Pictured: CogendaWorks manages the entire collection workflow process in one system with powerful reporting tools and high grade web-based interactive facilities 

When smaller DCA businesses are under pressure from rising basic costs such as fuel and utilities few are inclined to look at IT investment as a potential source of reducing operating costs.  Paul Husband, Bromsgrove-based Managing Director of Cogenda Limited, says that more investigation may be needed.

"I was told recently about a multi-national market leader with one of the biggest brand names in DIY whose thousands of employees are still using Internet Explorer version 6", he says. "IE6 came out in 2001, three years before Facebook was founded and almost ten years before anyone had heard of the iPad.  Even though only about 1% of internet users are stuck on IE6, this major company is still operating in the internet dark ages."

Even for the smaller business though, Paul Husband argues, keeping abreast of technology is much more than simply "techno-enthusiasm" or boy-toy gadgetry. Occasionally there will be a breakthrough in every market place that simply changes procedures for the better and offers measurable performance improvements.

As a long-time member of the Institute of Credit Management and with more than three decades of first-hand industry experience, he is a member of that exclusive management group which both pre-dates sophisticated computer software and now actively markets it to others.

His company's flagship product, CogendaWorks, claims to be the first software system in the UK that truly integrates the collection and litigation elements of debt collection.  Ten years in the development, however, it is priced affordably for the small DCA. Just as significantly it is likely to deliver around 15% savings in the cost of processes and it will provide the means to ascribe accurately the cost elements of a case as it progresses.  Not only does it seamlessly integrate the collection and litigation stages of case management, but it offers a reporting tool to measure the benefits.

Realistically, he acknowledges that there is widespread cynicism about software claims. "Like everyone else I am aware of colossal failures, for example in the NHS where a very expensive system integration project was eventually abandoned.  It cost £12billion, a sum which would pay 60,000 nurses for ten years."

The root cause of such failure he ascribes to basic lack of industry experience, IT experts trying to make clever technology adapt to a specific market.

"It's entirely the wrong way round", he argues. "Software applications need to come from inside the user community so that they are designed and fit for purpose, road-tested by people who actually need to use it in their jobs."

CogendaWorks was co-developed with an associate business which has been active in the debt collection market for some 15 years. So confident is the business that its tag-line for the product is "works day one".  Such a facility is seen by some as the Holy Grail for out-of-the-box software and it's perhaps the greatest reassurance to the small businessman.  Negligible downtime, immediate benefits.

CogendaWorks manages the entire collection workflow process in one system with powerful reporting tools and high grade web-based interactive facilities.

Defined as "an affordable solution that is easy to configure to the way you run your business" its appeal to the small DCA is simplicity and payback.

Paul Husband is a passionate advocate for the small businessman and concedes that its business benefits, not technology, that hits the spot for him.

"I think we understand what DCAs want because a number of us at Cogenda have either been directly in that line of work or been involved in the community that works with them.  I'd encourage all DCAs to look at what current software systems can offer, not because I'm impressed by the technology, but because I know what it can do."