Benefits of an Annual Vendor Conference

Scheduling an annual vendor conference presents an opportunity for a client to articulate their outlook and expectations for the coming year. All your vendors will hear the same message, without wondering what you say to their competition. Annual vendor conferences should be scheduled in support of a practice of regular business reviews and structured performance feedback.

Planning
Critical to the success of any annual vendor conference is to clearly establish the message you want to convey and your expectations of what you will cover in the time you have available. You should provide for a comfortable meeting setting, preferably at a site separate from your offices to minimize outside distractions. There is obviously a significant difference in planning and content for a half day meeting vs. a day and a half meeting. For a longer meeting, you should arrange for breaks, and lunch if necessary. Remember it’s easier to stick to an agenda if you arrange and control lunch, than if you send your attendees out for lunch on their own.

If possible, the members of your team should include not only those with responsibility for vendor performance management, but also those support managers who provide vendor liaison and documentation assistance. From the Agencies and Attorney Firms, it’s better to have Senior Managers with an Operational involvement in the relationship, in place of Sales or Relationship Management personnel. If the scope of the conference warrants it, you can also include client service staff from the vendor. The key is that the content is directed at improving overall operational recoveries and process flow. It should be clearly communicated to the vendors that this should not be viewed as a sales opportunity. Make sure you have the right audience.

Content
The introduction to your conference should include a vision statement. Include supporting actions that you expect to undertake to achieve your vision. The supporting actions should be measurable against specific, incremental goals. Depending on the length and scope of your conference, the vision statement could be delivered by a Senior Executive or member of the performance management team. The use of PowerPoint to present your conference material will enhance the impact of your message.

You will want to include a review of past performance, both strong and weak. It is also important to recognize top performers in each segment of business that you place. This recognition can be included in the PowerPoint presentation, or it can take the form of a more formal awards presentation.

Additionally, you can include speaker presentations from your internal business partners, panel discussions lead by senior operations staff from your top performers, or breakout sessions lead by your team, with a goal of capturing and sharing some Industry best practices or focusing on specific challenges you maybe facing.

The key to these presentations is to be specific and concise in your message, but be open and receptive to the information and feedback received as a result of your conference presentation or any related breakout sessions.

Wrap Up
A conference evaluation and feedback form from the attendees is appropriate. It is also important to summarize and communicate any takeaways that your organization has identified and committed to as a result of your conference. These issues can become talking points in the following year’s conference. Your organization should be prepared to openly discuss the status and progress of any of these items, and don’t hesitate to indicate the closed status of anything you will not be pursuing.

Annually bringing together all of your active collection and recovery vendors will provide multiple benefits to your Recovery organization. A conference provides the Vendor Management team an opportunity to articulate a consistent message to your vendors, celebrate recent successes, and acknowledge short-term and long-range challenges. This will allow your vendors the opportunity to gain a clearer perspective of the clients’ internal and external challenges, and establish a clear understanding of the impact of vendor actions on the development of your processes and collection success. Additionally, a conference of this type provides for your entire team to receive candid feedback regarding process gaps, industry issues and can provide an early indicator of changes to the quality of the portfolios.

Chris Straiter has almost 14 years experience in Collection and Recovery Management, including six years as an Agency Performance Manager for Bank of America, part of a team responsible for performance audits and agency performance management in the Recovery operation. As such he was the key operational contact point for performance issues between the bank and the agencies he managed. In addition to his other responsibilities, he was instrumental in planning their annual agency conferences.

As a consultant and project manager for Resource Management Services, Inc., Chris has been actively involved in client projects to review and improve Recovery Operations and Process Flow, involved in the successful presentation of the 2005 Bankruptcy Educational Forums for Creditors, and has an active role in conference planning and content.

For more information on managing your collection and recovery agencies, contact Resource Management Services, Inc. (www.resourcemanagement.com) and join us at Debt Connection Symposium and Expo 2007 (www.dcs2007.com).