By A comedian named John Mulaney recently hosted “Saturday Night Live” and has his own comedy special on
Netflix. He spent time during his opening monologue on “SNL” and during his comedy special talking about how fast the world is moving today.
In the "olden days", as Mulaney referred to them, people moved slower because they needed to fill their days. They didn’t have as much stuff as we do today and the stuff they did have back then didn’t move fast, so they moved slow to compensate for what they didn’t have.
He sounds a lot funnier when he says it.
But it’s true! Things move a lot faster today, and that includes in the ARM industry. If a collection agency is not using a up-to-date collection system, it likely will not run as fast as a web-based solution. The problem agencies on those legacy platforms face is falling behind the agencies using up-to-date systems. It's clichéd to say it, but time is money, my friend, and every minute lost to a slow-running system or manual process that a computer could do faster and more accurately is real money flying out the metaphorical window.
Participants in a survey in the United Kingdom back in 2016 said they lost as much as 50 minutes per day in dealing with slow technology. Multiply that by every employee in an office, and that is a lot of time that people are sitting around doing nothing. How many employees are in your office? Take a second to do some quick math, then multiply that number by the average hourly rate you are paying. Don't fall off your chair thinking about all the time you are paying for people to sit and stare off into space.
There is a very real business impact when companies hold off on updating their technology and IT infrastructures. Sure, you can say they are saving money by not making the investment, but in the long run, that non-investment is
going to hurt them. Sooner or later, everyone who drove an old car had that conversation with their mechanic and learned that it’s not worth putting more money into it.
I get it though, that old car is like a family member. It has an endearing name like "Bessie" or "Big Yellow" and it's idiosyncrasies are consistent and known. Sooner or later, even though that good, old car can technically still roll down the road under its own power, more or less, it’s time to get a new one and stop throwing good money after bad. It's a tough decision, but you know what? That new car smells awesome, and it has GPS navigation and power seats, and other tech will talk to it, like your phone or Google Home device - stuff you can't even imagine how you lived without once you have it.
Think competitively, nobody driving a Formula 1 car built with the latest tech in 1985 is going to win the Indianapolis 500 going up against the modern machines driven today. It’s just not a fair fight. Collection agencies need to look at their systems and processes to determine what they are driving when they show up to work every morning.
Just because you have a lot invested in your software doesn't mean it's worth keeping - no amount of investment would help that 1985 race car compete today - in fact, it wouldn't even be allowed to enter the competition, which is exactly what some agencies are finding when potential clients demand modern tools or high security/compliance standards their software just can't meet.
Before you make the decision not to spend money on your technology and software, ask yourself what it’s going to cost you in lost productivity if you don’t.
