Professional Services

Success Stories

SUMMARY
  • CLIENT: Rutledge Law Firm
  • PRODUCT: Collection-Master
  • PROBLEM: Manual and time-consuming process for court filings and service of process
  • SOLUTION: Comprehensive VT help in setting up Vertican File & Serve
  • IMPACT: Tasks that took 8 hours per day now take 30 minutes
PROBLEM

Kip Rufini is the Director of Legal Operations for Rutledge Law Firm in Texas. Prior to implementing VTFS, the firm’s file and serve tasks were a significant drain on her time and resources. It typically took Kip 8 hours a day to manage the workflow of all the different proceedings and service of process, manually tracking filings, compiling packets, monitoring service, and updating claims at each step. All the complex steps, varying requirements, and constant checking seemed to take forever. Rutledge was even close to requiring additional personnel to stay on top of it all.

SOLUTION

Joe Woodward, Deputy Product Owner, worked closely with Kip to set up and configure her VTFS system, turning the manual tedium into an automated lifesaver. VTFS supports multiple process variants so the setup is flexible. For example, when the timeline is tight, Rutledge will do the filing themselves and only outsource process service. In this case, the VTFS code will just create the service record. VTFS can be configured for multiple processes by jurisdiction and any of the 25 proceeding types. At the point of attorney approval, VTFS smart functionality uses formulas to create records for the debtor(s) en masse.

IMPACT

Instead of spending her entire workday on court filing and process service tasks, it now takes Kip 30 minutes per day. And they haven’t had to hire additional staff. Kip can now spend her time on value-added activities that push the business forward.

Since implementing VTFS in July, Rutledge has sent over 800 cases to court.

“VTFS has been a game changer for Rutledge. It’s taken a manual and very time-consuming process for court filings and service of process and has given us an automated, flexible, and scalable solution – reducing my workload by 90%!”

– Kip Rufini

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Additional Information:

  • vMedia is a prerequisite for VTFS implementation.
  • For even greater firm efficiency, implement Attorney Meaningful Review (AMR) prior to, or in conjunction with, VTFS.

Related Links:

SUMMARY
  • PRODUCT: Collection-Master
  • PROBLEM: Errors on Remit and EOD Balance – Off $6m
  • SOLUTION: Fix Bad Data on Old Transactions
  • IMPACT: Firm could remit and reconcile balance successfully
PROBLEM

An experienced client services manager has worked with Collection-Master at her firm for over 20 years. Just before 4 p.m. on a Friday, she encountered a serious issue: running her end of day generated an error with the account off by $6 million. 

She quickly reached out to Julia O’Day, Vertican Account Manager for her firm, to see if she could get an emergency incident that day. She noted that the day prior, she had also received an error when reversing an old batch remittance. Julia immediately contacted Paul Perez, Client Success Team Lead – Collection-Master/vMedia, to see if he could jump in, and she guided the manager through the emergency incident purchase process. 

After dropping everything to tend to the client, Paul was able to diagnose the issue within 10-15 minutes. The old batch remittance had bad data in three transactions. This bad data could have resulted from any number of issues: lack of maintenance updates, a hardware issue, or a difference between current table structure or fields from prior years.

When the program cannot read the data or the data is corrupt, it will enter a value; in this case, the value was -2002000. Multiplied by three transactions, the result was a negative $6 million balance error. 

SOLUTION

Paul used special, advanced tools to edit the COLLBILL and COSTBILL tables to correct the data in the remittance and cost bill. He then checked the bank account balance and ensured that the fix did not negatively impact other functions in the software.

While this sounds simple, it wasn’t. Without expert knowledge, a firm wouldn’t even know what tools to use, much less how to use them. Vertican’s SME, Paul, identified the proper tool, which was a potentially destructive tool that isn’t normally used for this type of problem. This situation is really not something a client could likely ever diagnose much less fix.

Keep in mind that while this problem was caused by an old batch remittance, bad data can happen to you with yesterday’s data. The index could be bad, maintenance could have been lacking, or the network could have interrupted writing the data to your hard drive. It could be something that’s not even related to Collection-Master.

IMPACT

After a couple of hours with Paul, the manager was able to rerun the remit successfully and reconcile the balance. 

Being able to remit and run your financials are key business processes you don’t want interrupted. Without Paul’s help, the firm would not have been able to remit to their client or run their end of day to reconcile their account. 

How Do Emergency Incidents Work?

In this situation, Vertican’s Account Manager determined that the remittance error and the balance error were likely related, so the remittance error ticket would be diagnosed together with the balance error in a single emergency ticket.  

  • However, even if the issues were not deemed to be related, once you purchase an Emergency Incident, you receive 2 hours of consulting for anything you want. 
  • You can purchase Emergency Support during normal hours or during weekend/holiday hours. 
Silver & Gold Clients Now Have an Account Manager

One of the benefits your Account Manager provides is acting as a liaison with our Client Success team, developers, and even product owners. In this case, Julia helped the firm get emergency support. 

  • In January 2025, Nicholas Arcaro, SVP Business Development, announced a new benefit for Silver and Gold subscription clients: an assigned Account Manager. 
  • Platinum and Diamond clients also receive an Account Manager, but at an enhanced level of service. 
  • Find out more about the Account Management Team.

If your firm doesn’t know who your Account Manager is, click this button: 

SUMMARY
  • PRODUCT: Q-Law/Q-LawE and Collection-Master
  • PROBLEM: Manual work to onboard claims from non-DTP clients
  • SOLUTION: Automated onboarding, document management, and reporting
  • IMPACT: Boost profitability by saving time and money on each claim

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We’ve seen this situation countless times with our CM and QL/QLE clients. But for this success story, we focus on one firm’s experience.

PROBLEM

One of our smaller Q-LawE firms found that as their claims increased, it became exponentially more difficult to manage all the associated tasks, like new claims processing, status updates, and reporting. These are tasks that their DTPs handle seamlessly. But many of their clients don’t have a DTP.

For example, they typically pick up six creditors a year for medical claims, but only one might have a DTP. For the remaining five, the firm had to perform a lot of manual work to onboard new claims and documentation and to handle the associated reporting.

The cost of this manual work added up when they considered the volume of claims they had. Looking at one of their creditors, if they only did 200 new claims per month, they were expending at least 75 hours of manual work for the client:

  • 10 minutes for initial onboarding + 10 minutes for document onboarding = 20 mins x 200 claims = 4000 mins (67 hours)
  • Plus 8 hrs per month to create custom monthly status and remittance reports for the creditor.

Once they realized all the time being wasted, the benefit of automation became clear and they knew Vertican could help.

SOLUTION

Automated Claims Onboarding

Fortunately, this client used spreadsheets. But the firm didn’t have the staff know-how to set up the new claims template and map the data from the client to the software to enable bulk import. That’s where Vertican came in to take the load off the firm and dedicate the time required to make it happen.

Now the system locates the client-provided data file in a specified folder and the firm ingests placements, maintenance, recalls, etc. with the click of a button or on an automation schedule.

Automated Document Management

Along with each new claim, the firm had to manually onboard the media (e.g., statements of accounts, credit card agreements, affidavits, etc.) and produce the suit filing packages. Each suit typically requires three documents but may have up to ten.

Instead of spending 10 minutes or so manually importing the documents for each claim, Vertican set up batch import. Media was configured and mapped so that the system knows where each document goes and executes the import with the click of a button.

Automated Reporting

After the claim was imported, the firm would perform ongoing manual work to produce not just the one-time acknowledgment report, but monthly status reports and remittance reports according to the client’s custom requirements.

Vertican reviewed the client’s requirements and mapped the fields they required, in the format they required, on the schedule they required.

This not only saved the firm time and stress, but it minimized human error.

IMPACT

Based on an estimate of 75 hours of manual labor each month, and a conservative estimate of an 80% time savings with automation, the firm saved a minimum of 60 hours of work each month for a single client, freeing up their staff to work on additional claims and increase revenue.

What is it worth to save money and earn more?

If your firm earns $50k in revenue from a client each year, is it worth it to spend $5k on Professional Services to help you make that $50k with less labor and time so you handle more claim volume? 

SUMMARY
  • PRODUCT: Collection-Master
  • SCENARIO: Bookkeeper Left with All the Knowledge
  • SOLUTION: Staff Training
  • LESSON: Cross-Train Staff to Avoid Emergencies & Lost Revenue
SCENARIO

Sometimes there’s a single person in a firm who knows the collections software. This person may suddenly leave the firm or even die unexpectedly. It’s happened.

  • The firm may contact Vertican in a panic because they have to do X by a deadline, and they have no idea what to do. They don’t have staff who can help.
  • Other firms, however, assume they can “figure it out” on their own without any help. We don’t hear from these firms until they’re in a world of woe after realizing they not only lost critical firm knowledge, they also lost a lot of time.

You can experience an immediate crisis or a slowly developing crisis. Or you can prepare!

SOLUTION

A small, long-time client in Florida lost their bookkeeper when she retired. Instead of wasting time, the firm immediately purchased training to help the staff member get up to speed in her new role.

  • During just one hour of training, Paul Perez, Client Success Team Lead – Collection-Master/vMedia, gave the client an overview of program features and how they could benefit the firm.
  • He also answered questions about software processes and features that no one else in the office could answer since it was knowledge that only the former bookkeeper had and there was no documentation.
LESSON

Ideally, your firm will proactively cross-train your staff with at least one backup. Don’t wait until knowledge walks out the door and you have to start from scratch!

You can also use training to cover knowledge gaps that would make your operations more profitable. Staff may be doing tasks manually because they simply don’t know another way.

How much can training save your firm in avoiding down time, playing around with the system, and making mistakes that then need fixing?

About Vertican Training & Consulting

Vertican Professional Services covers both web-based Training and web-based Consulting.

  • Training covers standard use of the software according to a pre-determined agenda.
  • Consulting covers firm-specific topics, including your data and your workflow.
  • Both training and consulting hours are good for 180 days from purchase and come with a recording your firm can keep.
  • An example of combining the two would be to use Consulting to automate your workflow and Training for staff to manage the automation.
What Can Gates Do?

You may be under the impression that Gates only reject data. Actually, Gates don’t have to reject any data. Find out how our Senders use them to manage data, monitor events, and avoid manual work. These are some of the Sender stories made possible by Maryann McBrinn, vExchange Product Owner and her team.

Gates Protect Senders from Compliance Risk

One of the largest debt buyers in the U.S. has implemented a set of custom gates, some of which were the inspiration for these Universal Gates:

  • Universal Gate 4005 notifies the Sender if a suit code is reported on an account with an expired statute of limitation (SOL).
  • Universal Gate 4003 notifies the Sender if a call is attempted on a Cease & Desist or Do Not Call account.

With Gates monitoring events and notifying them, the Sender is free to focus on value-added work. Without Gates, the Sender would either have to manually sift through data in Excel or create an offline tool.

Gates Filter Data Automatically vs Manually

Our next story involves a national debt buyer based on the West Coast. Of the hundreds of vExchange codes, they only wanted specific codes that aligned with their Sender-driven compliance requirements.

  • Previously, they would export the data from vExchange to Excel and filter the codes manually.
  • Then they would import the data back into their system of record, which is Q-Law.
  • Now they have controls in place with Universal Gate 2008 (Invalid Activity/Status Code) to automatically filter the vExchange codes coming from Receivers.

As a result, the Sender can focus on managing underlying issues rather than slicing and dicing data in a spreadsheet.

Gates Stop Record Updates From Triggering Sender Events

A national consumer finance company wanted to stop vExchange record updates from triggering events on their side.

  • The Sender received blank records whenever the place of employment (POE) was removed from a Collection-Master file.
  • The blank record would trigger a proprietary event notification in the Sender’s system, and they spent time trying to figure out why there was an event with no data.

Now this Sender uses Universal Gate 2009 (Updated/Blank POE Information Received from Firms) to block blank POE records, stop Sender notifications from occurring, and take the strain off their legal managers.

Gates Save Time Managing Financials

A large Midwest debt buyer recently implemented a set of custom financial gates.

  • Before implementing these gates, the Sender had at least two staff working full-time to manage their financials.
    • They would manually perform the gate checks offline to make sure the data met the requirements of the firm manual.
  • After implementing these gates, staff time went from 80+ hours per week to about 2 hours per week.

Essentially, the Sender outsourced their effort to vExchange and freed up their FTEs for value-added work.

About vExchange Gates

vExchange has more data and record types than YGC, and more information for the Sender to better evaluate data. With more data comes complexity and risk.

  • As your portfolio grows, you need to make use of tools to automate monitoring, so issues are resolved as quickly as possible.
  • Request access to the Mastermind session on Universal Gates for Senders
  • Check out Universal Gates in the vStore.

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Reprinted from the March 2024 vConnect.

SUMMARY
  • CLIENT: Mid-Sized Collections Law Firm
  • PRODUCT: Collection-Master
  • PROBLEM: Formatting Remittance Statements to Meet Client Requirements
  • SOLUTION: Template Changes and Custom Programming
  • IMPACT: Monthly savings of 50+ Hours
PROBLEM

A firm contacted Vertican stating that they spend an inordinate amount of time formatting remittance statements to meet their Clients’ requirements. Their staff uses cut-and-paste and rearranges data on every remittance, which takes considerable time. To avoid excessive work for staff with limited bandwidth, the firm invested in VT Professional Services to customize the remittances per Client requirements, out-of-the-box when the remittance is performed.

SOLUTION

Joe Woodward, Deputy Product Owner, worked with the firm to create Client-specific templates that print to Excel precisely as each Client requires — no more cutting and pasting each remittance and wasting valuable human effort. The firm was able to reallocate its resources since it no longer required manual intervention to reformat every remittance.

IMPACT

Since reformatting each remittance could take 10 minutes to complete and verify, at just 300 remittances monthly, the firm saves 50+ hours of manual work per month. Professional Services helped them reclaim the time from unnecessary manual labor so they can focus on value-added work.

SUMMARY
  • PRODUCT: Collection-Master
  • PROBLEM: Mail merge Configuration
  • SOLUTION: Enhance templates and learn to leverage the power of Smart Document functionality
  • IMPACT: Significant increase in time-efficiency and reduced labor costs
PROBLEM

A firm was struggling with the complexities of configuring mail merge forms in WordPerfect. They have been using Collection-Master for many years, and the employees who were originally trained on document configuration were no longer at the firm. The firm wanted to make adjustments to existing documents, including eliminating the need for human intervention on merged forms.

SOLUTION

John Currey, Product Owner, assisted the firm with their document configuration needs. Not only were the template forms enhanced with significant efficiencies, the firm learned how to use Collection-Master’s powerful Smart Document functionality. 

Formulas were enhanced to employ the following time-saving and mistake-proofing functionalities:

  • Make decisions that avoided human errors
  • Populate merge code data that previously required a manual entry
  • Intelligent, automatic adding and removing of Diary Codes
  • Route claims with insufficient data to proceed to the appropriate party for corrective action
  • Automatically reformat text to the appropriate case
  • Add specific breadcrumb notes to the Paperless Notes
  • Parse data as needed for the document
  • Make document decisions based on client, jurisdiction, etc.
  • Validate data to ensure document integrity
  • Cancel the document based on circumstance to avoid errors
  • Perform calculations, including date math, percentages, and other necessary arithmetic
  • Advance the workflow so the claim moves through each stage automatically
  • Lookup items in a list and take the appropriate actions
IMPACT

The firm not only saved huge amounts of time on templates they use every day, but they also gained proficiency on how to configure forms going forward.

SUMMARY
  • PRODUCT: Collection-Master
  • PROBLEM: Overwhelmed collections firm lacked training on workflow tools
  • SOLUTION: Subject Matter Expert training on powerful automation tools
  • IMPACT: Training on advanced tools boosted efficiency, saved hours of manual work, and eliminated opportunities for human error.
PROBLEM

A firm was struggling to keep up with their work. Inundated with daily demands, and clients asking for increasingly more, they hired additional staff. But they still couldn’t keep up. They were so busy, they didn’t have time to train new employees. Furthermore, the new employees received training that was watered down since the training the trainers had received was from their staff’s own insufficient knowledge of the power of Collection-Master. The firm had limited or no knowledge of the workflow enhancers (below) built in to Collection-Master.

SOLUTION

Vertican subject matter experts showed the firm how each tool could be applied in their specific situation.

  • Conditional Themes to change application colors based on claim conditions (bankruptcy, represented by attorney, hardship, etc.)
  • Field Level Events to automatically change data, redirect workflows, catch errors, and alert users, based on a claim event.
  • EDI Field Level Events to automatically perform a multitude of functions based on electronic data ingested by the applications.
  • Smart Document Workflow enhancers such as X-Documents and WP Scripts to automate workflows and alleviate the necessity for human intervention, resulting in faster actions and fewer mistakes.
  • DTP automation to automatically import or export to and from clients or third parties without human intervention.
  • Paperless Note Filtering in the Paperless File based on job assignment to reduce time to find data.
  • Report Generator coaching to facilitate combining workflows and reports to quickly identify data holes and correct them.
IMPACT

Today, the firm is up to speed and leveraging their knowledge and use of Collection-Master. The last time the firm received Vertican training was in the 1990s! None of the staff that was trained at that time was still at the firm. Sound familiar?

Collection-Master is an earthmover. Are you using it as a shovel?

SUMMARY
  • CLIENT: Retail Collections Firm
  • PRODUCT: Q-Law
  • PROBLEM: Mail Merge not working with new forms
  • SOLUTION: Rebuild and re-program the forms from scratch
  • IMPACT: No more backlog of complaints
PROBLEM

A retail collections firm in the Midwest was stumped. They couldn’t get mail merge to work with five new Word forms: four summons and one garnishment. After several weeks of frustration, they asked Vertican for help.

When Michelle Samlaska, Client Success Manager, tried to load the summons forms, her Word program froze, then crashed. Upon investigation, she saw that the forms, which were court templates, contained hidden metadata and security features embedded in Word.

SOLUTION

Michelle rebuilt the summons forms from scratch, stripped out the embedded data, and made the forms interactive. She then input the correct merge fields, wrote custom field strings, linked the data sources, and set up the automation logic to pull data from the accounts. After this, she also created a second set of forms and programmed the merge fields for Debtor 2. Each form was then tested to ensure mail merge was successful.

IMPACT

The firm’s Accounts Coordinator was amazed with how fast the forms went through after Michelle’s help. From a backlog of over 300 complaints, by the first afternoon following the solution, 47 complaints were processed in a matter of minutes, and the entire backlog was resolved in a single day!

While custom programming was still required for the garnishment form, five hours of Professional Services took care of weeks of hassle and gave the firm peace of mind. In the end, they received eight summons forms since they had two versions for court venues, two for process service, and then four created for Debtor 2.

LESSON

There’s no need to lose sleep (or sanity!) by trying to do it yourself. Let Vertican come to the rescue!

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Reprinted from the Septeber 2024 vConnect

SUMMARY
  • CLIENT: HOA Collections Agency
  • PRODUCT: Q-Law
  • PROBLEM: How to charge interest when the client withdrew the principal
  • SOLUTION: Set up automatic interest tracking using existing functionality
  • LESSON: Vertican’s expertise can save you from manual, offline workarounds.
PROBLEM

One of our clients collects monthly Homeowners Association (HOA) fees. They had a large HOA client who wanted to charge interest on the monthly fees but subsequently pulled the accounts.

The collections agency had to return the principal to the HOA but was still entitled to their fees, which they wanted to collect with interest. But there was no longer a principal balance or a judgment account by which to charge interest.

They figured they’d have to track interest offline in spreadsheets for 500 accounts, then manually upload the data to Q-Law. But they decided to consult with Vertican first. When they explained the problem to Michelle Samlaska, Client Success Manager and Kurt Sund, Q-Law Product Owner, they asked, “Is there a better way to do this?” The answer was a definitive “Yes!”

SOLUTION

In a one-hour consultation, Michelle and Kurt created a custom solution without custom programming. Using existing product functionality, the solution ‘tricked’ the software into doing what the client wanted it to do – apply interest to specific non-judgment accounts. After the initial setup, they will never have to do manually what the system does automatically.

SAVINGS

A 1-hour Professional Services consultation likely saved the agency 20 hours of staff time per month.

LESSON

Proactively engage Vertican before you get wrapped up in a manual, offline workaround. Invest in Vertican’s expertise to save your firm time and money.

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Reprinted from the June 2024 vConnect.

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