One of the largest airlines in the U.S., Continental serves 152 domestic and 138 international locations and carries approximately 61 million passengers annually. Prior to implementing eCredit, Continental's Commercial Receivables' credit operations were based off two separate accounts receivable systems. A staff of 4 credit analysts would pull data from a variety of sources including eCredit's proprietary transportation-specific database (formerly The CreditExchange) and LexisNexis. They would then use a basic credit score/MS Excel spreadsheet for financial ratios and approval of accounts. This process was cumbersome and time-consuming and even more problematic was the fact that the approval process was largely subjective and prone to vary from analyst to analyst.

Initially, the credit scoring project was intended to be an internal system designed and maintained by Continental's own technology team. However, after evaluating several vendors of credit management solutions, Continental Airlines selected eCredit to centralize its customer credit and payment information and to automate scoring of commercial accounts. Because Continental chose to deploy eCredit via a subscription-based model, IT involvement was minimal. This was helpful for a department which is often last in line for IT resources.

With eCredit, Continental was able to consolidate two distinct accounts receivable systems; each feeds customer account and aging information into eCredit. "Having one centralized file with all of our customer history has been an enormous improvement for our department," said Pam Demasi, Supervisor, Credit & Collections, Continental Airlines. "By eliminating the need to search for credit information between multiple systems we have saved a lot of time."

In addition, eCredit has made the collecting of account information and the creation of a "paperless customer file" very simple. Although is has been difficult to breakaway from the paper trail, with eCredit, analysts can easily add notes, cut and paste from emails, and add attachments to a customer. Having all the information related to one customer in the same place saves paper and saves time on account maintenance requests.

One of the greatest benefits of eCredit has been the facilitation of a consistent scoring process. eCredit eliminates many of the judgmental factors that exist between multiple analysts and ensures that the same decision is issued across the board. eCredit's ability to pull information from multiple sources and automatically score has reduced the time involved in both new application processing and periodic account reviews.

eCredit's automated scoring has not only allowed Continental to issue credit decisions more quickly but has also added a level of sophistication to their scoring process. Continental has been able to bring in new elements to their scorecard and more effectively incorporate aging data into the decisioning process. "eCredit has given us increased access to better information and has helped ensure that credit decisions are issued quickly and consistently," continued Demasi.