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October 21, 2021

Collectius improves customer experience and productivity and supports growth through Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Pages

As a financial restructuring company, Collectius provides their customers with a fresh start on their finances. With growing demand and new portfolios acquired, Collectius found that their collection platform and system no longer met their needs and vision. They then turned to Microsoft Dynamics 365 to provide the functionalities they needed. This proved to be a crucial decision, as it supported the growth of their business and even paved the way for a new self-service offer. 

As a leading financial restructuring company in Asia, with nearly two decades of experience in credit management services and purchase of non-performing loans, Collectius is well-known for their secure and compliant protocols that go beyond industry requirements. By building their cloud debt management platform on Microsoft Dynamics 365, Collectius was able to capture customer data and utilize analytics, integrate third-party API’s, and build a customer self-service portal using Power Pages.

Collectius

Need for Data-Driven Customer Service

As their business continued to grow, Collectius recognized the need to gather customer data and harness it to provide customer-centric solutions.  

The Collectius customer service team plays a crucial role in delivering a personalized customer experience. As mediators, they help customers set up suitable payment plans. To help them better understand their customers’ needs, they needed access to accurate customer information. 

Unfortunately, the platform they used could not provide them with the data, analysis, and reporting capabilities they required. 

They sought a stable CRM system that follows international standards in security and compliance, and more importantly, a system that would allow them to achieve their three main goals: 

  • To automate customer communications 
  • Easily integrate the CRM system with third-party API’s 
  • Analyze customer data to provide the best service 

Adopting a New, Scalable CRM Solution

The task of selecting and implementing the right CRM tool for their growing needs fell to Sarah Johansson, the Chief Strategy and Projects Officer of Collectius, and Rafal Bielec, their Head of Digital Innovation.

Johansson and Bielec worked with their procurement team to perform due diligence. They compared different cloud technologies and vendors before bringing Microsoft Gold Partner NTT DATA on board and choosing Microsoft Dynamics 365 as their preferred CRM tool. 

What prompted Collectius to choose Dynamics 365? “We mostly benefit from the scalability of the software platform and the interface ease of use provided by Microsoft to our company staff. MS Dynamics 365 allows us to grow our business as we help more people in the financial industry,” Bielec answered. 

When it came to integration, Bielec observed that they did not encounter many challenges; they followed Microsoft guidelines on implementing software and already had some level of familiarity with the system.  

But as with other large-scale projects, data migration was a bit more challenging — they had to move all their data from their old system to Dynamics 365. The solution they came up with was to migrate data batch by batch to test them, which took them only two months to complete. 

Building the entire system, including all their customizations, took Collectius a total of six months to accomplish. 

Since their first implementation of Dynamics 365 took place in the Philippines, their local operations team of mediators and team leaders were involved in designing the processes, gathering requirements, and testing. Collectius worked with NTT DATA to train their team on utilizing and maximizing their new CRM platform. 

As a certified Microsoft partner, NTT DATA helped Collectius plan for and customize Dynamics 365 to achieve their vision. They also involved their operations team, one of their main platform users, in the rollout preparation.  

“Involving our operations team has been key to the success and adoption of the new system. This also meant that we had a full group of super users even before rolling out the new platform,” Johansson said. 

Improved Customer Experience and Productivity

Collectius now uses Dynamics 365 as the foundation for their cloud debt management platform and it has become essential to their everyday operations.  

Through their use of Dynamics 365, Collectius also gained access to a whole suite of Azure services and reporting via Microsoft Power BI. Bielec shared that “Microsoft provides a large range of interconnected services which speeds up development, automation, reporting, and analysis of real-time customer data. The cloud services also allow us to scale more compared to a local hosting environment.” 

Because they can now capture data and perform big data analytics to understand their customers’ needs better, their operations team is able to provide customer-centric solutions. This resulted in an increase in their customer service scores as well as a 30% productivity improvement in the countries where Dynamics 365 has been launched. 

With NTT DATA, Collectius found a trusted, solution-oriented partner to collaborate with, even post-implementation. They provided recommendations that addressed Collectius’ needs and they continue to help them replicate the success of their first implementation to other markets. 

Partnering with NTT DATA and Microsoft also assures Collectius that their CRM tool meets global standards in compliance and security, so they can keep their customers’ data safe.  

The software customizations they implemented meet their business demands and they have also integrated several third-party API’s such as payment gateways for online payments. 

For Collectius, the most successful outcome from their partnership with NTT DATA and Microsoft is the improved customer experience that they can now deliver. The time and cost they save as a company are huge gains for them as well.

Launching a New Self-Service Solution

One of the big wins that Collectius achieved after shifting to Dynamics 365 is establishing their own self-service offers — something that they didn’t have before. They were able to purchase a portfolio of accounts that could perform a full self-service collection, made possible by their new CRM system. 

Collectius also developed a customer self-service portal integrated with Dynamics 365 and built on Power Pages. Customers can log in and view their accounts anytime, anywhere. The portal also gives them the ability to create their own payment plan, checkout, and pay online. 

Expanding to self-service solutions allowed Collectius to give their customers an option to manage their own accounts without being dependent on the operations team, while still giving them an opportunity to talk to their mediators when needed.

Creating New Possibilities

Moving forward, Collectius aims to offer more self-service solutions to their customers, as an increasing number of their existing clients are now adopting their new online portal service.  

As a large business supporting a lot of customers, having secure cloud solutions to rely on supports their agility and gives them more confidence to expand their business. They’ll also continue to utilize customer analytics to provide the best customer experience in the financial restructuring market. 

Collectius ensures that they diligently listen to and learn from their customers’ feedback so they can consistently improve their digital customer journey. 

As they benefit from the continuous improvements that Microsoft brings to Dynamics 365, Collectius is assured that the platform can grow with their company and accommodate the developments they pursue going forward.

“Microsoft provides a large range of interconnected services which speeds up development, automation, reporting, and analysis of real-time customer data. The cloud services also allow us to scale more compared to a local hosting environment.”

Rafal Bielec, Head of Digital Innovation, Collectius

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