Five Major Benefits of Consolidating Your Vendors

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Apr 07, 2022

Debt Collection, Effective Communication,

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Collection software, payment processor, letter vendor, phone system, dialer – why does it seem like in order to succeed in the debt collection industry, the list of vendors you need keeps growing?

This seems especially true as new technology like AI and omnichannel communication is introduced. Add speech analytics, texting, and email to the list, and it feels impossible to secure that many relationships and still keep up.

Whenever possible, consolidating your vendors can have a huge impact on your time, productivity and even revenue.

There are five specific ways consolidating your vendors will impact your office:

Simpler Processes
Cost Savings
Better Relationships
Reduced Training Time
Less Administrative Work

Keep reading to learn how you’ll benefit from consolidating your vendors in as many areas as you can.

1. Consolidating Your Vendors Can Create Simpler Processes

A problem we hear many agencies have no choice but to confront: their software doesn’t talk to each other enough.

You import a list into their dialer, notate accounts, then have to manually export and re-import the list into their collection software, but the notations didn’t carry over, so you have to re-notate… you get the idea.

There is a much better chance that working with one vendor for multiple products will reduce these types of manual processes.

You can typically expect that a vendor’s suite of software will communicate across products. In addition, if they do integrate with another vendor, the integration will most likely apply to multiple products.

2. Consolidating Your Vendors Can Lead To Cost Savings

We’ve all seen enough Progressive Insurance commercials to know that bundling products can save money.

You can also leverage your vendor to use fewer resources to achieve the same (or better) results.

It will take a pretty great vendor, of course. 🙂

Make sure you find a vendor who offers the right combination of customer support and uptime, and then build on your relationship with them to take advantage of all the services they have to offer.

3. Consolidating Your Vendors Can Lead To Better Relationships

Speaking of relationships, we have a question: How easy is it for you to get in touch with your vendor representative when you need something?

If your answer is anything besides: “Super easy!” it might be time to re-evaluate that relationship.

Customer support and success is something that we invest a lot of time and energy into constantly improving.

If you are working with one vendor for multiple solutions, as opposed to multiple vendors, you’ll probably find:

Your vendor has a better understanding of your problems
Your vendor can advocate for you more successfully
Your vendor is much easier to get in touch with when you need something

4. Consolidating Your Vendors Can Reduce Training Time

Providing ongoing training for your agents is essential for success.

Regulations and compliance is always changing, which makes ongoing training a necessity.

But training on a new platform – that’s a different story.

Your tenured agents are your greatest asset. The learning curve on a new software can lead to a lot of frustration, and in the worst cases, turnover. This is especially true when you haven’t considered agent buy-in.

Consolidating your vendors so that there are fewer platforms to learn can result in:

Increased agent happiness
More time to train on compliance, soft skills and professional development
More time to spend on producing results and revenue

5. Consolidating Your Vendors Can Reduce Administrative Work

Who doesn’t want to make their administrative tasks easier?

Whether you have an admin team, or you are the admin team, the never-ending tasks can take up a lot of your mental load.

Reducing the number of administrative tasks you have to take care of can create more space in your day – and your head – for business acumen.

Consolidating your vendors can mean consolidating invoices, phone calls, chargebacks, calls to support – you get the idea.

Your administrative life will get easier the more you can reduce the vendors you work with.

Is Consolidating Vendors Possible In This Industry?

Our industry is getting better at consolidating what we offer, one step at a time. We’ve heard the cries for a “one stop shop” that integrates everything an agency might need to operate full speed ahead.

But in the meantime, we do have one thing you can consolidate – your broadcast dialer and your phone system.

We offer solutions to outbound and inbound calls, and consolidating these products has all the benefits that we discussed above.

If you want to learn more about combining your inbound and outbound on two powerful solutions, use the link below to schedule time with our product experts and start experiencing all the benefits of consolidating your vendors.

About The Author

Alex Villafranca

Alex is the CEO, co-founder and Head of Revenue at Arbeit, a better outbound communication software that makes businesses more profitable.