This time, Todd Langusch’s family wasn’t going anywhere.
The longtime industry veteran was approached by Roxanne Baker, the president of Coast Professional, this summer, about coming on board as the collection agency’s chief information officer. Langusch, while he was president and chief executive of Tech Lock, served as a virtual CIO at Coast, but the agency was growing and now needed someone full-time. But Langusch, who had served in the military before spending the past 12 years at different jobs in the collections and debt-buying industry, did not want to uproot his family again and move from Michigan to either of Coast’s offices in New York or Louisiana. And his family did not want to move.
“My family sacrificed a lot when I was in the military and in different jobs,” Langusch said. “This time, they had the full say.”
But Coast wanted Langusch, so a deal was struck where he could join the company but not be required to move.
“Coast had been a Tech Lock customer since 2009; both of us knew each other really well,” Langusch said last week. “I was going to take a year off and spend time with the family. But I knew the players already. I knew I would be working with people of a high caliber “
Langusch has already received approval from the company’s board of directors to hire 11 additional IT staff, to help the company continue to grow. Langusch is hoping he can reproduce some of the results he had when he was CIO at Asset Acceptance Capital, where he said the company was able to cut IT expenses by 30% but still help collector productivity double, giving the company its best financial quarter in 50 years.
“My goal for the year is to build world-class IT organization,” Langusch said. “I want to focus on process excellence. That includes efficiencies, automation. “There are a couple of key things every organization should look at, such as where are you spending your money. About 30 to 35% of an IT budget is telecom. Are you doing long distance dialing, partnered with a certain vendor or taking advantage of SIP? We want to reduce our telecom bill. We want to get accounts to the right collector at the right time. Analytics is key.”
