Adam Parks (00:06)
Hello everybody, Adam Parks here with another episode of Receivables Podcast. Today I'm here with my good friend and industry legend, Mr. Tim Collins, who among other roles is also on the ACA Board of Directors here to talk to us about Fall Forum and the technical twist that they're putting into the Fall Forum this year that's got me really excited as well. So how you doing today, Tim? Great to see you again.
Tim Collins (00:34)
I'm doing great, Adam. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to talk about Fall Forum and all the exciting stuff that were never been done before, kind of stuff that we're doing at Fall Forum this year. It's very exciting.
Adam Parks (00:45)
Well, I'm very excited to learn more about what you guys have planned for this year. I know that we've done your intro so many times on different episodes, but you have changed roles recently. Can you tell everyone a little about what you're working on today?
Tim Collins (00:59)
Yeah, absolutely. I'm now for the first time in my career, not at a collection law firm, a collection agency or a debt buyer or a creditor. For the very first time, I'm now on the software side of the business and I work at Pay Ready. I'm the Senior Vice President, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer. And Pay Ready is in the multi-tenant space. That's all they do. So that's apartment rentals and they help agencies connect with the property management companies and the landlords via their software. And that's first party and third party. So we just did an RFI to kind of benchmark our agencies against what's out there in the world. so that's what I've been working on lately as we look at product enhancements around voice AI, a lot of stuff that ties back nicely into fall forum.
Well, what do you know, Tim's working on technology and building something incredible. I'm just so shocked. Very excited to learn more about that and kind of keep my finger on the pulse of how that starts to move. think multi-tenant is a big opportunity for the space in general. So I'm interested to see what you're doing there. But Fall Forum is coming up here in November. Talk to me about what is different this year at Fall Forum.
Tim Collins (02:10)
Yeah, at Fall Forum this year, there's really, we, couple years ago, we started doing this how, you know, it's like how you do stuff. And this is the next evolution, the next layer of that. I've been fortunate enough to be on an amazing team that is going to talk about not only how do you do automation, but we're going to actually do it. We're calling this bring your own device. So you can bring your computer. Don't bring your, don't bring your server or your mainframe if you're still on one of those, leave that at home. But bring your computer because we're going to not only for the first hour we'll be talking about what is automation, things to think about, how to get into that automation mindset. And then we're gonna come back and start to automate the ideas that the audience comes up with. And they're gonna close with using some of the latest and greatest automation tools that everybody has access to some would call those GPT's open AI Gemini perplexities how you can use those to automate functions and we're gonna actually give them takeaways from that so That's what the sessions gonna be about. That's what's most exciting is it's actually very much hands-on and there's I think there's four of us Including myself that are on this panel. They're gonna help people actually go and set up stuff And actually get get something automated to leave this session with something that you've automated.
Adam Parks (03:31)
So you're turning it from a session to a workshop where you're actively going to be engaging and working through solving a problem. I'm gonna say as a group, but not that everybody has the same problem, but I think the foundation and fundamentals remain the same. How deep down the rabbit hole do you expect to go in a group setting?
Tim Collins (03:52)
Yeah, see Adam, this is where your brilliance always shines. So workshop is the perfect word for it, right? Because we're going to talk about kind of what the problem is and how to think about it. And then it's going to come down to the audience. We'll have some examples as as you know, the panel that's up there that's helping you guiding you through these. But we really want you to bring your thoughts or, you know, problems or automations or opportunities. And if you don't have any, that's okay. And if you don't want to do any of the workshop, that's okay. But
Tim Collins (04:22)
come in and watch how it gets done so you can start to get that mindset, start to get that confidence and say, hey, look at, can take this and go back. And it's really going to come to, to your question. It's going to come down to the audience. How far do you want to go? Do you want to talk about, you know, what we were talking about prior, where we're talking about API connections or MPC servers, or are we talking about a simple workflow? How can we create something maybe that's already possible in your system of record, your CRM, can we turn that into a simple workflow for you? And those tools may be already there and we're going to be able to share that as a group. So not only are the panelists here to help you with automation, but it's everybody in the room who's showing up, who's automated anything in the past, we'll be able to participate in helping that direction.
I would encourage anybody to participate and to go be part of the discussion. I think a lot of organizations and even individuals at the top of organizations have been hesitant to deploy artificial intelligence for a variety of different reasons. I mean, we all read the headlines in the news and it sounds exciting, but I think there's also a fear level that goes with some of that. And I always say, get in the room, participate, take a look at this. And when you start seeing these responses coming back and you start seeing the level of quality in the responses when you ask questions the right way, a lot of the people that are afraid, I think are afraid because they have only tried some super basic things and they're just kind of playing around on their phone with a chat GPT or whatever their model of choice is. And they're not getting these really great responses back, but they're not structuring prompts. They're not asking the right questions. They're not engaging with the AI.
They just expect it to know things that it hasn't been fed. And this seems like that opportunity to talk about how to actually use some of these things, how to build a GPT, right? How to build a project in chat GPT and what that ultimately means and how that differs from building out a separate GPT. Now these are things that guys like you and I do as soon as it's available. And we're out there trying to figure out how these things come together and how can we use them for commercial purpose.
Tim Collins (06:26)
Right.
Right.
Adam Parks (06:32)
But even just being in the room and participating, think will help get more people engaged in the processes. Because if we don't get engaged, we're gonna get left behind.
Tim Collins (06:42)
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And you summed it up beautifully. I this is the worst AI that we're ever gonna use. it's okay. It's pretty good. It gets better all the time and the iterations happen faster and faster. It's not like what we saw with computers and Moore's law where we were able to shrink them over time. It seemed like it took a long time and now we've kind of plateaued. What we're seeing right now with. AI and its ability to help you with that automation. Like if you don't know what to automate, you can ask chat GPT, I've got to go to fall forum session on automation. I'm not sure how I best can prepare for it. And it can help you prepare. can say, well, let's start with some of the processes you do. And again, to your point, and I think you've kind of got this expert status in this is that it comes down to that, that prompting, right. But even some of those AIs, like the Gemini prompting is crazy anymore. It's like, it's a leap forward. So, you know, I think the biggest addiction I have right now is I'm buying too much AI, you know, I've got to like you have them all right. So you're just like wanting to use them all. Yes, I am collect. Yes, absolutely. But it's taking those tools as a way of example, it's either for the very beginning, helping you figure out what you should automate to potentially, you know, how do you go about doing it and then
Adam Parks (07:47)
I am collecting them all. It's like Pokemons, I'm collecting them all.
Tim Collins (08:02)
kind of that last phase is how do we make sure that it actually is working and is working right. And I know I'm gonna jump ahead here real quick, but there's the second session, is DIY code, which is you can code today. Anybody can code. And so you could even take something that maybe we couldn't do in the automation session, but that coding session follows and we could take that right into the coding session and say, look, we need to be able to code for this. We need to make a small application or website or something along those lines. And we could, you could see how the tools could be used for that purpose. So this is dual purpose. You've got automation and coding and, you know, use of AI things that we've never done before three hours of automation, three hours of coding time. So real time to do hands on, not just grab a quick snippet, learn something and take it away with you, but actually do something and take it away with you. So.
Adam Parks (08:57)
I like that ability to walk out of there with something tangible. And for anybody who's lucky enough to participate in a session like this, I would tell you to sit down and play with ChatGPT for a few minutes before you go. And you don't need to learn how to prompt engineer. All you need to do is start asking questions. Just start by asking questions. Or ask ChatGPT or whatever your flavor is to ask you 10 questions about your intent. And I think you'll be surprised how
Tim Collins (09:23)
Exactly.
Adam Parks (09:25)
quickly you're able to hone in on value and start working down some of those rabbit holes and learning some of these tools because it's not as difficult as it sounds. I don't write my own prompts anymore. I did early on, My first 300 hours of learning how to prompt engineer, I wrote a lot of my own prompts. Now I've learned how to ask the right questions and to have the tools build their own prompts because they know themselves better than I know them.
Tim Collins (09:41)
to learn it. Yeah.
Adam Parks (09:53)
And that's when it starts getting easier and easier. But that's when I took my use of artificial intelligence off of just the desktop machine and onto my phone anytime, anywhere. And it becomes a much more usable systematic tool. But I love what you guys are doing here because all the other conversations we hear about the theories behind it or just trying to encourage people to participate. But this is a get your hands dirty kind of situation, which I really like. Get into it actually do the thing, because there's no way to learn like actually doing
Tim Collins (10:25)
No, absolutely right. Hands on. mean, if you're looking to change your business, set your business up for success going forward, you have to have that operational efficiency. And it's going to come from tools like we've been talking about with AI. It could come from tools, know, RPA, know, robotic process automation. It could come from basic scripting, but it needs to start. If we're seeing repetitive stuff done over and over and over again, not, that adds a tremendous amount of value because it has to be done, but it could be done you know, systematically, then you have to come to this workshop and be hands on. And I think what we're going to see is there are going to be those who came to like the fall forum and actually, you know, got their hands dirty and got in there and did it. And you're going to start to see that. That's going to say, Hey, I could do, if I could do it here, I can do it in other parts of the business and take that information back. then not only has that person become a rock star inside their organization themselves, but that whole organization now starts to see the power of automation and the power of the tools, AI tools and all those things, especially as it relates to the secondary piece, which I'm super excited to not be a panelist on, on the coding one, but to sit in there and just, because I can code today. It's like, all right, great. I got some beautiful code here. What do I do with it? And really hearing from the experts, okay, here's how you can use it. And here's where you can upload it and here's how you test it and do all that stuff. That's the part.
Tim Collins (11:51)
super, super exciting to me. So I'm going to be not only a teacher and always a student, but I'm going to really focus on being a student and a learner in that second session on coding.
Adam Parks (12:04)
It sounds like you guys have a lot of really great content plans for this year and it's practical usable things that going into your holiday seasons, you're going to have a little bit of extra time and an opportunity to really further use these tools and to dig in a little bit deeper. That's what happened to me last year. I started I got into it and once you got into it, it was hard to break away. It was I just felt like I was constantly learning something but these sessions I think can help put people on the right track for success. So they at least have a direction on the map that they're trying to get to, right? From an AI perspective and with their organization being able to get from point A to point B, but where is point B and why am I trying to go there? I feel like a lot of these great questions are going to bubble to the surface through these discussions.
Tim Collins (12:51)
Hands down, hands down. I agree 100% with you. And it's perfect timing the way I look at it because you can maybe implement some of these things before tax season, create some of that efficiency, especially if you're going into the end of the year and it starts to slow down to your point, now's a great time to implement some of these things, get them successfully launched and then have an amazing tax season that sets you up for success in 2026. 2026, it's hard to believe. Where did the first It's wild.
Tim Collins (13:20)
quarter ago. First quarter was here a minute ago. I don't know where it is now. Quarter of a
Adam Parks (13:20)
Agreed.
Tim Collins (13:25)
century gone.
Adam Parks (13:26)
Agreed. Well, Tim, I really do appreciate you coming on sharing your insights today and talking with me about all of the great things that you have planned for the ACA Fall Forum this year. I think everyone's going to get a lot from this session. Any final words or anything else that you want to talk about related to Fall Forum this year?
Tim Collins (13:44)
I would just say, you know, it's a great time to be in Chicago. It's a great time to come to Fall Forum. If you've never gone to an ACA event before, now's the time to come. We're trying to get more active membership. This is what the association does, is for its members, it's all about the members and on the board of directors, that's been my focus for these last two years. And I'd love to see you there. I'd love to meet you and would love to be able to help you in your automation journey. Come see me at Fall Forum.
Adam Parks (14:13)
Well, that is awesome. For those of you that are watching, if you have additional questions you'd like to ask Tim or 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, you can leave those in the comments below as well. And hopefully I can get Tim back at least one more time to help me continue to create great content for a great industry. And Tim, can't wait to hear all about everything that happened at Fall Forum this year, learn all about these sessions and how they went. So I look forward to our follow-up and I look forward to speaking with you again soon.
Tim Collins (14:43)
Thanks Adam, take care.
Adam Parks (14:44)
And thank you everybody for watching. We'll see you all again soon. Bye.
