1.
How does BSI eSolutions' Cogent Collection
Software differ from other collection systems?
2. Why did BSI eSolutions
decide to invest in and engineer Cogent?
3. What is the business
and technological impact of the Rules Engine
at the heart of Cogent's design?
4. Why is Cogent specialized
Attorney collection software?
5. What was the reasoning
for building Cogent on a Microsoft foundation?
6. How does Cogent
address the Correspondance problem of creating
documents, making them more professional
looking, etc.?
7. How will BSI eSolutions
ensure that Cogent continues to meet the
needs of its client base?
8. When will Cogent be available?
9. Are there other
products BSI eSolutions plans to bring to
market within the next twelve months?
How
does BSI eSolutions' Cogent Collection Software
differ from other collection systems?
When a collection attorney makes a decision
on what software to use, they are in reality
making two critical decisions. First there
is the decision to invest the money and
resources required to purchase the software
and make it work for their organization.
Second, and more importantly, is the decision
concerning the software’s required
features, functionality, and integration.
These factors will determine how quickly
and successfully a business can respond
to the ever changing, competitive environment
of collections.
Cogent
has been engineered from the ground floor
up. This means we were not constrained by
legacy software or multiple versions of
prior releases as we designed the Cogent
collection solution. It also means we could
fully exploit the best business practices
learned in our years of collection experience
and incorporate them in an entirely new
product that will provide ease of integration
with your clients and third party vendors.
Business Solution Integrators, LCC has developed
“Cogent™”, intelligent
collection software, as a highly scalable
business solution for collection agencies
and attorney firms. Cogent efficiently manages
account inventory, customer interactions,
litigation, correspondence, collections,
payment posting and more, all from a system
that is built on a technology platform embracing
open architectures. The product is engineered
on the latest technology platforms and is
specifically designed for collection agencies
and attorney firms to provide cost saving,
exceptional inventory management and process
efficiencies. Collection agencies that use
Cogent will find its business processes
efficient and time saving. Cogent raises
the bar for all other collection systems
and sets the standard for the next generation
of collection software.
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Why
did BSI eSolutions decide to invest in and
engineer Cogent?
The BSI team has built several large collection
industry solutions. BSI’s business
experience with debt “Best Practices”,
collection agencies, credit grantors, ARMs
and attorney firms convinced BSI of a unique
opportunity in the marketplace. We determined
that new products, freshly engineered with
efficient business workflow and built on
current and open system technology, would
be the solution for this unique opportunity
The Cogent solution will incorporate the
latest security methods (encryption, firewalls,
etc.), provide integration flexibility for
import of new placements and export of status
to clients, allow seamless third party vendor
integration using Cogent XML schemas, provide
functionality for efficient management and
processing of large volumes of accounts,
include data mining and analysis tools to
allow collection agencies and attorney firms
to make sense of massive amounts of operational
data, and much more. In short, BSI had the
engineering experience, technical resources
and collection experience to bring new debt
products to market that could make a significant
difference. Cogent is our first product,
to be followed in late 2005 with another
complimentary product.
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What
is the business and technological impact
of the Rules Engine at the heart of Cogent’s
design?
As an accomplished engineering organization,
BSI eSolutions has built many creative and
highly productive solutions. The Cogent
rules engine is the culmination of many
years of experience and will clearly provide
our clients with a competitive advantage.
Saying
“Clients and Courts tend to change
their minds and their requirements frequently”
is probably an understatement, according
to most attorneys. As change will
no doubt remain a constant in the debt collection
industry, we at BSI believe the next generation
of debt collection software must step up
and support the attorneys' and collection
agencies' needs for instant business adaptability.
This is the Cogent approach.
Traditionally, the “Business Rules”
controlling debt collection software’s
functionality have been recorded first in
text documents and then hard coded by programmers
into the application code. This methodology
tends to create programs that are “Black
Boxes”, whose inner workings are not
easily understood by end-users and require
a programmer to change. In this scenario,
even minor changes in processing rules and
workflow require contracting programming
resources to make your changes. This impedes
the business in rapidly responding to business
and regulatory changes and may lead to a
loss in productivity or business opportunity.
Cogent helps your firm avoid this software
trap with its “Intelligent Task”,
rule-centric approach. At the heart
of Cogent’s processing power are user
defined Intelligent Tasks which separate
your firm’s unique business rules
and related processing from the application
code. Cogent’s “Rules
Wizard” editor puts the power of instant
adaptability in your hands, allowing non-technical
business managers to build and maintain
processing rules using a simple point-and-click
“English language” interface.
Your “Intelligent Tasks” working
in conjunction with Cogent’s internal
Rules Engine, will help you control user
queues, workflow, exception monitoring,
document scheduling and dynamic content,
dialer file creation, court and process
server assignment, review and follow-up
scheduling, and much more.
The Cogent approach provides a comprehensive,
dynamic, easy-to-use business rule management
process, allowing business rule changes
to be made immediately when needed and applied
dynamically while the system is running.
This means any attorney or collection agency
can quickly make changes to their processing
workflow and business rules to adjust to
organizational changes, FDCPA rule changes,
a client’s new requirement and regulatory
changes. Clearly the Cogent “Rules
Engine” is a key productivity edge
and a competitive advantage for the users
of Cogent.
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Why is Cogent specialized
Attorney collection software?
The flow of accounts for legal processing
is constantly increasing. The type of debt
being placed for legal collections is becoming
more diverse (credit card, commercial, medical,
student loan, bad checks, etc.) and requires
standard litigation as well as arbitration
and subrogation claim management. Cogent
has been engineered to manage large volumes
of all debt types. Cogent’s integrated
legal process has unique workflow paths
for Litigation, Arbitration and Subrogation.
In addition Cogent was designed to meet
the needs of collection attorneys by providing
unique account dual path workflow for simultaneous
collection and litigation processing. Cogent’s
pre-legal collections and litigation management
features provide an automated fast track
for managing collection accounts and litigation,
arbitration or subrogation needs. It is
a complete solution with document generation
and docket calendaring. Our seamless integration
of collection and litigation activity processing
makes Cogent the perfect fit.
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What
was the reasoning for building Cogent on
a Microsoft foundation?
BSI eSolutions has been developing systems
built on Microsoft technologies for over
eight years. Microsoft’s SQL Server
database, Business Intelligence (BI) features
and ASP.Net tools provide BSI with engineering
technologies required to design and build
a highly efficient and integration friendly
application architecture. Our application
designers use this architecture to build
applications like Cogent with uncommon speed
and quality. The additional flexibility
of the Microsoft SQL server database allows
BSI to easily convert new clients to the
Cogent SQL server database design. Also,
when designing an application like Cogent,
BSI strives to protect the potential client’s
desktop hardware investment. Use of Microsoft
technology on the desktop is extremely popular
within the business world, thus supporting
the overall Microsoft design. Finally, the
strength of any newly engineered application
comes from the relational database upon
which it rests. The power of the database
must complement and drive the application’s
performance. Microsoft offers the best price/performance
mix at this time for achieving that goal.
With our design and current technologies
we can easily scale to tens of millions
of accounts and thousands of concurrent
users. In the future, Cogent may be ported
to use Oracle, Sybase and DB2.
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How
does Cogent address the Correspondence problem
of creating documents, making them more
professional looking, etc.?
Cogent provides unique document and correspondence
design and printing features that brings
new levels of power, flexibility, professional
appearance and control. Document templates
can be designed and built in most word processors,
or designed directly in Cogent’s document
designer. Existing templates in WordPerfect
or MS Word can be converted into Cogent
with over a 95% accuracy rate. Embedded
Cogent Intelligent Tags within your template
designs dynamically adapt to situation requirements
at printing time, help to ensure compliance,
reduce human error, and alleviate the need
for multiple versions of similar templates.
Images of all documents and correspondence
generated by Cogent are available to view
online or can be reproduced at any time.
Litigation documents can be printed in their
correct sequence eliminating the need for
manual collation. Attorneys can review queued
letters before they are sent. Batch letter
production is supported, and letter files
can be exported to third party vendors for
final product.
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How
will BSI eSolutions ensure that Cogent continues
to meet the needs of its client base?
BSI is a business engineering and technology
company. Our business, products and services
require us to remain current with the direction
of technology, as well as stay, knowledgeable
of best-of-breed industry business practices.
BSI consultants have specialized their services
to the financial (22 years experience) and
debt collection industries (eight years),
which provides them keen insight into industry
directions. Additionally, in 2005 a Cogent
Users Group will be established. This users
group will be instrumental in prioritizing
future enhancements and new features. With
a strong engineering company like BSI behind
the product, and the Cogent Users Group
providing guidance, we believe that the
direction and stability of Cogent is secure.
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When
will Cogent be available?
Cogent is available now. Participants in
the Cogent Beta Testing program were converted
first, followed by our early-bird clients.
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Are
there other products BSI eSolutions plans
to bring to market within the next twelve
months?
Engineering and development activities are
focused on additional Cogent features and
integration of new third party product offerings.
BSI has also developed a product called
the Cogent Data Translator. The BSI "Data
Translator” is a Microsoft .Net, wizard
driven application designed to facilitate
the translation of data files from a variety
of formats into XML, and vice versa. Extensible
Markup Language (XML) is a simple, flexible,
text based format that is widely used for
exchanging data between systems and across
the web. The Cogent Data Translator allows
a non-technical user to design and save
translation templates for reading, processing,
translating and mapping data fields between
text files and the XML format, without requiring
programming support. Data can be translated
to and from any number of file formats,
including fixed length, delimited and EDI
variable record formats.
BSI is also engineering other new debt
industry solutions, and later in 2005 we
are planning another significant product
announcement that will benefit the debt
industry.
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