Unlocking Actionable Intelligence in Receivables with RNN Group’s Dane Mauldin | Ep. 250

Hello, everybody. Adam Parks here with another episode of Receivables Podcast. Today, I'm here with a new guest who is the new president of RNN Group and a data industry guy with a deep knowledge. I'm very excited to talk to Dane Malden today about everything that is going on in their world from a data perspective. So, Dane, thank you so much for joining me today. I really do appreciate you sharing your insights. Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

For anyone who has not been as lucky as me to get to know you over the last couple of months, could you tell our audience a little about yourself and how you got to the seat that you're in today? Sure. Yeah, I've had a pretty interesting career, fortuitous, I guess is probably how I describe it. I started my career many, many years ago as a sales guy working for a company called TRW that later became Experian.

I was born and raised in Oklahoma, and so I had what many of our jobs are the first time you get out of college. I was a sales guy with a small territory in Oklahoma, and it was... I was fortunate in that my father was a longtime sales guy and was always kind of the life of the party. And my mother was a operations VP at a collections.

firm. So ironically, we're talking about receivables management, you know, some 35, 40 years later. But I started my career at TRW later at Experian, which was really interesting because it kind of taught me, even though I was familiar with the finance.

services space, but predominantly I called on banks and credit unions, collection agencies, collections operations, and utility companies and that type of thing for identity authentication and verification. And held that role and kind of expanded and ended up managing Oklahoma.

Arkansas, Northern Louisiana, but ultimately went to work for one of my customers, which was in the collection space. And my role there was frankly, was kind of a unique role, an island role, as I usually like to call it, where my job was to kind of take the entire portfolio.

and help them work more effectively and efficiently using third-party data content, data sources. And I was fairly successful at Experian and predominantly in kind of their batch environment because I kind of had this knack of how do you kind of find... you know, the way companies work and then how do you really apply data to that to help them be more effective? And I'd help this specific company with that. And so they hired me as a, I think my, my.

title was like department manager of electronic skip or some strange name. I didn't quite understand it. Something made up, yeah. And it kind of happens throughout my career, oddly enough. But yeah, but it was great because, you know, I think what that afforded me was I had this exposure to a pretty significant skip tracing department, a pretty extensive kind of collection department. And so it kind of taught me.

and really kind of hands-on. How do you actually get in there, understand what they're doing, how they're using the information that they have to be more successful? And I don't know why, but I kind of had this little knock where I kind of knew what data was available and could tie together kind of this operation. efficiency to data and data information to help them work more effectively and efficiently.

And then you could really see the net result, right? Because it's like either you could find the person or you couldn't, or you could get them on the phone or you couldn't. And so it was really interesting. And unfortunately, that organization kind of got into a downturn. little bit of an issue. But as I progressed in my career there, I started in this island role and ultimately I ended up managing about 400 collectors and skip tracers.

And I also managed all the procurement kind of activity for this type of data. So I had a lot of familiarity with the players in the space and ultimately went to work for one of them. It was a company at the time called Business Transactions Express that changed their name to RiskWise. And RiskWise was an interest. interesting small company out of Minnesota, but they were one of the first companies that really focused on identity authentication.

They had a pretty decent presence, albeit small, within the collection space and really wanted to expand that. I had come from the space. I knew the folks that were there. And so very quickly kind of went there, established some relationships and kind of a product set, if you will. Again, centered around kind of scoring, skip tracing, prioritization, really pretty much in the same vein. And shortly after I started, they were acquired by LexisNexis.

And so I was one of the few, as many of us in our careers are acquired by bigger companies, was able to kind of straddle the fence between the two organizations. And one of, I still contend, is probably one of my favorite jobs I ever had. I was a batch consultant.

And as a batch consultant, it was like, you know, you work with customers and you help salespeople sell the customer. But again, it was kind of in the same vein of a knack of, well, what are you trying to accomplish? Yeah, that's exactly right. But Lexus was a phenomenal organization. And this was before the Risk Solutions Group was established because they had this immense amount of data and information centered predominantly around law firms. But it was much more about.

you know, just raw data sitting in kind of all of these files. So it gave us a lot of flexibility. So very quickly, I was like, oh, yeah, I'll take some of this and some of that and some of this and created these products, right? These batch products.

And it was phenomenal because you get into a big corporate organization or a big corporate world where there's hundreds of salespeople. And so it was it was, again, fortuitous for me because it's like, well, this is really simple. Here's a value proposition. This is what it does. I can, you know, kind of behind the.

curtain, figure out how to put it together, but really kind of demonstrate and build these products that could solve problems. And so it really kind of gave me exposure to these broader sales organizations and how do you talk about that and help salespeople be more effective.

with customers in terms of both exploring kind of need and understanding how they actually use the information. Because, you know, frankly and fundamentally, I feel like if we're able to understand a customer and the challenges that they face and what they're trying to do to be more effective. and the closer you can kind of get.

in that groove and be kind of walking in lockstep with a customer, that's how you build kind of longstanding partnerships and relationships. And so I'll try to make this short because when I was at LexisNexis, I was fortunate. Early on, and this is early 2000s, I had the ability, because we were a small part of a company inside of a bigger company that ultimately became the Risk Solutions Group.

And so I had these opportunities to start focusing on these different and various functions, a lot of exposure to acquisitions and integration and how those things kind of come together in terms of how you position product. and ultimately how you operationalize that in terms of what I always define as customer operations, those customer touch points, whether it's contracting or service or support.

And so I virtually was able to kind of hold a multitude of positions and functional areas to kind of get my legs and understand it in very short succession. And again, I don't know. I always say fortuitous because I feel like I'm just blessed or was lucky because it's so hard to get that kind of general management experience these days, right? Because you have to be very specialized. Ultimately, I ended up through a series of acquisitions with LexisNexis.

being kind of head of what we defined as customer operations, which were all of these customer touch points. And we were a much larger organization. We'd established a risk solutions group. We'd acquired a company called Choice Point out of Atlanta. So we had become this kind of...

billion plus dollar organization. And after, as has kind of been consistent within my career at that point, one of our business units was a screening business, kind of a background screening, employment screening business. And so I actually ended up maintaining my customer operations function across the risk solutions group, as well as managing this full business unit, full kind of P&L accountability and responsibility. And so I did that for a couple of years.

And at the time, I'd been there about 12 years. I'd kind of had a great run, a great experience. Felt like I'd accomplished what I needed. I had relocated to Atlanta from Oklahoma. My parents were getting a little bit older. I was a little concerned about their health. My kids were still pretty young. And so I basically made the decision I wanted to move back to Oklahoma. Felt like I'd accomplished a lot with Lex.

And it was fortunate. So we moved the family back to Oklahoma, got to spend some time with my father before he passed away in 2020. I did some consulting work and that type of thing. But ultimately, I went to work for TransUnion. in the early part of 2013 as their chief product officer. And if I'm being completely honest, I never really knew what a chief product officer was, but I thought I could be pretty good at it.

And I had a relationship with a guy named Jim Peck who had taken over as CEO and so was able to kind of join TransUnion at a time that they were going and kind of shifting their strategy to becoming a... growth organization and really expanding their data content and thinking more broadly about how they attacked the group. And TransUnion, a great organization. It was a great organization whenever I got there.

but was really part of a transformational effort there from a product perspective and part of a very substantial kind of run with that organization as they continue to kind of grow and expand organically and inorganically. and had some great success from really kind of redefining the credit report with a credit vision-related product and looking at trended data. And how do you actually then make that the new norm within the industry for underwriting and other purposes?

credit reports, and really expanding some other areas. They'd acquired a company called TLO that really kind of shored up a lot of public record-related data. that supported a lot of the credit data. So really great run, a great time in terms of that role. And in late 2000, 2019 or so, Jim Peck had decided to move on and Chris Cartwright had taken over as CEO and they had asked me if I would step into an operations role as the chief operations officer.

And so it was a great new challenge, kind of moved most of the product related functionality to another individual. And so it was a new challenge to take on this operational. And again, it was a little bit of a hodgepodge as tends to happen a lot for some reason within my career. Maintained a lot of the customer delivery related activity, the analytics group that's still under my accountability.

But then to things like expanding their global footprint relative to their global capability centers within the group, things like procurement, things like facilities. So everything from is there, you know, are there paper towels and the restrooms to how do we contract with customers and make sure that we have things connected?

Yeah, it was a really great experience. So I had initially planned on, as we all had these visions whenever we're younger about, I'm going to retire whenever I'm 50. That's what I'm going to do. Well, so I... I kind of held this operations role for about five years and felt like, again, similar to whenever I left Lex, I felt like I'd accomplished a lot. I was very proud of what I'd accomplished there. A lot of great relationships and great affinity for TransUnion.

relationships that I have there and actually stepped into a brief role at a company called NIQ, where Jim Peck was the CEO. And they hired me as the chief transformation officer. And it's a great organization, large, growing. But the reality is I stepped into that role and they kind of. done a lot of the heavy lifting from a transformation perspective. And I guess if I'm being honest about it, great organization, great people, but I just didn't feel like it was a very good fit.

And so after about six months, it was a tough decision, but I made a decision that maybe it is time for me to retire. My daughter was pregnant. My daughter was pregnant, about to have a baby. I had a lot of travel coming up, a lot of things going on with the organization. And I felt like that it was probably just the appropriate time. A good experience there, but one of those things like we have sometimes. I don't think it was a great fit for me.

I left on good terms, still very good friends with all of those folks there. They just went public. So very happy for that crew. And so I was like, this is it. I'm going to retire. This is going to be great. I've got a grandchild coming. And so that lasted a little over two months. I think, at which point it's like, you know, I was under over on a year. Yeah, well, you can only reorganize the pantry and clean out the garage so many times, you know.

I had these visions of, I've got all these notes for books I wanted to write. And I started formulating that, but it's, I think it was like a Tuesday. I kind of woke up and I was like, man, I don't know if I can do this, but I made it through the holidays.

And actually, I had a long-standing relationship with a guy named Jim Van Schyke. And Jim and I had worked together many years back, very early on at LexisNexis, whenever we stood up the risk group. And so I had stayed in touch with Jim and we talked about his organization because they've been around for 12, 13 years. Really interesting spot. And we started having some conversations and I got kind of charged up about it. I was excited. They had a very kind of unique position.

within the receivables management space and a very nice footprint, a very solid product in terms of, you know, the verification of assets, verification of employment, verification of bank information. really started expanding out a phenomenal kind of foundational monitoring capability called VAST within the organization and an immense amount of data and data content. Committed team, committed folks, committed organization. And I got really kind of pumped up and charged up about it.

Because it fundamentally just gets down to the nuts and guts, right? We're talking about raw material. How do you kind of then formulate that and think about that in different ways? It's a market rate for innovation.

It's a market that's absolutely ripe for innovation because we've been doing the same things the same ways for such a long time. And when you're able to have that deeper understanding of here's what the menu includes. You're not just ordering from the menu. You're able to order from.

the warehouse bring things together create a menu and then offer that to your customers which i think is a really unique position to be in within the debt collection space, because bringing in that outside data knowledge and how are you not only going to apply the data, but enable the customer to operationalize it within their own organization. And what does that start to look like? That's exactly right. Well, and like many...

markets, right? And many kind of verticals. And even though I've been away from kind of direct engagement with the receivables management space, but I've been around that my entire career. It's competitive. You know what I mean? It's like there's competition at every side and everybody wants to be better and they want to be more efficient, but they also, you know, get.

let the secret sauce go. And so it's just a great dynamic because ultimately, if you're able to tie together and really deeply understand what the customer's trying to accomplish, if they let you in, right? It's like, if you can develop that relationship, they'll talk to you. and have confidence that it's held in confidence.

It's just really exciting. That's the kind of stuff that really kind of gets my juices flowing. I want to understand and help me understand and walk something through the door for me and tell me how that works, both from an efficiency perspective and a yield perspective and kind of a return. And it's just.

really satisfying to kind of have the stuff to play with, understand kind of the state of affairs because every customer is a little bit different. Yeah, we all kind of do the same thing, but...

you always kind of put your stamp on it. And sometimes it's trying to get my arms around kind of the compliance requirements, or sometimes it's like I'm trying to increase my contact rates, or how do I increase my yield, or how do I think about my portfolio, and what's the variation, whether it's geographic or demographic.

or sociographic, but it's like, you know, you meet the customer where they are and what they're trying to accomplish. And so being back in the thick of that, and because R&N is a small, hungry, right, we're lean and nimble organization, it just kind of, I found this like.

rejuvenation of I can see the passion coming through here right like when you when we start talking about putting the pieces of the puzzle together and creating a new product I watch you light up which I absolutely love because seeing somebody with your knowledge base and being able to actually put that into the hands of the marketplace and use it because I know I mean I know a lot of people on your team and

They all have really strong relationships with the people around them. And now to empower those relationships with the kind of thought power investment that the organization is making into bringing in somebody like you. And what does that start to look like over the next couple of years?

Clearly, the passion is there. How do you envision the marketplace starting to change over the next 12 to 18 months? And how are you helping the customers to prepare for that type of new challenges that are coming down the pipe? Yeah. Well, you know, listen, RNN as an organization is evolving, right? We are transforming. And again, all the pieces are there, right? We have the foundational. And it's probably important to say the other great thing is.

is the people. When I think about the team at RNN, they're hungry. They want to learn. They're excited. They're invested. And so when you marry that and you think about kind of direction where we're going, number one, there's an element of kind of clarity and demonstration of how you kind of bring that value and help customers. And then how do we help our customers be successful?

And so, you know, I think we've got a pretty good reputation within the space in terms of the quality. I mean, we do the really hard stuff, right? It's generally kind of post-judgment recovery, difficult to make sure that we identify those consumers. So it's like...

To get to the hard stuff, you got to be experts on how you kind of lead up. But there's all kinds of nuggets and granules of value there. So it's like, as we hear about these opportunities with our customers and what they face, they all want the same thing, right? It's like...

We just need data and we want it cheap and, you know, it needs to be better. Which I really do. That's a pretty familiar conversation. That's right. And listen, I can appreciate that. And I know that there's a place for it. And so we understand and acknowledge and kind of recognize that when I think about where you can truly bring value and it's a little bit tired, you know, but you hear this, oh, we want to be a trusted partner. Well, if it's.

BS, then it's BS. And customers know. You know what I mean? It's like, you got to have a vested interest. I want our customers to be successful, but I want our customers to be successful in terms of how they define their strategy.

and to determine if and where we can play a role in that. And to me, I think customers know that just like people generally know that, right? You know if somebody's full of it or not. And it's like, if you're genuinely interested in where they're going and what they're trying to do and try your... best to kind of fit and figure out and test and evaluate and assess and help them wrap that in things that I generally would call more administrative, but provide insight while you're doing it.

helping them, you know, kind of understand, listen, we found some interesting things within the portfolio. Here's how it compares. You got some. differentiation or variation that may exist. It might be a regulatory from a state. It might be specifics around the portfolio. It might have to do with age or type or what have you. But all of those things provide insight and optionality.

And if you provide a customer with insight and optionality and a means to be able to test that and also be forthcoming and forthright enough to say, you know what, we've tested this and I don't think we can solve this problem for you effectively. But I tell you, I do know somebody. who can, that to me is the mark of a real partner because then it's like, listen,

By hook or by crook, I want you to be successful and I want to be a part of that. But if I've got a genuine concern about a customer and their success and can help them get there, that's how you build, in my opinion, long-term valuable. relationships. And to me, the dollars come, the revenue comes, the performance comes if you're working in kind of unison to kind of get there with that common vision with a customer in mind. And I think it works for...

Actionable intelligence. There's one thing when it comes to mountains of data, and mountains of data can be valuable because we can find the patterns and trends within the mountain, but our ability to translate those behaviors. signals into actionable intelligence, I think is where the differentiator is and where the marketplace has been.

I've talked with law firms that are not running a data waterfall because they're expecting to get it from the client or they say, I'm going to sue everything. Now that we have all of this new digital information and all of this technology that's coming to the surface, ability to distill that down and distill those behavioral signals into actionable intelligence to me is

where we're headed. I realize you've been in the data space your entire career, but you've been focused on RNN now for about four or five months. What have you seen in the marketplace that is going to allow us to start taking more of those signals and creating that actionable intelligence.

for organizations to drive themselves forward. Yeah. Well, I tell you what's interesting. You think about the aspect of time and you think about how quick, right? Quick is important. Quality is important. Yeah.

Quick is important. Time is of the essence. But I'm telling you, you link together fast, efficient, high quality. I think that's really important, number one, right? Got to be first. Everybody's in a race, whether you realize it or not, right? If you're not first, you're last. That's right. So it's like, especially in this space, being there first, getting the information first.

really important as a direct correlation in terms of success. And so the speed is really important. I think also kind of the insight and the assistance and the help. So to your point. You start talking about, I generally kind of refer to it as data jockeying. Okay, well, you know, I'm going to work my waterfall and I got to get this and I need to get the result and I need to get that and I need my damn technical people to get that stuff in the file and drop and where's the...

You know, and ultimately you kind of end up in this kind of data jockey play, which is kind of important. And so I think with RNN, we have a couple of really significant opportunities. Number one is... What I consider to be is expedited performance. So how do you kind of get what's kind of this industry standard and particularly in the in the area of kind of employment identification, verification and bank?

verification and identification is that, you know, your standard kind of 30, 45, 60 day kind of window. We need to bring that down to a couple of weeks, 15 days. And that's really kind of what we're trying to drive towards with the same level of quality, same level of effort. I think that's a huge opportunity for us.

Having a pro, what I would define as a program. So, so, you know, when, when, when you think about the way many customers kind of apply that, it's like, all right, well, here's my portfolio. Either I've only got a budget for this, or I can only send this many files or this many.

records, and I call it dead money, you ultimately kind of end up with a number of accounts that just kind of sit. And they sit until they get to, you know, well, all right, so this month we can take another 15% or 25% and kind of funnel it through. So I think, you know, we have a huge opportunity at RNN to really. Better educate, I think, our customers of our vast program. I think of it as kind of vast infinity is what I call it because we can apply strategies.

for our customers we're actually managing we're maintaining that portfolio that population where we're consistently trying to identify new information, new employment, new bank information, new location information, new contact information, new automobile, whatever it may be, and let them know when it happens. And so that way they can have assurance that, you know.

At least it's not just sitting on my server somewhere with nothing waiting for, you know, the fortuitous kind of dollars to come from. Motion creates emotion. We got to see these things. That's right. You have to have some sort of an action in order to find a success.

And in some of those cases, we can appreciate because our customers, like any business, you know, there might be budget constraints. There might be concerns. They may not be able to work it or what have you. But the beauty of our system is that, yes, we've got the data kind of piece unlocked. Right. It's like we know how to find that and how to do it in the appropriate way to meet our customers needs. But similarly, if our customers have constraints or challenges.

No problem. Help us understand what those are. We can help from an operational perspective and a data management perspective to do that. And not only will we do it. We'll report back to you. We'll tell you everything that we find. We can tell you everything from a compliance perspective. We can tell you about your coverage. We do kind of internal data science and kind of

play on that information consistently. So if we start seeing variations, even though it may not be raw data, we could say, hey, we think we've identified a population here that could be of interest or, you know, if you have some budget dollars that free it that you can try to go after.

We think we can help you identify and carve that out. But again, it goes back to me to specifics around the customer's objective. What are they trying to do? What are they trying to get to that moves beyond just... Yes, I'm a vendor. Here's our data. Please, I hope that it's successful for you to help me understand how you could be more successful, not only from the data performance and the outcome, but from the overall management, because we can help.

With that being more effective, more successful, more efficient, and our customers can have confidence in that. So I'm really excited about how this plays in because we have a programmatic kind of solution. that can fit for our customers to help them be successful. Whether you're a single shingle shop or you're a significant player, we've got the flexibility and the speed to be able to kind of help address that effectively to help our customers meet their needs. I love that you guys are sharing.

intelligence. Not only are you looking at the data science solutions internally, but sharing those with the customers and creating a true partnership that allows for data experimentation, the application of that intelligence to your operations. like where you guys are starting to shape your organization to. Is there anything new happening at RNN that the marketplace should be aware of going into the NCBA conference?

Well, I mean, listen, we've got some new products that are rolling out. We just rolled out a kind of an auto intelligence product for those that are interested. You know, if you think about that as an asset, particularly in judgment recovery for receivables management. We are right at the conclusion of developing a product we call Real Residence. So it's a high level of confidence that the address is accurate and correct. You know, we deal with a fairly nomadic population at times.

While it's difficult to be 100% perfect, you know, but. multiple data sources, tons of testing, and we feel pretty strongly about it. It can always get better. Like anything that we would ever do, we're consistently kind of pushing the envelope. How can we get better? How can we test different sources and see where we could fit?

things better. We're also going to dig a little bit into when you kind of think about process flow, you think about operational flow. So you think about registered agents, you think about things that happen with those customers, particularly when we have potential cross-state related problems.

certain things that our customers are dealing with. How can we help? How can we assist? How can we verify that for you to find other alternatives? And so, you know, we've got some quick hit things that I think kind of help expand what we can provide. We continue to push. envelope on emails and try to get more effective there in terms of different points or Omni kind of contact plays there from kind of spot solution. And again, we're pushing this 15-day play. We don't have it.

100% locked in, but we're really close. It's a big lift. And we feel like we can make it happen. And we think it's important. And so as we kind of play with that and test it. Not only that, but then rolling that out into some expanded play for those that we can't capture in that 15 days, right? That immediate play, then how do we fold that into our vast kind of infinity play and do that appropriately?

Knowing that we're actively kind of keep that working and our customers can have confidence that that remaining population is still being worked and identified. So I'm really excited about that play. And that probably then ends up. with this vast, probably a broader vast infinity play. So when we think about that portfolio management, that portfolio monitoring and doing so in a very customized way.

where I feel like that's a strong level, an area of differentiation for RNN. You look at our team, you look at our sales team, you look at the staff overall, deep experience, deep experience within the space. And not to mention the deep experience that we have from a technical and data science and kind of analytic capability. And so we're transforming a bit.

to really taking that next step. And I think focusing on how do we better understand the customer? How do we then continue to kind of build out these suites of kind of clamp on, add on things, I think of things like compliance. I think of things like insight identification and proactive notification about where there's places that we can play to try to get those little nuggets, right? Because in this world,

It's like you find that little sliver, you find that little universe and you're able to find it and do so consistently. It's huge value for our customers. And so we just kind of continue to dig and play. And I think, you know, not to sound.

silly. My mother always said sunlight's the best disinfectant. So it's like, it's like the more that you're transparent about the information and what we find and what we see, even if we don't know the answer, the ability to say, we find this interesting nuance whenever you think about. within your population, where could we play here? Could we think about a different treatment strategy? Could we think about a different approach?

And I think the more that you bring those things to the table in an innovative way, in a proactive way to our customers, I think, number one, they appreciate it. Number two, they recognize the value that's there in terms of helping them be successful. And we genuinely want. our customers to be successful and feel like we're a part of it. And that's what really kind of gets me pumped up about where we are and directionally where we're going.

Dan, this is one of my favorite conversations of the entire year. Your energy and knowledge is infectious and inspiring. You've got me all amped up now. I'm very excited. Stop, you're going to make me blush. I'm really looking forward to spending some time with the RNN team at the NCBA Connect conference in San Antonio, Texas and talking some more about the...

incredible things that you guys are working on over there. And I really do appreciate you taking the time to join me today, share your insights and your story because I didn't know the whole background and now I just cannot wait to learn more about signals and intelligence. how that's going to start to connect over the next couple of years.

Well, I appreciate it, Adam. And thank you for having me. And thanks for what you do. I mean, I think, you know, I've learned a lot from watching you and kind of reading the material that you produce. I think it's a great. service for the industry overall. But listen, if it's not apparent, I'm excited about where RNN is. I'm excited about the industry and where it's going. And frankly, I'm excited to be a part of it. So thanks for having me.

We're excited to have you here. For those of you that are watching, if you have additional questions you'd like to ask Dana myself, you can leave those in the comments on LinkedIn and YouTube and we'll be responding to those. Or if you have additional topics you'd like to see us discuss, I have a feeling there's a few other topics out there. Hopefully I can get Dane back at least one more.

more time to help me continue to create great content for a great industry. But until next time, Dan, thank you so much. I really do appreciate all your insights. All right. Thanks, Adam. See you later. And thank you everybody for watching. We really do appreciate your time and attention. We'll see you all again soon. Bye.