A case for adaptable applications software

Contemporary economic circumstances have sent many organizations that extend consumer credit scrambling to secure automated support for collection operations. The traditional alternatives, custom system development and packaged software, fall far short of being acceptable to most large credit-oriented organizations. The Computer Assisted Collection System (CACS) was originally developed as a custom system and has since been used as adaptable foundation software by many large organizations to secure essentially customized support at a fraction of the cost, time, and risk that would normally be required. This paper reports on the success of the use of adaptive software to fill this urgent need and lends credence to the theory that throughout the 1980s there will be a trend towards the use of adaptive software to meet business' demands for low-risk, low-cost, fully functional and tailored software.