ACA company members have until Jan. 17 to complete their Benchmarking Intelligence data entry. Need help? Try reaching out to your collection software vendor.
01/11/2024 1:20 P.M.
3 minute read
ACA International company members have until Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024—that’s next week!—to complete their Benchmarking Intelligence submission so they can receive the next free benchmark report. Start the year off with actionable data you can use to drive a higher profit margin in your business.
Each quarter, ACA company members who sign up for our Benchmarking Intelligence platform and enter their data by the deadline receive a free benchmark report with anonymous, aggregated industry information. When you compare your agency’s performance to that of your peers, you not only identify potential gaps but you can also find out where your strengths are in the larger marketplace.
The next data-rich benchmarking report will be available on Jan. 24 for members who meet the data input threshold for the quarter.
“So far we’ve been hearing from Benchmarking Intelligence participants that this tool has been the most useful when identifying overhead costs in regard to staffing comparisons both for office/administrative/executive level and for collection positions,” said Nicole Succop, an account manager with Dynamic Benchmarking, the vendor that hosts the secure platform.
Vendor Support
Compiling and entering the required data into the Benchmarking Intelligence platform can take a bit of time, especially at first.
“You’ll probably want to create custom reports for this process—a task you’ll only have to do once that will make things much easier in the following quarters,” Succop said. “That will help to cut down on the amount of time spent searching for some/any of the data.”
Succop also encouraged ACA members to reach out to their collection platform provider, who might be able to help set up custom report parameters to match the data being requested in the Benchmarking Intelligence platform.
For example, Beam Software is helping its customers gather the data from their collection database to populate the Benchmarking Intelligence tool by running reports on their system for the various requirements.
“If you are a Beam client and wish to participate in the Benchmarking Intelligence project, please reach out to our Support Department to make those reports available in your web portal,” said Tom Noble, general manager at Beam Software.
Program Enhancements
We are also excited to announce some new enhancements to the Benchmarking Intelligence program:
- We’ve added Trailing Twelve Months (TTM) reporting. What does this mean? After you complete your data submission, in addition to seeing your trended quarterly results, you’ll also see TTM results and be able to compare them.
- ACA is further engaging the collection software community with the goal of increased support in automated reporting to make the data input process faster and more efficient.
- Coming soon: We’re launching a new community for participants who want to talk about the program.
Get Started
If you haven’t signed up to participate yet, reach out to ACA’s Member Services team here and let them know that you want to participate in the Benchmarking Intelligence program. (You must be a Company Division member of ACA to participate.) You’ll need to sign and return an agreement before you are granted access to the secure platform.
Once you have access to the platform, you can download a full exportable list of the entire question set and begin reviewing the metrics and compiling the relevant data. Get started today to make the most of 2024!
Remember, subscribe to ACA Daily and Member Alerts under your My ACA profile when logged in to acainternational.org to receive updates on the ACA Huddle.