Security Check Cuts Costs With Self-Service Reporting Environment

Snapshot

Organization Security Check.

The Challenge Streamline NSF check collection processes to keep up with weekly requests for reports from 30,000 clients, take pressure off internal departments, and give customers better visibility into collection status.

The Strategy Build a Web-based information delivery system that places reporting options in the hands of clients.

The Results An industry-leading solution that reduces operating costs, increases flexibility, and allows clients to create custom reports on demand regarding the status of returned checks.

Information Builders Solution WebFOCUS, Consulting.

In many instances, a returned check is spawned by a simple mathematical error. No harm is intended, and the person who wrote the bad check is quick to make restitution. In other cases, bad checks are written intentionally by criminals. Either way, businesses that receive non-sufficient funds (NSF) checks are left in the unfortunate position of having to collect the money – a tedious activity that detracts from their core business competency.

That's where Security Check comes in. Security Check assists merchants with check collection activities and supplies current information to protect merchants from accepting NSF checks. What began as an after-hours venture for University of Mississippi students John Lewis and William Alias, III has quickly become a $20 million business. Named among the fastest-growing private companies by Inc. magazine, Security Check has 36 offices throughout the Southeastern United States and serves approximately 30,000 businesses.

To keep pace with client demands – and fuel another wave of expansion – Security Check recently constructed a real-time information delivery system called the Security Check Online Reporting Environment (SCORE). Built by Information Builders Consulting using WebFOCUS technology, SCORE automates many of Security Check's manual processes and enables clients to easily access information about outstanding checks via standard Web browsers. "WebFOCUS has drastically reduced operating costs by minimizing our outlay for postage, printing, paper, phone calls, and other recurring expenses," says Dewitt Lovelace, chief financial officer at Security Check. "Our new reporting system also allows us to grow dramatically without adding personnel."

Checking Out the Technology Options

Once a merchant signs a bank release form to avail itself of Security Check's services, any bad checks are routed directly to Security Check for collection. Once collected, the face value of the check is sent to the merchant and Security Check keeps the state-allowed service fee. Most aspects of the process can be automated – provided that Security Check can stay on top of myriad customer and regulatory reporting requirements.

Before Information Builders came on the scene, Security Check relied on a PC-based reporting system created with Crystal Reports. As it continued to take on new and bigger clients, Security Check found itself struggling to satisfy information requests from its customers. "We had tens of thousands of business customers constantly requesting summaries of the NSF checks we received," recalls Lovelace. "We were printing mountains of reports, and our postage costs were outrageous. We needed a self-service reporting system that was fast, flexible, and easy to use. We also needed a Web presence."

Security Check submitted a request for proposal (RFP) to systems integrators and application development shops to construct a custom reporting solution and accompanying Web site. Purchasing officers were surprised by the high prices they received from vendors. "The bids were much too high and still failed to meet our needs," says Lovelace. "By contrast, Information Builders offered a complete, Web-based reporting solution for a reasonable price. Their expertise pivots around WebFOCUS, which has both the reporting and the Web development capabilities we were looking for."

Banking on Information Builders

Security Check quickly put Information Builders Consulting to work developing its new Web presence. The consultants constructed an intuitive Web site that features a menu of reports to satisfy most users, along with an ad hoc query tool for sorting, summarizing, and presenting unique information.

"SCORE began as an in-house system designed to take some pressure off our client services department and our information systems department," says Lovelace. "Once we were immersed in the development process, Information Builders helped us turn it into an information delivery environment that our customers can use as well. We were very happy with the service we received from Information Builders Consulting. We told them what we wanted and they delivered the system in just three months – on time and within budget. We were impressed with their abilities."

SCORE now automates a good portion of Security Check's information delivery requirements. The architecture is straight-forward and doesn't break the bank. Transaction data is transferred nightly from a Cache database on an IBM RS/6000 computer to a Microsoft SQL Server database on a Microsoft Windows 2000 platform, where WebFOCUS is also installed. This data access and reporting architecture ensures that clients always have current information – it's just a few mouse clicks away. "Merchants and customer service personnel can see data that is updated each day," says Lovelace. "Four months of data is archived for running summary reports."

The Checks Received report gives merchants a summary of all the information about each check – including driver's license number, telephone number, address, amount of check, check date, charge-back date, the date it was entered into Security Check's system, and the current status of the check. "In the past, we mailed or faxed status reports to merchants every week," Lovelace says. "Now the merchants can obtain that same information on their own. And because the database is refreshed daily, they don't have to wait a week before learning they have received a bad check, which helps them catch repeat offenders and simplifies their reconciliation processes."

Compliance Reports are another popular item, mainly because they reveal missing information. "If a check is missing a phone number or a driver's license number, we are notified," Lovelace explains. "By tracking that information and presenting it through WebFOCUS, managers can see which stores and employees are getting current information when they take checks, and which are not. This helps them improve their NSF records in the future."

The Right Kind of Return

Information Builders helped Security Check construct a comprehensive security architecture that prohibits merchants from viewing each other's data. Within each company, roll-based security restricts users to data within their purview. For example, regional managers can view information from all the stores in their regions while store managers are restricted to information about their particular store. Each individual check is imaged and stored in the database, supplying a fine-grained level of detail about every transaction.

"In the past, merchants depended on us to create and send reports to them," says Lovelace. "The new system not only gives merchants the freedom to access information whenever they want, it saves us the significant effort of creating and mailing thousands of reports. It is a great example of using the Web as a self-service information portal."

Best of all, SCORE has boosted revenue by giving Security Check an edge that its competitors don't have. "We can show prospective clients how they will be able to run their reports on a daily basis, and specify date ranges to track down particular trends or problems," he says. "Based on their enthusiastic response, we estimate this system will pay for itself within six months. Several new clients have told us that it was our Web site that won their business and separated us from competing service providers in our market."

Lovelace and other corporate officers at Security Check are confident that they made the right choice when they selected Information Builders to construct their Web-based reporting system. "WebFOCUS gives us a faster system, more flexibility, and a graphical interface that is easy to use," Lovelace says. “Our users tell us that our Web site is the best one of its kind.”

"Anyone with the proper authority can use WebFOCUS to see the same status information at the same time, from anywhere in the world," Sabin concludes. "We succeeded in building a functional data warehouse that allows us to get near real-time logistics information and Command and Control information into the hands of our people – without requiring them to have an understanding of how the transactional system works."