Site-Premised vs. Cloud-Based:
A Guide to ChoosinG the RiGht diAleR
Improved agent productivity, faster account contacting, more debt collected—these days most collection managers or owners know the basic benefits of predictive dialing and IVR messaging. But with so many dialing options the question quickly changes from “Should I use a dialer?” to “Which dialer technology should I use?”
The answer to that question may be different for everyone—based on the different ways collectors operate. Choosing a solution with the right cost, technological advantages and flexibility to meet your needs is paramount to making the right dialer decision. Following are the important considerations for each dialing solution—a guide to helping you make the right choice for your business.
Site-Premised solutions
As the name implies, the site-premised solution involves hardware setup at your facility, which means day-to-day operation of these self-contained systems is under your management.
Site-premised solutions are often categorized as a luxury enjoyed exclusively by the industry’s major players. While this is mostly true, many smaller companies also find a site-premised system to be a good, affordable fit for their business.
Companies with considerable predictive dialing needs are ideal candidates for a site-premised solution. This is also a great option for businesses whose top priorities are compliance and control. Examples include medical or financial institutions, government entities, agencies concentrating on medical, early-out/pre-collect or newer debt
(typically less than 6 months in arrears).
sCAlAbility And ContRol
Whether you expect to put 4 agents on the dialer or 40, a site-premised dialer will include all the same features and benefits. You can easily modify dialing resources and features to accommodate your growing business.
seCuRity ConsideRAtions
Site-premised solutions provide greater confidence when it comes to security. Because you have control over the entire system and all equipment stays on site, you prevent sensitive information from ever leaving your facility. This makes a site-premised solution an appealing option for handling medical, financial or government accounts.
ResouRCe AlloCAtion
Site-premised systems require access to your PRI/T1 lines or VoIP infrastructure to dial and accept phone calls. In the past, phone line resources were designated for use by one type of call—inbound, predictive dialing or IVR messaging. This setup potentially left several lines of one type sitting unused, while lines dedicated to another type of dialing maxed out. Today, there are dialers that allow resources to be dynamically distributed to the call type where they are needed most. This dynamic allocation works in real-time to help you
maximize the use of your resources.
Cost ConsideRAtions
The luxury of a site-premised solution doesn’t come without investment. In addition to vendor hardware and software licensing, you will need additional third-party components—server, telco card, operating system, text to speech engine, etc.—each of which will have its own price tag. The good news is most of these costs are fixed, so the more agent licenses you purchase, the less you will pay overall per agent.
Other add-on modules, such as call recording, cell phone scrubbing and data analytics, typically include their own price structure, so be sure to discuss these options with your dialer vendor.
When estimating the size of your potential dialer system, remember you are not going to have all agents working on the dialer
simultaneously. For instance, if you have 12 agents working at your agency, you may only need 4 or 5 agent seats due to differing work schedules and the need to complete other tasks such as skip tracing.
Maintenance: Most manufacturers offer annual support agreements to help keep maintenance costs low and manageable. These plans also ensure that the system remains up to date.
Return on Investment: A site-premised system usually pays for itself quickly due to overall increases in agent productivity and agency efficiency. Depending on the number of agents and calls you make, your return on investment will vary.
COLLECTOR ALERT: Make sure your maintenance plan includes free software upgrades, warranties on key hardware components, telephone support and ongoing training.
COLLECTOR ALERT: Site-Premised Solutions generally qualify as a tax write-off under Section 179.
Infrastructure requirements: In order to be operable, your site-premised dialer will require a communication infrastructure. Other common prerequisites include internet access, a phone switch, PRI trunk lines or VoIP capabilities and a facility to house the equipment. You will also need sufficient in-house IT Staff support to maintain the dialer.
Setup/Installation: On average the planning, setup and training stage for installing a dialer takes 6–8 weeks, depending on whether you have the necessary communication infrastructure. Your dialer vendor should work with you to ensure that the dialer is tailored to meet your company’s needs.
Financing options: As with most capital expenditures, you have a variety of purchasing options, including securing a loan. Depending on your vendor, you may also have the option of leasing the system.
Cloud-Based solutions
The cloud-based solution accesses the dialer through a secure internet connection, which means there is generally no hardware and minimal software installed on-site for you to manage.
Cloud-based dialing solutions typically don’t require a large start-up investment making them a favorite choice of smaller debt collection operations. But cloud-based options can be an equally wise investment for larger well-established businesses.
Companies with a considerable focus on IVR messaging are ideal customers. IVR strategies can help you easily and regularly contact all your accounts, making them especially useful when working with older paper (9+ months in arrears) such as Debt Buyers, 3rd party collection agencies and collection attorneys.
sCAlAbility And ContRol
Cloud services provide unlimited dialing resources, so you will always have what you need to work each list or campaign. Frequently, add-on features are available with the service (e.g. cell phone scrubbing, call recording, analytics), which may or may not increase the cost. Feature flexibility is limited since hardware is controlled by the dialer vendor. However, this also makes the training process very easy.
seCuRity ConsideRAtions
Along with the hardware, the dialer vendor has control over your data’s security. The dialer encrypts all data before sending it through a secure internet connection and placing the call. If your company is concerned about maintaining complete control over you data, this is an important point to consider.
ResouRCe AlloCAtion
Cloud-based dialing uses your vendor’s phone lines to dial and accept phone calls. Dialing resources are unlimited, but most vendors require you to choose how many lines you’d like each campaign to use. For IVR messaging, this allows you to decide how quickly you’d like the dialer to run through each list. Predictive dialing is a little more complicated. While selecting too few resources can cause your agents to have long wait times, selecting too many will place people on hold. Some vendors provide predictive dialing technology that automatically adjusts your dialing resources in real-time based on factors such as agent talk times, hit rates and desired pacing. This approach helps you maximize the productivity of your agents.
Cloud-Based Solutions
Cost ConsideRAtions
Cloud-based dialing’s big draw is the flexible price tag. There is little to no upfront cost and no long-term investment to worry about. Dialing use can easily increase as your business flourishes. The straightforward cents-per-minute pricing means you only pay for the dialing service(s) you use each month. By wisely planning a dialing strategy, companies with smaller dialing budgets can maximize this resource and get the most for their money. Below are a few example dialer strategies for various-sized budgets.
What can i do with a $500 Budget?
type of dialing/Calling
Predictive Dialing IVR Messaging
iVR breakdown
Broadcast Messaging
Answering Maching Messages Inbound
Monitoring
Pd breakdown
Dialing 22 days per month Dialing 15 days per month Dialing 10 days per month
dollars $250 $250 dollars $125 $50 $50 $25 total hours/day 3 4.4 6.7 time 66 hours 5,708 minutes time (Minutes) 3,125 833 1,250 500 5 agents @ hrs/day 0.6 0.9 1.3 Continued...
All numbers have been calculated based on a PD (predictive dialing) rate of $3.75/hour, and IVR messaging rate of $0.04/minute. Budget includes ALL listed items in the IVR breakdown, whereas the breakdown for PD displays 3 different ways to use the same amount of time.
Cloud-Based Solutions
What can i do with a $2,000 Budget?
What can i do with a $40,000 Budget?
type of dialing/Calling Predictive Dialing IVR Messaging type of dialing/Calling Predictive Dialing IVR Messaging iVR breakdown Broadcast Messaging
Answering Maching Messages Inbound
Monitoring
iVR breakdown
Broadcast Messaging
Answering Maching Messages Inbound
Monitoring
Pd breakdown
Dialing 22 days per month Dialing 15 days per month Dialing 10 days per month
Pd breakdown
Dialing 22 days per month Dialing 15 days per month Dialing 10 days per month
dollars $1,000 $1,000 dollars $20,000 $20,000 dollars $500 $200 $200 $100 dollars $10,000 $4,000 $4,000 $2,000 total hours/day 12.1 17.8 26.7 total hours/day 242.4 355.6 533.3 time 266.2 hours 22,833 minutes time 5,332.8 hours 456,667 minutes time (Minutes) 12,500 3,333 5,000 2,000 time (Minutes) 250,000 66,667 100,000 40,000 8 agents @ hrs/day 1.5 2.2 3.3 30 agents @ hrs/day 8.1 11.9 17.8 Continued...
All numbers have been calculated based on a PD (predictive dialing) rate of $3.75/hour, and IVR messaging rate of $0.04/minute. Budget includes ALL listed items in the IVR breakdown, whereas the breakdown for PD displays 3 different ways to use the same amount of time.
Just like a site-premised system, your agents will not always be working on your cloud-based dialer. When considering your budget, remember to account for differing work schedules and the need to complete other tasks such as skip tracing.
Maintenance: Your dialer vendor will handle all the equipment maintenance and technology upgrades behind the scenes. Typically support and maintenance is wrapped into your per minute rate.
Return on Investment: Effective cloud-based dialing services mean more calls generated and more agent productivity, which typically equates to more debt collected. The cost can also be written off as a business expense.
Infrastructure requirements: Very little additional equipment is required to use cloud-based dialing—a computer, a telephone and an internet connection with adequate bandwidth is all you need. The dialing company will provide the rest.
Setup: Setup, installation and training for cloud dialing is fast—about 2 hours or less, depending on which services you’re using.
Comparing your Options
Both site-premised and cloud-based dialers offer great benefits to users. Below is a side-by-side comparison to help you choose the right solution for your business.
site-Premised
High Initial Minimal/Ongoing
Owner-managed Vendor-managed
Complex, but Custom Simple, but Generic
High/High High/Moderate
High Low
Owner-managed, Vendor-Supported Vendor-managed
Better Long Term Good and Immediate
Capital investment scalability/Control security infrastructure Required setup Maintenance Roi Cloud-based
the Hybrid solution
Hybrid dialing options are ideal for companies that hit predictive dialing hard but also have fluctuating or seasonal IVR needs. This solution offers site-premised companies additional dialing power without purchasing the dialing resources. Because cloud-based resources are managed from your site-premised dialer, all the data and reports from both systems are integrated together—making the entire process seamless.
Risk management is another reason to consider selecting a hybrid solution. Some dialer vendors allow you to reserve back up dialing resources in case of natural disaster, power outage, system down, etc.
sCAlAbility And ContRol
Hybrid solutions combine the benefits of a site-premised system—all the features and flexibility to meet your needs—with the unlimited dialing power behind a cloud-based option. In essence, you enjoy the advantages of both solutions.
Collectors are no longer forced to choose between a site-premised or cloud-based dialing solution. Recent advances in technology have facilitated the provision of a third option:
The hybrid solution merges site-premised and cloud-based dialing, which means you manage hardware within your facility and have the ability to access a cloud dialer when needed.
COLLECTOR ALERT: Not all dial technology vendors are created equal. Make sure your vendor offers the technology required to tailor a hybrid solution for the specific needs of your business.
seCuRity ConsideRAtions
It’s easy to determine which accounts will be handled by each dialing solution. Maintain control over sensitive information by sending accounts requiring special security considerations to the site-premised dialer, and use the cloud dialer for the others.
ResouRCe AlloCAtion
Hybrid systems offer you ultimate control over how, when and where your accounts are worked. You can choose whether to work campaigns with predictive dialing or IVR messaging as well as whether to keep them on the site-premised system or use your cloud resources. With this ultimate power you also get ultimate rewards in the form of maximum productivity and unlimited resources.
Cost ConsideRAtions
You can expect to pay the same site-premised system costs upfront; however, there is typically no additional charge to sign up for a cloud-based service—you pay only when you use it. Disaster recovery plans generally include a small monthly fee, based on how many dialing resources you want to reserve. When you use the reserved dialing resources, regular cloud-based dialing rates apply.
COLLECTOR ALERT: The hybrid option allows you to enjoy the features, flexibility and unlimited power of both site-premised and cloud-based solutions.
These days, the challenge isn’t investing in a dialing solution—it’s finding a vendor with the right dialing solution for the way you do business, or the way you’ll need to do business as your company grows.
With more than a quarter century of predictive dialer experience, IAT SmartDial offers site-premised and cloud-based dialing solutions. IAT is also uniquely qualified to offer collection-specific, hybrid dialing solutions to fit the needs of any debt collection operation. That means no matter which solution is right for you, you’ll find it with IAT. SmartDial continues to evolve and match our dialing technology to the current needs and expectations of the ARM industry—ensuring you won’t get stuck with outdated technology or dialing methods.
Contact IAT SmartDial and request a complimentary technology consultation. See for yourself what business can be like when you SmartDial.
