Today, anscers has re-launched a simplified version of our original anscers Network concept called RFI Reference List. We have removed the Network invitation and acceptance portions – and now simply allow every company using anscers to maintain their own RFI Reference List for the easy submission of RFI’s.

References come from many sources: trade references on credit applications, known competitors you currently rate with, companies you would like to rate with – all of these companies and more can be added to your RFI Reference List for easy use during the RFI process. In addition, anscers know tracks how many requests you have made of these references and how many they have responded too.

RFI Reference List and Response/Request Tracking

If you have used the anscers RFI Reference feature in the past it will be very easy to start your RFI Reference List by importing previously used references. Click on the RFI Reference List link at the top right of any anscers page – then click Import RFI References.

Import RFI References screen

To build your RFI Reference List you can add companies on the RFI Reference List page or during Step 3 of the RFI process when you are adding a reference to a specific RFI.

Adding a reference during Step 3

Find out more about the anscers RFI Service and the pricing for the service here.

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Today we added a new feature to the database of the anscers.com system that will help to eliminate the entry of duplicate companies; continuous address updating and company merging.

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CMA has made some significant updates to anscers this weekend that will benefit users in several ways and prepare you for new anscers services we have planned.

Update #1

We have been soliciting full accounts receivable from anscers users and as a result of analyzing that data, updates had to be made to how we import trade lines. Many companies in Construction, Media and other industries track more than one account with a customer as a separate AR line with it's own account number. This could be because of different construction jobs, different advertisers, or tracking different product lines. Talking with anscers users we found it was important to see each account separately on a report. The updates we made this weekend allow this to happen using the account number on a tradeline.

As a result of this update you will now see multiple tradelines from the same company on certain subjects. These represent the multiple accounts that company has with the subject.

Entering your account number in anscers when you enter a tradeline is more important than ever. It will prepare you for services that are coming in the future and allow you to report the full relationship with a subject.

Please note: You may see true duplicates of tradelines if the account numbers were entered incorrectly. Account numbers are NOT required fields except for full AR imports. If you see duplications of the same tradeline please contact Customer Support and we will clean the data.

Update # 2

If you submit your full AR to anscers for import we are now cleansing all the address data using the USPS address guidelines before an import. This results in much better subject matching when data is imported.

Previous to this update AR imports would create many duplicate subjects because the addresses did not match. Now we cleanse all the anscers subject data and the addresses on the AR we import resulting in better matches.

Imported AR data must also meet validity requirements before it is entered into the database. Those are:

• Full subject address data – address, city, state, zip
• Account Balance and aging must total +-$5 for rounding
• If there is no account balance then the tradeline must have 2 or more of the following: Year Open, Last Sold (within 18 months), Terms, High Credit, or Comment Code

Tradelines that do not meet this criteria are not imported into anscers. If you are a full AR contributor you don't need to worry about filtering your AR for validity, anscers will do that for you.

Update # 3

CMA has automated a great portion of the AR import procedure making it very easy for us to take on new AR contributors.

If you would like to become a full AR contributor please contact Teresa Campos at 818-972-5361. There are many benefits to contributing your full AR:

• Matching RFI's will be answered automatically with your data
• Matching Group Report requests will be answered automatically with your data
• We can filter data to submit to Group Past Due Reports
• You are building better anscers Business Credit Reports
• You are prepared to take full benefit of future services to be announced

Please contact me direct if you have any questions or ideas for the anscers system, Dina Amadril 562-432-4807. Thank you for using anscers.

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Several upgrades to the Construction Forms Filing Service (CFFS) are available on anscers.com starting today.

The upgrades are:

1. A confirmation page for each project submitted where the you can make
changes to the elements of the project before submission.

2. Progress Release forms that have been requested are now saved
into History on the project detail page. Clicking on the link in History will
open the form you created.

3. A different screen flow after project submission. Instead of sending you
to the project summary page after submission – you will now see the project detail page
for the project you submitted. This confirms that we received the project and allows you to print Progress Releases right away.

If you are interested in learning more about CMA’s CFFS service please contact our Nevada office at 702-259-2622 and ask for Amber or Elise.

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One of the greatest challenges on anscers is identifying duplicate subjects. Since anscers accepts data from many sources (the online user, A/R contributions, fax contributions) duplicate subjects are easily created using different spelling of a company name, street abbreviation, or missing suite numbers. Too many duplicates create confusing search results and the need to view multiple anscers Business Credit Reports to see the full payment history.

Here is our plan to remove the duplicates in the next few weeks:

We have invested in US Postal Service (USPS) software that standardizes all addresses in our database. This week, we processed over 710,000 subjects through the address standardization program. Using address standardization alone we identified over 300,000 duplicate subjects.

Our next steps are:

•    Updating all subject records with the USPS standardized addresses. Since all addresses will be standardized there may appear to be more duplicates on anscers because all the addresses will be the same. At this point we will not have run the match and merge process, but that is next.
•    Match and Merge all duplicate subjects. This means all contacts, tradelines, Alerts, RFI’s etc. that existed on duplicate subjects will be merged into a single subject.

This process will result in a great reduction of duplicate subjects in anscers. Look forward to super clean search results and data packed anscers Business Credit Reports once we are done.

As always, we thank you for your patience during this process.

If you have any questions or suggestions please contact Dina Amadril at 562-432-4807 or email damadril@creditservices.org.

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