect money from late stage delinquent customers. 

Cost of collections / Commission to DCA:

In most of the countries, DCA commission is based on the collection performance. Organizations has to pay out more commission to DCA for handling accounts in the mid and late stage delinquency cycle. 

Constraints:

• Focus on email address – Data collection at the time of customer acquisition might not include email address or typographical errors made by sales team restrict you to get in touch with customer by email.

• Overall email usage as a communication channel in the country, by customers, by organizations to engage customer (for example emails send out at the time of on boarding, new up sell or cross sell offers, Billing intimation and information etc)

• Reliance on other service channels for collections, for example calling every delinquent customer (cost of telephone calls) or visiting (cost of visit) or outsourcing the entire collection process to DCA (more commission payout, reputational risk)

 Example:

How and where (at what critical points) email communication can be use in the collection cycle -

Pre-delinquency Management

•          Payment reminders

•          Limit alerts (In case of credit cards & overdraft accounts in Banking, Post paid card in Telecommunication)

•          Transactions reminders

Early Stage Delinquency

•          Mild message – payment warning

•          Payment options suggestions

•          Request to call for assistance

•          Promise to pay confirmations

Mid Stage Delinquency

•          Promise/payment confirmation

•          Confirmation of conversations

•          Payment prompts

Late Stage Delinquency

•          Strong warning of legal action

•          Legal Teams / DCA Action