Last post in my series today – how to prioritize your use of EDM in a recession. As with any effort to prioritize EDM, the first thing to do is identify the decisions that make the difference. This means finding the micro decisions that are often hidden in your processes as well as correctly identifying the ones that are already known. Having found the decisions that can be automated using EDM, the next step is to assess things like:
- Who takes them now – a programmer, a manager, a supervisor or a call center representative?
- What’s the difference between a good decision and a bad one, in terms of costs and revenue
- How well they are taken typically and what’s the variability?
- How many of these decisions are there – what’s the multiplier for improvement?
Having found your candidate decisions you must prioritize them. Clearly, in a recession, your prioritization might well be different from other times. While the logic of maximizing the potential value of improvement by looking at those decisions where the number of decisions multiplied by the potential value improvement still stands, areas likely to be worth prioritizing include:
- Collections – many companies have poor approaches to this and improving it is particularly important when a recession increases the number of accounts in collections
- Manual decisions with high volume – these will offer the best opportunity for cost reduction through the elimination of positions.
- Customer service – automating approvals and pricing so that customers can truly be served electronically can be both cost effective and a competitive differentiation if done well. Everyone will be looking to drive customers to cheaper channels. Those that use EDM to keep the quality of the experience high will gain at the expense of those who just take the cheapest approach
- Systems with high maintenance costs driven by compliance – it is always worth looking at systems that have decisions that must constantly be changed, resulting in high maintenance costs, while also being driven by external regulation and compliance. There is no option to delay these changes, making the maintenance cost guaranteed and allowing investments that reduce it to be justified quickly.
Well, it’s a wrap. That’s the end of the recession posts. Enterprise Decision Management, EDM, can be effective even in a recession. EDM delivers value in many ways in a recession but, as always, around the 5 keys to decision management:
- Increased Precision
Reduce fraud and collections losses through better risk management and segmentation - Improved Consistency
Reduce staffing needs by making decisions consistently correctly - Cheaper and easier Agility
Reduce IT costs with easier to maintain systems and reduce losses from taking too long to respond to competitors - Increased Speed
Make online and other low-cost channels truly effective by eliminating waits and call backs - Reduced Cost
Fewer staff, less IT costs, lower losses
