All posts by Gary Stockton

This year, Experian business information services released some major enhancements to our BusinessIQ product. The project was completed by a highly skilled team here at Experian and heavily driven by customer feedback. Today we'll speak with Casey Hald. one of our lead software developers as he takes us through some of the enhancements to BusinessIQ. The transcription of our interview with Casey has been lightly edited to improve readability. What was the main goal of this redesign on BusinessIQ? CH: The goal of the redesign project was to not only improve BIQ user experience and design but also update the overall framework as well.  We wanted to bring BIQ into 2020 strong and  I feel like we did that. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how that process worked in this case. CH: So first I dug up the existing research material when BIQ was first being developed and used that as sort of a baseline for what BusinessIQ is all about. Since coming into Experian, I was brand new to the credit space. So having that research material was very important to me to have empathy for our users. So,  I was lucky that in the first month of joining the team I traveling across the U.S. visiting our biggest clients,  well both big and small and mom and pop companies and basically discovering why they use BIQ and you know, why it was important to them. So, they sent you out on the road to meet face to face. It wasn't just a conference calls? CH: Yeah, face to face. So we went from the West Coast to the Midwest, to the East coast and we visited companies, big and small. It was a treat. It was over 27 different participants across 16 different companies. So we got to talk to a lot of people. What were their struggles with BusinessIQ? CH: Yeah, so they love BusinessIQ for the speed and accuracy of pulling credit reports.  They choose us over our competitors because of that speed. So we wanted to make sure that with this redesign that wasn't compromised at all. And that was something that they love with the existing design. However, with the existing design, unless you are already privy to how BusinessIQ is structured, a new credit analyst coming into this pace could be somewhat confused. So we used that as sort of a baseline to decide how we wanted the redesign to go. CH: So the first thing we did was we simplified the forgot password workflow. A lot of the challenges that our customers ran into was updating their credentials, managing their credentials. With BusinessIQ, it's security first. So we require that they log in. They can't just log in and walk away, the system will just be open for people to compromise security. It refreshes every 15, 20 minutes, so sometimes they forget to log in. So we wanted to simplify that workflow by adding a remember me functionality. So that way they can plug in their credentials and can log in. We also modified the look and feel and the design to a more modern look and feel. And so that would involve what the site navigation? CH: Yeah, the sign navigation. With that we updated the layout, moving it to the side to more of a modern dashboard, which you see a lot of times with modern applications. They have navigation right here and then the content takes up the majority of the space, which is something that we wanted.  We removed search from the navigation since,  it's now in the header searches, the meat, and potatoes of BusinessIQ. What our customers use and love is search. So we wanted to take that out of the body, and give that its own container and put that right above the navigation. So it's something that becomes the focal point of the application. We also reordered the search elements based on the order of importance based on customer feedback. So it's not just alphanumeric. We reordered it based on the importance of what we learned from our users. What about pulling reports? Because I mean, our customers love to pull reports and they pull a lot of them, right? CH: Absolutely. So, when they pull the reports, it's arguably the most important workflow to BusinessIQ. They use BusinessIQ to view a credit report. So if a customer wanted to pull a new report in the old design, they would need to first search a company, view an old report, click on pull report, and then view the report configuration options, which aren't exactly super organized, and then click to view the report. So with the new design, the user searches a company views the company information alongside the report configuration options and then clicks on the report. So we've lessened the number of clicks by one or two and organized it to a step by step process. So a new credit analyst coming into space doesn't get confused about what configurations he or she needs to make. The old design requires potentially 26 form inputs while the new design contains only six. Our goal made pulling a report easier by making the configuration options into a series of steps,  as opposed to just a random configuration. What are the other big improvements? Did you do anything in credit configuration? CH: Yeah. So 85% of our users stated that they never changed the report type because they simply didn't understand what each report type contained. They didn't understand the benefits of a Premiere Profile versus a business report. So we added a summary for each report type. So any new credit analysts that come in, they can simply read the summary and understand what each report type means to them, and why they need to pull it. Since users often pull the same report, we added a separate card for past pulled reports. So it uses a one-two, three-step approach, making it super easy for a new user to use. And there's only one call out with all the options already default selected. So there are a lot fewer form inputs. So this has got to be saving our customers a ton of time. Right? It's all about productivity and making your business more efficient. Is that really how those improvements have been received? CH: Totally, and a lot of our credit analysts, when they use BusinessIQ, they're in and out in five minutes. They go in, search a company, pull a report, log out, get on with the rest of their workday. So we wanted to keep that, you know, save their time because time is the most important asset you have right? So we wanted to make sure that that was first and foremost. What about the management of reports if they're pulling a lot of reports, is the management of that been fixed or improved? CH: Absolutely. So we added a quick search filter to find exactly the report you're looking for. For a new credit analyst, we rolled up all the filters into a simple selector delimited by date.  So they always see the freshest report at the top, which is super important.  The user now has control over how many reports that they can view at once with our new paginated system,  which is utilizing Google materials design documentation. So we took kind of what they learned,  through their research and utilize that into our cards and components as well.  The business name is now the focal point instead of the date, which is super important. And we removed the reference code as it wasn't being used among users. It was a big sequence of numbers that kind of got in the way. And one of the goals of our redesign is to cut away the things that our users don't use and create focal points for the things that were most important to them.  So that's how we improved managing reports. What has the response from our clients been? CH:  luckily for me and my job, they love it.  they love the new visual direction. They say that it's pretty, which is a compliment. But they also say that it is much easier for them to use.  One of the things that we improved,  in terms of cutting things away was that the old dashboard contained 10 to 15 different cards with newsreels tasks, some charts,  portfolio charts, things that our customers didn't necessarily use first and foremost on the dashboard. They kind of just went straight to search. And when I asked them if you had a Wishlist on what you would like to see on the dashboard, what would it be? And the first thing that they said was recent reports. If you could put recent reports at the top, so that way I can always see the last report that I pulled. So I don't make a mistake of pulling that same report. That would be lovely. So,  that was one of the major things that we did. And we're seeing a lot of positive feedback,  from just that simple improvement alone,  let alone the other improvements that we've made. So,  the reports have been positive and we're continuing to keep our ears open.  We have a lot of empathy for our users and the way that they use BusinessIQ.  So we're going to continue to listen to them and, and continue to iterate on the design since the design is a very fluid solution, right? Design changes over time. So we're keeping that first and foremost for our users. What was your biggest learning? CH:  So the thing that I learned the most was how quickly our customers use the application. They go in, they search, find what they're looking for, they use it as a confirmation of address and phone number. For our credit analysts, the phone number is super important alongside address information when they're pulling a credit report. Since a lot of companies have ambiguous locations that could look like one another. So I learned that differentiating those elements was super important to them. It actually sped up their workflow. So we use that in conjunction with some of the other design decisions that we made to improve the overall user experience. So for me, being in the credit space and having the opportunity to redesign the experience I really learned from our users, that has been a privilege.

When insurance underwriters make mistakes, bad policies can cost billions. Alternative forms of data is helping change those outcomes, particularly for insurance providers in helping them identify blind spots and accurately underwrite policies. Watch our special Insurance-focused webinar titled "Beyond Credit Risk - Understanding Alternative Data" with HazardHub. Heath Foley and Carl Stronach from Experian is joined by Bob Frady from HazardHub during this lively discussion. Alternative sources of data are growing in importance in the market. The key to our data platform is constantly investing and sourcing a wider variety of data such as geographic hazards, social media, and OSHA data in order to represent a fuller picture of the health of the business.  In this one hour talk, we walk through: Utilizing property-level hazard risk assessments The growing importance of alternative sources of data How to bring superior data to power comprehensive insights Related information What is alternative and non-traditional data/

Matt Shubert, Experian's Director of Data Science and Modeling participated in a discussion about trends in AI and Machine Learning. He shared insights on how Experian Business Information Services is leveraging these technologies for clients. Matt and a panel of industry experts discuss how businesses are taking advantage of predictive analytics technology to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Webinar Highlights: - Use cases that show how AI and machine learning are helping companies be more proactive than ever - How predictive modeling can lead to more informed business decisions - What steps organizations can take to adopt an AI-enhanced analytics strategy that works for them - And more! Panelists: Puravee Bhattacharya, Senior Data Scientist and Analytics, BI & Performance Reporting at Energia Nirupam Srivastava, Vice President - Strategy and AI at Hero Enterprise Matt Shubert, Director of Data Science and Modeling at Experian

In 2019, 3 in 5 businesses noticed an increase in fraud over a 12-month period. Today, in the face of COVID-19 and the economic downturn, it’s safe to assume that these numbers have increased. In this Sip and Solve session, Experian's commercial fraud expert, Li Mao, discusses the process of introducing friction into credit processes to discourage fraudsters. He'll also talk about: The most common types of fraud you can expect during COVID-19 What first party fraud is and how you can detect it Tips on how you can combat first party fraud and more WATCH RECORDING

Experian and Moody's Analytics have just released the Q1 2020 Main Street Report. The report brings deep insight into the overall financial well-being of the small-business landscape, as well as offer commentary on business credit trends, and what they mean for lenders and small-businesses. After just one quarter, there’s no doubt the theme of 2020 is the pandemic, Covid-19. Unrelated to the pandemic, and subsequent shuttering of a swath of economies across the world, delinquencies rose in the first quarter. This was occurring as businesses reduced their borrowing. Lower borrowing will not have lasted long though, as government efforts to aid small business have taken the form of SBA lending. In Q1, the slowing of businesses pursuing credit pushed moderately delinquent balances up to 1.61 percent from 1.60 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019. # DPD Q1 19 Q4 19 Q1 20 Moderately delinquent 31–90 1.74% 1.60% 1.61% Severely delinquent 91+ 3.35% 2.29% 2.68% Bankruptcy 0.16% 0.16% 0.16% The bankruptcy rate was essentially flat in the first quarter, rising to 16.3 basis points from 16.1 in Q4. But the rate increased as fewer firms were reported as having active credit balances. The Federal Reserve’s Senior Loan Officer Survey indicates lenders are seeing higher demand than usual for Commercial & Industrial loans. This indicates the beginning of increasing loan demand this year, as small firms look to borrow to ride out lower consumer demand and remain in business. Watch the Quarterly Business Credit Review Get the full analysis of the data behind the Main Street Report by watching the experts from Experian and Moody’s in the Quarterly Business Credit Review.

During the great recession of 2008, the recovery of the U.S. economy hinged on the idea that certain institutions were just too big to fail. Bailouts ensued and the recovery effort was long and arduous. Today, the COVID-19 pandemic poses a different kind of threat to the U.S. economy, grinding the wheels of commerce to a crawl, forcing millions of businesses to temporarily close and lay off workers. The Federal Government passed the CARES act, including the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program. These bold relief efforts, while helpful to many, came too late as a flood of businesses sought bankruptcy protection through the courts.  With only a few states planning to loosen social distancing and safe at home restrictions, the courts are being forced to improvise. So in this post, we spoke to an attorney, Scott Blakely about a couple of unique cases involving iconic American retail brands. The first Tent Sale   Over 60 years ago, Michigan entrepreneur Art Van Elsander opened the first of seven Art Van furniture outlets. By the time they opened their seventh store, cash flow was an issue. On the brink of bankruptcy they came up with a novel idea — erecting a huge tent in the parking lots of the stores to attract crowds of shoppers, and drive-up cash flow, hatching the first-ever “Tent Sale.”  Art Van Furniture ran tv ads all the time and were a major sponsor of America’s Thanksgiving Parade.  In the 1990s when the parade organizers ran into financial difficulty Art Van Elsander wrote a $250,000 personal check so that the parade could go on. Art Van Elsander passed away in 2018. Fast forward to early March 2020, Art Van Furniture had grown to become a $1.4 billion retail juggernaut with 141 stores and 3,700 employees. By March 8th, battered by tariffs on Chinese furniture imports, Art Van Furniture filed for Chapter 11.  Under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, debtors are left in control of the business and provided an injunction that prevents creditors from collecting debts or recovering collateral.  Three days after filing, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus to be a pandemic, and on March 13th the Trump administration declared a national emergency, forcing non-essential businesses to close. 🚨 BREAKING 🚨 "We have therefore made the assessment that #COVID19 can be characterized as a pandemic"-@DrTedros #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/JqdsM2051A — World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) March 11, 2020 The two announcements crippled Art Van’s ability to conduct a tent sale so they filed a request of the court to convert their case from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7. Under Chapter 7, the management of the company loses control and a trustee is appointed by the court. Under Chapter 7 the chances of debt recovery are greatly reduced. In Art Van Furniture’s case, remaining shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic would result in expenses eclipsing any potential revenues generated for creditors. Their hand was forced, and the courts took action. We asked our legal expert Scott Blakeley to give us his take and here’s what he said: “In Art Van’s case, the pandemic destroyed a strategy to operate to prepare for the sale of all its assets as a going concern to Levin Furniture’s former owner, so as to capture that value to distribute to unsecured creditors.  Art Van’s alternate strategy to pause the Chapter 11 proceedings until the pandemic passed was not workable as it could not meet the accruing administrative expenses.  Rather, Art Van was forced to implement a going out of business strategy for all of its stores.  In the initial days of the store closing sales, deposits from inventory sales dropped from $23 million to just $8 million in their final week." "Continued negotiations with creditors to pause Chapter 11 proceedings and conserve cash to meet fee obligations and pay former employees also fell through. In the middle of proceedings, the Judge ordered Art Van to freeze any spending in order to have the company declare amounts owed to employees. By then, however, employees joined in suing the retailer. With no revenue coming in and no amounts to cover employee pay and health care, the Judge declared that Art Van could not choose to pay employees at the expense of other creditors without a court order. With no other options, Art Van filed their request to convert the case to a Chapter 7, handing over the decision to the Trustee and Bankruptcy Court. In Art Van’s case, the Trustee is hoping to open stores again, but that pathway is unclear given the stay-at-home orders of states.  Unsecured creditors are not expected to receive a distribution.” Landlords cry foul over Modell’s bankruptcy pause Morris A. Modell opened the first Modell’s Sporting Goods on Cortland Street in Lower Manhattan in 1889. On March 11th, 2020 that run ended when they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, announcing they would be closing all 134 stores, citing declining interest in sporting apparel. They had planned an orderly liquidation to proceed through the month of April and sell a portion of their stores. But the Government imposed closure of non-essential businesses hampered those efforts so on March 23rd Modell’s requested and were granted a period of suspense in their bankruptcy case until April 30th, citing a rarely used Section 305 provision. Ordinarily, rent must be paid to the landlord post-bankruptcy, with the exception of a limited grace period for cause, and COVID-19 would be such a case.  So landlords in this case got the short end of the stick, they cannot collect rent or evict. Scott Blakeley offers the following assessment of what happened with Modell’s: “With its chapter 11 filing, Modell’s was forced to liquidate its assets through going–out–of–business (GOB) sales at its retail locations.  However, COVID-19 restrictions shuttered the GOB sales. Modell’s motioned the bankruptcy court to suspend the GOB sales given the COVID crisis and the resulting stay-at-home orders.  The court order allowed Modell’s to suspend payments to landlords for post-petition rent since the retailer could not conduct their GOB sales at the stores.  Other retailers in chapter 11 are likely to follow Modell’s strategy to suspend post-petition payments to landlords as social isolation orders continue. Given Covid-19 and stay at home orders, debtors and even creditors may benefit at some level (other than landlords) from the suspension of chapter 11 as debtors can preserve the value of their business as it stays in place, lenders can preserve the value of their collateral by not being forced to seek a premature sale or liquidation, and unsecured creditors may increase the likelihood of a distribution through enhanced values of GOB sales.  The chapter 11 case suspension is expected to extend through May 30th, but landlords are expected to oppose.” Scott Blakeley is the founder of Blakeley, LLP, a noted expert in the field of creditors’ rights, commercial law, e-commerce, and bankruptcy law. Scott regularly speaks to industry groups around the country and via monthly webcasts on the topics of creditors' rights and bankruptcy.  

Experian® today announced Ascend Commercial Suite™ for financial institutions specializing in commercial lending as well as insurance carriers to drive growth while reducing risk. The suite includes Experian’s Ascend Analytical Sandbox™ configurations and a new Ascend Commercial Benchmarking Dashboard™ that provides access to industry-leading data on small and midsize businesses. “Experian is committed to creating opportunities for businesses to succeed,” said Hiq Lee, president of Experian’s Business Information Services. “During uncertain times, making fast, accurate decisions is critical for lenders so they can continue to extend credit responsibly to the businesses that need it most. Experian’s Ascend Commercial Suite enables clients to access world-class advanced analytics, AI, machine learning, and benchmarking tools so they can make real-time decisions that can ultimately help businesses on the road to recovery ahead.” Experian’s Ascend Analytical Sandbox is an industry-leading cloud-based data and analytics solution that offers flexibility in addressing lenders’ needs and offers instant access to up to 19 years of data. The secure hybrid-cloud environment allows users to combine their own data sets with Experian’s exclusive data assets, including consumer credit, commercial credit, nontraditional, auto, and more. Small and midsize business lenders, as well as insurance carriers, can seamlessly blend commercial and consumer small business data to get a 360-degree view of their overall small business portfolio to more easily identify risks and opportunities. It’s a one-stop-shop for insights, model development, and results measurement. The Ascend Commercial Benchmarking Dashboard delivers a comprehensive visual dashboard view of credit risk data and Small Business Financial Exchange™ (SBFE) Data exclusively for SBFE members. Clients can compare their portfolios against industry performance and analyze new market segments for potential growth and expansion. The insights available through the Ascend Commercial Suite can be viewed and shared through interactive dashboards and customizable reports. Additional use cases include: Portfolio performance and monitoring: Lenders can harness the power of Experian data to better monitor performance and quickly identify areas of strength or concern on visual dashboards without having to run custom reports every month. Model development and validation: Clients can monitor existing models and develop new models in order to improve risk profiles of new accounts and improve existing accounts. Blended analysis: Small business lenders relying on personal guarantees can use both consumer and business data to determine a customer or potential customer’s overall risk. Marketing analytics and acquisition: Lenders’ campaign information and results combined with Experian’s Credit Risk Database help them understand performance and improve marketing and segmentation. Decisioning for risk assessment and segmentation: Lenders and insurance carriers can optimize risk decisioning and segmentation strategies using analytical tools on one platform, which provides quick and efficient access to multiple integrated data sets. Reject inferencing: Lenders can load application data and use SBFE trade-level data to understand how declines performed if customers obtained credit elsewhere. Custom attributes to better analyze portfolios: With SBFE Data, lenders can create their own custom attributes or use Experian’s highly predictive set of attributes. Experian’s Ascend Commercial Suite is built on the Experian Ascend Technology Platform™. Launched in 2017, the Experian Ascend Technology Platform is recognized as one of the most successful launches in Experian’s history. It’s currently being used by the top financial institutions globally including the United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil and Asia Pacific. Experian’s Ascend Analytical Sandbox was also selected in 2019 as the winner of the “Best Overall Analytics Platform” award by FinTech Breakthrough, an independent organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global fintech market. To learn more about Experian’s Ascend Commercial Suite, please visit: https://www.experian.com/business-information/ascend-commercial-suite.

We recently sat down with Kyle Blanchard, Product Manager with Business Information Services to ask him a few questions about Experian's improved OneSearch technology. What is OneSearch? OneSearch is a lot of things at its core. OneSearch is the ability for a customer to find a business, but the story of OneSearch is much bigger than that. OneSearch is Experian's technological advancement and journey on how we're bringing all of our innovations to drive improvements for our customers. So, our customers can find businesses today, but at Experian we had to ask the question, how can we make this better? And with OneSearch, we're providing the ability for our customers to find businesses faster, and for them to find a more exact match and a more precise business every single time. What should Experian clients expect? Our clients can expect a variety of changes. Those changes won't come in terms of the products or services you're using today, but more about the experience you're having. So whether you're using BusinessIQ, or you're getting files in batch, the only experience difference you're going to feel is you're going to get better match results, more match results, and you're going to get them at a faster speed. So your experience is going to improve. This is going to be free of charge. This is just an internal improvement that we're making for you. But, every way you interface with our applications or your services will not change at all. Why does OneSearch matter to our clients? This matters a lot to our clients. Their first experience and every experience they have with us starts with finding the right business. So, we stepped back and we asked ourselves, how can we improve this experience for our customers and how can we make it better? And so, we looked at all technologies available and we did an evaluation, and what we had was a deterministic solution but where we really needed to be was a probabilistic one. But the investment that the company or that we needed to make to get there is significant. But we saw that this is an important investment to make because of the improvements that it can drive for our customers, and the improvements it could drive for our customers are wide and varied. Whether it be an improved ROI because you're finding more businesses, or a faster processing time so you can do more jobs even quicker. Why is Experian investing in innovation and technology? Experian is investing in innovation and technology for two reasons. One, it's part of our culture, we're always investing in innovation and technology, whether it be this probabilistic search match algorithm, whether it be machine learning or whether it be A.I. We're always trying to innovate and always trying to drive new best practices in technology. Finally, we know the importance from our customer perspective. This is fundamental to their experience. And not only that, we recently partnered with Forrester to do a research study and found that over 85% of risk managers are looking to improve their risk management practices. 75% of those are willing to invest and purchase a solution within the next year. So we know how important this is to our customers, and the only way to get there is to innovate and always drive new technology. Learn More About OneSearch

The credit industry works very differently than it did even a few years ago. In recent years, new technology and the availability of analytics means that credit departments have much more information to make decisions. When both commercial and consumer data is used together, departments unlock a lot of powerful data that can be combined for more accurate decisions. However, some credit departments have not changed their processes and staffing structure. By using the traditional approaches even with new technology and data, credit departments are not able to see all of the possible benefits. I recently spoke on a panel of credit management executives at the High Radius Conference. During the talk, we touched on this topic and talked afterwards about what credit organizations need to do. Jan Minniti, Senior National Account Executive with the National Association of Credit Management mentioned that while many large organizations are using automation, even smaller shops can benefit as well. But her larger point was in order to transform, organizations must change the skill sets that they are recruiting, and expand training offered to current employees. Here are a few keys to help your organization transition to modern credit management: 1. Understand the recent evolution of credit models and technology As Minniti pointed out, we started out with general payment score models that were applied to everyone. However, today more specific models are available (for example, specific to an industry), so you can choose the best model depending on who you are selling to. These new models move us into a new generation where instead of making gut feel decisions or spreadsheets to track data, we can use statistics to not only assess risk, but also assign credit line increases. These scores and credit lines can then be fed to automated tools to manage the order-to-cash process. Even more importantly, we can use automated technology for account management strategies, which increase efficiency, maximize account potential and reduce fraud. In our experience at Experian, we have evidence that machine learning reduces manual reviews by as much as 74 percent. 2. Learn how credit managers can revise their role and processes Research recent changes in the financial services industry for inspiration on what is possible and how to help your department get to the next generation. Typically the FinTechs and large banks are on the leading edge of advances in risk management. By starting with analytics, the financial industry has driven a lot of innovation and change. They have also focused on data management to evolve to a frictionless environment. Think of how your company can incorporate these changes. But most importantly, how you as a credit manager can introduce and drive the change. 3. Revise the credit manager role to include more strategy Instead of shrinking from the change out of concern that technology will replace your role, credit managers need to lead the change. Start by learning what’s possible with regards to both technology and data. Share it with other credit managers and leadership to help your company be an early adopter. But, be careful not to fall into “shiny object syndrome”, where you use technology just because its available, even though it might not yet have the features you need. A solution in search of a problem is always a questionable approach. Minniti says that she knows changing the roles is challenging because it is a big shift and credit is not typically the shiny, new area of the company. However, to reduce risks and impact change, credit managers must seek greater visibility with the C-Suite. “Credit managers should educate management by using reports to show the importance to your company. Use data to show how much money you are saving the company,” says Minniti. “It’s also important to talk about automation, which actually helps credit managers stay relevant instead of replacing their jobs.” Having an automated credit strategy is also a great way to manage in times of turnover, or in trying to up level expertise. 4. Revising staffing and hiring guidelines Minniti says it starts by picking good analysts who can replace you. “If you staff with people who listen to what the machine learning is saying, but don't have the ability to think beyond that then who fills your shoes when you move on? What happens to the credit department?,” says Minniti. “We will always need people to tell the machine what to do, be able to adjust the model when the economy changes.” One of the biggest reasons that many managers and departments are resisting technology is fear of being replaced. This simply isn’t going to happen. Without the experience and background, credit models quickly decay. It is impossible to turn over all of the thinking behind credit decisions to machines. Someone needs to be there to manage the ongoing performance of the models, and make sure the analytics track with changes in the marketplace. Credit departments that take initiative to lead the change, to use the new technology and models, will demonstrate their value to their organization. By using automation and machine learning, the credit department becomes more valuable to the organization instead of less. By proactively managing the change and taking the lead, you can set your department on the right path to lead the transformation of your company as well as the credit industry.