Buying a Collections System - What Vendors Won’t Tell You #6

This is question 6 in your handy guide to shopping for a collections system. I’m offering 10 tips — things most vendors won’t tell you that are absolutely critical to selecting the right system.

How do data extracts work — and how much will they cost?

Can your team extract data from your systems? Can the selected vendor? Is there a third-party vendor that can get at your data and provide it to your new vendor?

This effort could easily require hundreds to thousands of hours, depending how scattered the data is in your current system. If you’ve been on a system for a long time, it’s likely the same data fields have been used for different data. This requires corrective action.

When it comes to extracting data, precise cost estimates are hard. Data provided in a specific format is easy to price, but the reality is that there are inevitable, unexpected issues, which makes this difficult for any vendor. To mitigate this, you should understand your data and what you are going to provide ahead of time. No matter which vendor you choose, you will go through the exercise.

Next week I’ll share question #7. To make sure you don’t miss it, subscribe to the FICO Blog using the box on the right side of this page.