Following our joint award win with Dukes Bailiffs for ‘Digital Business Transformation’ in the Credit & Collections Technology Awards last month, we thought we’d explain a little bit more about the project that led to this accolade.
What the judges were looking for
The judges were looking for ‘evidence of a partnership that has been developed to deliver tangible benefits to an organisation, creating technological change’ and this is exactly what was delivered. Working with Dukes Bailiffs to develop a solution, in early 2023, Dukes deployed ‘Visit Genius’ a visit scheduling solution which automates the process of planning routes and prioritising collections during recovery. Pre-implementation, the process was labour-intensive and inflexible with Administrators spending time manually allocating cases using postcodes, and Agents spending up to an hour each day route planning for the following day.
Business Transformation
Clearly there was a more effective way to do things and both Destin and Dukes spent a lot of time scoping out the requirements to ensure that agents are now efficiently routed and cases automatically allocated. This now takes into consideration factors such as location, priority, previous visit dates and times, traffic, and KPIs, all without the need for any human intervention. The system provides real-time visit data, improving an Agent’s visibility, and rich location information enabling Agents to identify hard-to-find properties with pin-point accuracy.
AI and machine learning
No other technology like this exists in the recovery market. It is truly innovative using AI and machine learning with every visit. Constantly re-calculating based on historical data, it identifies the times of the day and week when a debtor has not been present in the past to calculate the likelihood of the occupant being home on the next visit.
Comments from the judging panel
The Credit & Collections Technology Awards Judging panel commented “The solution deploys AI-based visit scheduling using an innovative application of technology in collections. Metrics on increased visits, collections, and cost savings are positive.” As part of the submission a number of metrics were shared, with Dukes Bailiffs achieving an increase in monthly average visits of 144% through strategic routing and a 100% reduction in ‘unlocatable’ cases by identifying hard to find properties such as caravan sites.
Supporting the environment
The judging panel also noted “this is a brilliant example of a solution that has driven practical efficiencies for agents, while also supporting the environment through a reduction of fuel costs.” This was demonstrated with Dukes Bailiffs reporting a 14% reduction in fuels costs despite a 26% increase in employed agents as well as a 10% reduction in carbon emissions, post implementation.
This project was truly transformative in that is has completely revolutionised how cases are now allocated to enforcement agents as well as injecting intelligent learning and prioritisation into case handling and routing.
Congratulations to the Development team at Destin Solutions and all the Enforcement and Allocations staff at Dukes Bailiffs who were involved in getting this project up and running.
