American Recovery Service Maximizes Efficiency, Operations and Cost Savings with Biscom

When American Recovery Services needed a fax solution that would create efficiency and cost savings while allowing for the customization measures needed for its unique business operations, they called Biscom.

Faxes comprise a vital part of operations for American Recovery Service (ARS), an international repossession company that recovered more than $1.4 billion in assets in 2010. The ability to send, receive and audit faxes 24 hours a day ensures that the company can provide continuous service to clients that include captive auto finance companies, national financial institutions and regional credit unions.

“We remove the headache of having to deal with the complexities of the repossession process,” said Jon C. Foster, chief technologyoffi cer of ARS. “Our clients send us an order and we handle the rest.”

Minutes Multiply with Manual Processes

The process of recovery for ARS begins with an order from a client. From there, ARS determines which of its network of service providers best matches the order based on location and other factors. A complex series of faxed communications begin, which includes delivering the order, ensuring receipt and exchanging paperwork such as contact information, activity updates and delivery instructions.

“Prior to 2011, sending faxes was a manual process,” said Foster. “ARS employees would select the appropriate agencies and then take the additional step of having to prepare the paperwork and fax it out. Imagine this process being duplicated hundreds of times a day by each of ARS’s more than 200 employees. The minutes required by this extra step multiplied rapidly and resulted in a substantial lag in efficiency. This can impact earning potential over time.”

Foster continued, “It was clear we needed to streamline the process. If we can shave one minute off of each unique activity a person is doing, that is a huge annual savings. We needed the right technology to accomplish this.”

Adding to the efficiency lag was the dated equipment the company relied upon until early 2011. “The old fax server did well for us—until our previously steady growth started to accelerate,” noted Foster. “As time went by, we simply outgrew it. It was clear that the current system was becoming a hindrance, not a solution.”

Foster understood that ARS needed a fax solution that would create efficiency and cost savings while allowing for the customization measures needed for its unique business operations.

Four Criteria for Choosing a Fax Solution

In early 2011, Foster began evaluating fax options. He had four main criteria for his ideal fax solution:

• High availability, meaning the fax solution could handle the volume of faxes ARS delivered and received without a disruption in service. Scalability, which would accommodate the organization’s rapid growth.
• A competitive price point, which would comply with the company’s budget.
• Intuitive integration, enabling ARS programmers to rapidly integrate the solution within the existing software architecture
  
  

After evaluating multiple contestants on these criteria, Biscom Hosted Fax Services earned the leading score. As a cloud-based solution, the ability to jettison internal hardware and outsource faxing to Biscom was another plus both from a budget and an operational standpoint.

“Biscom was the number one vendor that met my criteria,” Foster explained. “They positioned themselves to meet my needs and supported my efforts very thoroughly and quickly. The whole implementation process took about a week. The first night we went live, we sent thousands of faxes with no issues.”

Results that Add Up

“Biscom made it enjoyable to be a customer,” noted Foster. “With Biscom Hosted Fax Services, ARS has experienced incredible efficiency gains and cost savings.”

Results have included:

• Cost savings from the elimination of expensive in-house software and hardware to support faxing capabilities. As Foster said, “We avoided any up-front investments we would have had to make for internal hosting by going cloud-based with Biscom.” ARS realized further cost reductions by dispensing with the expensive phone lines needed to support in-house faxing.
• The creation of a perfect-fit solution through the customization capabilities of Biscom, which allow faxing to be behind the scenes. Employees no longer have to manually set up the faxing of papers and processes. Instead, with this customization, they simply check a box during the intake process, saving them minutes on each task that multiply to hours over a day or week.
• Increased flexibility to accommodate client requests. When a major client requested that faxes from ARS be sent only during a specific timeframe each week, Foster was able to quickly configure Biscom to accommodate this request. The ability to reallocate valuable staff time to other tasks thanks to the automation of fax-related processes.
• A solid audit trail, including the ability to track each fax transaction and alert business partners when faxes do not go through. With this, the company is now able to operate with confidence in the face of the potentially serious legal consequences that could result if a transmission were to be missed or undocumented.

As Foster summarized, “I would recommend Biscom to other companies, but only if they want efficiency gains and no headaches.”

The first month ARS used Biscom, Foster planned for the handling of 10K faxes a month. ARS exceeded that estimation and actually hit 25K. Now, after using Biscom for almost a year, the company is anticipating sending more than 75K faxes a month—all with no hitches, thanks to Biscom. With the proven performance and reliability of Biscom Hosted Fax Services, the company hopes to surpass its 1.4 billion-dollar asset recovery mark set in 2010.

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