How do we build a business case for agent matching?

Start from your own numbers

A business case for predictive pairing needs four inputs, and your agency already has all of them:

• The campaigns in scope, the ones you would list on the Order Form.
• The collectors on those campaigns.
• Monthly collections on those campaigns, from your collection system.
• The share of collections your agency keeps. On contingency paper that is your fee share. If you collect your own paper, it is all of it.

Use the campaigns in scope only. Lift on one campaign says nothing about collections elsewhere on the floor, and putting the whole floor’s collections into the case overstates it. Starting with one campaign.

Choose the lift levels yourself

Lift is the percentage by which the BestPair group would collect more than it would on your current routing. Nobody can tell you that number before your own history is measured, so the business case uses scenarios that you choose: a low level, a middle one and a high one. Label them as scenarios. BestPair does not guarantee a level of lift.

The calculator on the homepage gives an illustrative lift from a few figures off your own reports. It is capped at 20%, and it is at best informed guesswork until your history is measured. Use it to sanity-check a range, and keep the low scenario low.

The arithmetic, step by step

1. Extra collections. Lift times 80% of monthly collections on the campaigns in scope. Only the BestPair group counts, because the control group stays on your current routing.
2. Your share of the extra. Extra collections times the share your agency keeps.
3. BestPair’s fee. The greater of 10% of the extra collections and $2,500 a month. The fee is charged on the whole extra, measured against the control group, and paid from your share of it.
4. Your net gain per month. Your share of the extra, less the fee.
5. The first year. Twelve months of the net gain, less the $15,000 Floor Assessment fee, plus whatever of the $15,000 credit is used. The credit is applied against Stage 2 fees above the $2,500 minimum, and credit still unused a year after Stage 2 starts, or when Stage 2 ends if sooner, lapses.

Two figures from this are worth putting on the page for your decision-makers. One is the lift at which your share of the extra just covers the $2,500 minimum. The other is what happens above the minimum, where the fee is a tenth of the extra, so each extra dollar leaves your agency its share less ten cents.

Step 1 is a simplification. In Stage 2 the extra is how much more the BestPair group collects per account contacted than the control group, multiplied by the number of BestPair group accounts contacted. How the extra is measured. A first-year figure that assumes a steady lift from the first month also ignores ramp-up, and early months can trail. Why live pairing can trail at first.

What the Floor Assessment adds

Your scenarios are guesses until your history is measured. The Floor Assessment (Stage 1) measures it. From up to 24 months of your own history, the report shows how much more might have been collected if each account had gone to its best-fit collector, as a range. The Order Form calls that an estimate from past data, not a forecast or a guarantee. The report also includes a one-page Stage 2 business case for your decision-makers, so the scenarios they approve can be checked against your floor’s own range before live pairing starts. The two stages, and a sample report.

What a finance reader will ask

• What does it cost if nothing changes? The $15,000 Floor Assessment fee if you stop after the readout, or the $2,500 monthly minimum while Stage 2 runs. If the Floor Assessment shows no gain.
• How will we know the gain is real? Every month both groups are scored on dollars collected per account contacted, in the same weeks, and both groups’ results are on every invoice. How to prove a routing change worked.
• Can we check the fee? BestPair provides the supporting calculations on request, and the Standard Terms allow a review by an independent accountant once in any twelve-month period.
• Can we get out? In the first 90 days of Stage 2, at any time, on 30 days’ written notice. After that, the term runs to a year from the Stage 2 start. The term and the exits.