New on-line service to reduce investigations turnaround and improve quality of service and performance

Published Monday 05 March 2007

New on-line service to reduce investigations turnaround and improve quality of service and performance

Lewis Investigation Services (LIS), the investigations arm of The Lewis Group – the professional debt recovery, debt purchase and investigations business – has launched LIS On-Line, a secure website that gives clients real-time, instant access to their investigations case-load, thereby significantly improving communications, turnaround times, service levels, and ultimately performance.

Developed over the last 12 months by The Lewis Group's own in-house IT team, LIS On-Line enables customers to view the progress of individual investigations cases or track entire caseloads, providing up-to-date status and instant access to both interim and final reports.

It is, in effect, a living communications hub and repository of information that can be accessed on-line at any time and from any authorised office by anyone with the necessary level of access, according to Dr Roger Lucas, Vice Chairman of The Lewis Group:

"Businesses like ours are all about making life genuinely easier for our customers, and this is particularly the case when it comes to introducing new technologies into existing processes. Historically, we have received instructions over the ‘phone or by fax, and of course via e-mail. The next logical step was to build a website, where users can not only create instructions on-line, but can also track individuals cases, monitor their progress, and view reports and exchange further information and comment. "

"The principal advantage of the web in this case is that it represents another major step forward toward paperless (where possible) instruction and reporting, and toward a properly managed office work-flow in which activities are structured rather than 'interrupt' driven.

"The credit industry is underpinned by the Information industry," Dr Lucas continues, “so any 'recovery' that requires field investigation at any stage, whether pre- or post-legal, can now be better managed On-line. Whether it is a legal process that requires service, a credit card to be repossessed, or a pre-sue enquiry or witness statement to be taken, the time between the client identifying a requirement for a field visit and the subsequent instruction being issued to one of our field investigators can now be greatly reduced. At the other end of the process, reports are made available on-line for the client to view immediately after passing quality control.

"By using LIS On-Line, customers can both send and receive other types of information and documents as may be appropriate to their instructions. For example, clients will be able to view or download word documents, spreadsheets, photographs, scale drawings etc for various types of investigation.

"The turnaround time on investigations can therefore be greatly reduced and the management information (MI) can also be provided on-line."

LIS On-Line is a password-secure certificated website with the necessary protocols in place to ensure it is inherently secure, and capable of a hierarchy of access to authorised users to view individual, multiple or group wide cases.

It is especially beneficial to those businesses with a number of sites that need to share information on particular investigations.