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LCL Collections and LCL Law Ltd a based in Bradford. We provide debt recovery services to large and small commercial entities, institutional lenders, service professionals and insolvency practitioners on a nationwide basis.
Through our web site at clients are now able to send us their outstanding debts, view the progress of their actions either individually or as a whole and transmit their specific instructions. LCL Collections Ltd deals with the pre legal collections service using letters and the telephone to recover accounts. We establish whether the debtor has the ability to pay an account and advise legal action. Legal action will be taken by LCL Law Ltd a separate but associated Law firm which also has offices in London, Leeds and Manchester.
Our parent company, the Litigation Control Group, through its subsidiary companies, offers a comprehensive range of specialised services provided by an experienced team of chartered accountants, insolvency practitioners, solicitors, legal managers, debt recovery executives and insurance specialists.
We use Linetime’s debt collection software called “Liberate” and we now also use the Liberate on line facility.
We started to plan our on line system in August of last year. We have had experience of on line systems in the past which we had found to be cumbersome. Our aim was to provide our clients with an online facility to enable them to clearly see at what stage a specific account is at, take a global view on all of their accounts and be able to provide instructions on line. We have worked closely with Linetime to achieve our aim.
We particularly wanted to make the system “user friendly” and we devised a “work box” concept for the client. This is a list of the client’s cases that require further instructions or other input. Thus, the clients can work through their own accounts in their own time, allowing them to manage their time more effectively.
The clients that are using the system presently are major corporate clients. They have found that the system has allowed them to manage their time more efficiently. The client is able to search the system for their accounts by whatever information that they choose and can then views:
1. A breakdown of the debt costs and interest
2. The stage at which the case is at
3. File notes made by the executive dealing with their account
4. A history of the key dates.
Through the system they are able to give specific instructions and provide details of any payments that they have received direct.
The system also allows the client to download their entire caseload or part onto their own system allowing them to create their own bespoke reports.
We use a secure site maintained by Linetime to host the software. The reports are updated continuously from our case management system.
Linetime are responsible for the security of the site and we have not had any problems so far. We have invested a lot of money and time to ensure that the site is secure yet is easily accessible by our clients.
We have a dedicated IT resource at our London office but the level of IT expertise at Bradford is limited since we rely on Linetime to support all our systems. The excellent working relationship that we have with Linetime means that we are able to call on their expertise when we need it.
We pay a monthly management fee to Linetime for each user that uses the system. We have found that this is the most cost effective method for our business.
We view our relationship with Linetime as a partnership they are easy and co operative to work with and shared our vision of what we wanted to achieve. They have taken our ideas and requests and produced a system that we required. We believe that the system gives us an advantage over our competitors, the system has been extremely well received by our clients.
Ian Longbottom, ian.longbottom@LCLCollections.com
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