Peek behind the tech at Lowell

Peek behind the tech at Lowell, one of the UK’s leading debt companies 

As we often tell our customers, we see the person behind the debt. But what lies behind us? The answer: technology. Without continuing investment in technology and its support, we would be unable to function. We would have no data from clients, no payments from customers, and no confidence from auditors and the FCA.

We asked Dan Snell, our new Head of Enterprise Architecture, to give us an overview of our in-house technology capabilities.

We’ve got around 120 people permanently employed in tech roles. That doesn’t include contractors and our partnership with Fujitsu.

Fujitsu provide our fundamental infrastructure and managed services. This includes managing the building where our servers sit. They build our laptops and computers, respond to incidents, look after maintenance and so on.

On top of that are our permanent teams. We have a group of people who are constantly reviewing, testing, and strengthening cyber security. Another group understand the landscape of how everything hangs together and manage the relationship with Fujitsu.

Tech Ops design, define, manage, and maintain our infrastructure. They also make sure our office facilities are set up and properly run; that we’re resilient and have plans for disaster readiness, (like it, say, an asteroid hits our data centre).

We have a mix of things that we’ve bought off the shelf. The usual suspects, Office365, Workday, and so on, plus a set of applications that we’ve built ourselves over the years, like Caseflow. These homegrown apps are so fundamental to what we do that nothing off the shelf would fit the bill.

Caseflow is the beating heart of everything we do. This CRM tool has been a crucial part of the business since we started. Our agents use it when they’re dealing with customers. We have a team of people who look after it, making sure it always runs smoothly, continually conjuring up improvements.

The systems our colleagues use are all about customer information. We have tech teams keeping them up to date, managing our interactions with credit bureaux, insolvency providers, and debt management companies.

We have people on call 24/7. Designers, developers, testers, and admin identify and fix any problems as soon as possible, ideally before they have an impact on our customers or colleagues. Think telephony system, website, app, our different comms channels.

Another team handles governance, compliance, and QA. They make sure all our certifications are in place, as clients rely on them to know their information and customer data is protected; the FCA demands that we’re resilient and secure and always doing the right thing for our customers; and auditors want to know they can rely on the integrity of our finances.

And finally, data. We have vast data. A specialist team analyses our data and reacts to what it tells us, generating the insights we need to make the right decisions for our customers and the business.

Want to know more about how we use technology  to drive our business?

Please contact your Client Director.