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Consumer Friend & Bitech Announce Integration Between DReX & Simplicity.

 

Consumer Friend is a company that assists various big credit providers with their debt review process. They are a multiple award-winning company that has taken the lead in regard to many aspects of the industry. While other credit providers sometimes even struggle to send their consumers the correct statement information, Consumer Friend have an online portal where consumers can go check on their balances (so can their Debt Counsellors).

Bitech Systems are the software guys behind Simplicity, a computer software suite that helps Debt Counsellors run their business and talk to the Payment Distribution Agency Hyphen PDA. A PDA handles all the money side of Debt Review (Debt C0unsellors are not allowed to handle the money only these firms registered with the NCR and embedded int he National Credit Act)

 Now They Talk Directly To Each Other

Now, these two powerhouses are getting together to help make the life of Debt Counsellors both easier and faster. They have enabled the two systems (DReX and Simplicity) to talk directly to each other so Debt Counsellors can have accurate information (securely) from Consumer Friend’s credit provider clients at the click of a button.

We ask Mr  Ryan Hartslief,  who is the COO of Consumer Friend, about the project and how long it has taken to develop and integrate. He said: ‘“This integration project began in 2015 and with Bitech’s innovative approach this project has now become a reality”.

Touching on one of the key issues surrounding profitability and sustainability of debt counselling businesses he says: “If you analyze the Debt Review process, you would conclude that much time and resources are spent on workflow for both the Debt Counsellor and Credit Provider. There are a lot of manual processes involved in the workflow that can result in errors and duplication of efforts along the way. Our goal with integration is to achieve a seamless and efficient debt review workflow process for each and every stage of Debt Review without a single email being sent”. In this, he is absolutely correct. This busy work reduces a Debt Counsellors ability to assist lots of people simply due to time constraints.

It is well known that Consumer Friend would like to see all PDAs integrated and all Debt Counsellors and credit providers making use of DReX so we wondered why they had started with Simplicity. Ryan said:” Bitech represent over 200 registered DC Companies and make up +- 50% of accounts that Consumer Friend manage, which makes this integration a no brainer”.

 PoPI Is Coming

With PoPI looming and everyone trying to figure out how they are going to share sensitive info about consumers, Consumer Friends are happy that they have a workable solution to deal with the issue. Ryan was proud to say that: “The exciting part of this journey is not only achieving the efficiencies…but also ticking all the required legislative compliance boxes and with the challenges of POPIA on the horizon, integration has allowed for the secure transmitting of data and personal information over a secure channel that the conventional method of sending emails cannot provide.

In the future, it appears that it will be illegal to send an email without a password on documents with personal information on them (like account numbers and ID numbers) and this will impact on Debt Counsellors a lot. So, innovations like this promise to make life easier for Debt Counsellors, enabling them to assist even more clients in the limited time they have each day and to stick to the law.