Lateral

Single View of Debt

Lateral has created the ultimate Single View of Debt platform -- useful for reporting, analytics, and collections. See all debt owed by a single customer in a single easy-to-use and configurable interface with integrations to all local authority legacy systems.

Features

• Natural language searching algorithms
• Customizable Single-View
• Automated Communication and Reminders
• Create Group Payment Plan
• Potential Match and Exact Match
• Connected consumer portal for customers to make payments
• Integration with payment and direct debit options

Benefits

• Can find all matching cases of name and address
• Get the exact information you want
• Automate tasks using rules or decisions, saving time and money
• Save on communication costs with Email and SMS
• Remind Consumers about their payment pans
• Make it easier for customers to get out of debt

£65 to £150 a user a month

• Education pricing available
• Free trial available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  ODT

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  ODT

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at ian@getlateral.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

597826899043774

Contact

Ian McManus
01242 802352
ian@getlateral.com

Service scope

• Software add-on or extension: No
• Cloud deployment model: Private cloud
• Service constraints: No constraints - it will work on any device.
• System requirements: Recommend computer hardware of at least 16GB of RAM

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: Our initial response time is within 8 working hours. We also have a support knowledge base answering questions available continuously as part of the application.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
• Online ticketing support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AAA
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support: Web chat
• Web chat support availability: 24 hours, 7 days a week
• Web chat support accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 AAA
• Web chat accessibility testing: We use a third party provider for web chat that is available on our website.
• Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support levels: Level 1 - Free support - available online via the knowledge base. Intelligently answers questions with support articles. Phone support and chat also available during UK business hours, with ticket system available 24-7. If client needs more than 30 minutes of support they will be charged a support token, otherwise it is free and included in the license fee.; ; Managed Support and Improvements:; ; Support Tokens; Pre-pay for 20 support tokens at £3000 this includes 20 hours of support, training, consulting or programming time. Any tokens not used can carry over for up to 12 months.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: We provide an implementation service to help our customers get on our platform. ; ; This includes training, documentation, set up and assistance with data migration, data imports, reporting and remittance requirements, financial requirements, and any new integrations that need to be built.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats: PDF
• End-of-contract data extraction: A full extract costs £1500, but clients are also able to get 95% of the data out at no charge using the reporting engine.
• End-of-contract process: Included would be the deletion of all personal data, of the data within six months of the contract terminating. The client able to retrieve data through the custom reports. ; ; An additional cost would be assistance with data extraction, we charge a one-time £1500 fee.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Supported browsers:
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari
• Application to install: No
• Designed for use on mobile devices: Yes
• Differences between the mobile and desktop service: Our mobile service is currently only for field agents and enforcement officers. This will allow them to perform visits, get their best route for the day etc.
• Service interface: Yes
• User support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AAA
• Description of service interface: The service interface is a helpdesk area for asking questions and accessing the knowledge base. Users can create tickets and see the status of previous tickets.
• Accessibility standards: WCAG 2.1 AAA
• Accessibility testing: We have tested on all browsers with assistive technology.
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: Users can create cases, insert payments, get data out of the system for reporting, insert visits, get data on cases.; ; We are continually adding API calls to give API users full access to all Create, Read, Update, and Delete protocols that a client may want with the correct permissions.
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats:
  • Open API (also known as Swagger)
  • PDF
• API sandbox or test environment: Yes
• Customisation available: Yes
• Description of customisation: Admin users can customize the dashboards, the fields, the imports, the reporting, the matching criteria for linking accounts, the questions in forms, the communication templates and more!; ; The menus can be customized, the summary fields, the actions, the user permissions, the layout of the grid page, the searchable fields, the advanced search by user group. ; ; The workflow automation is also completely customizable for various workflows and debt types. Settings like how many days before the arrangement breaks is also configurable. ; ; Lateral is known as being the most flexible product on the market but we now have pre-built workflows and setups to save on onboarding time.

Scaling

• Independence of resources: We do load testing on each instance, and also we have a read-only copy of the database for instances where there are lots of reports needed which does not then slow down the live database use.

Analytics

• Service usage metrics: Yes
• Metrics types: We provide reports on user activity by date range and action. ; ; We also provide reports on payments received, communication that has been sent, and we also have time tracking available.
• Reporting types: Real-time dashboards

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Conforms to BS7858:2019
• Government security clearance: Up to Developed Vetting (DV)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: No
• Datacentre security standards: Managed by a third party
• Penetration testing frequency: At least every 6 months
• Penetration testing approach: Another external penetration testing organisation
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
  • Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type:
  • Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
  • Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
• Equipment disposal approach: Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Data importing and exporting

• Data export approach: All reports can be downloaded as CSV files, and any user that has download permission can download their data onto their PC.
• Data export formats: CSV
• Data import formats:
  • CSV
  • Other
• Other data import formats:
  • Fixed Text length files
  • Pipe delimited files
  • XML files

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks: TLS (version 1.2 or above)
• Data protection within supplier network: TLS (version 1.2 or above)

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: The Platform Service Level is guaranteed at 99% uptime and 100% of that monthly allowance will be refunded if that Service Level is not met.
• Approach to resilience: We have chosen AWS London as they have the best security practices in the world and can withstand DDOS attacks with a $1B per year security budget. ; We also deploy all the security upgrades that one can purchase including GuardDuty, Web Application Firewall, and others and ensure that the data is encrypted at rest.
• Outage reporting: We have email alerts set up if there are any outages.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication needed: Yes
• User authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Lateral has pre-defined user groups such as Admin roles which give access to the admin areas of the system, as well as Super-Admin which has a few more permissions such as 'delete' account capability. Lateral also has a RBAC system for being able to create granular permissions and user defined roles for those permissions to give control and flexibility to Lateral's clients.
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least once a year
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users have access to real-time audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users have access to real-time audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• How long system logs are stored for: At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: Certified Quality Systems Ltd
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 09/04/2024
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: N/A
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: Yes
• Who accredited the PCI DSS certification: Self-accredited
• PCI DSS accreditation date: 15/01/2024
• What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover: We are level 3 PCI as we do not store credit card information
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: Yes
• Other security certifications: No

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards: ISO/IEC 27001
• Information security policies and processes: We are ISO 27001 certified as well as we get SOC 2 audited, ensuring we have evidence for all the processes that we declare in ISO 27001. In additional we do internal audits as well as external audits including risk assessments every time something has changed in our infrastructure or at least annually as part of ISO 27001.; ; We have management review meetings with no single critical point of failure, ensuring that Lateral is also resilient to any staff changes.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
• Configuration and change management approach: All RFCs (Request for change must be submitted weekly) to the CAB (Change Advisory Board). The Change Advisory board will make sure that the changes have been assessed for potential security impact, and that there is a documented plan for implementating and releasing the change to the live environment. ; The CAB will also make sure that there has been evidence demonstrating that the change has been tested in a pre-live/staging environment first. ; There also must be a rollback/ migration plan in case of failure as well as a post-change test to check the change has been successfully applied.
• Vulnerability management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Vulnerability management approach: Lateral asses threats and vulnerability as part of its commitment to security and ISO 27001 certification. Lateral's vulnerability management policy includes endpoint detection, logging and alerting, patching, penetration testing, and vulnerability scanning. Lateral uses AWS CloudWatch as its real-time vulnerability logging and alerting. Lateral also performs regular vulnerability scanning on our service. Lateral deploys high risk patches within a week, and medium risk within one month. We do third party penetration testing changing suppliers every year. Lateral also gets weekly security information from its security consultants.
• Protective monitoring type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Protective monitoring approach: Lateral deploys AWS Cloudwatch for real-time protective monitoring to identify any potential attempts at compromise. If there was a potential compromise, we would instantly investigate this and treat this as a P1 incident until we were certain there was no compromise. If there ever was a compromise we would follow our Incident Response procedure and respond within our incident response timelines (within 2 hours of becoming aware of the incident)
• Incident management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Incident management approach: We have a pre-defined process as part of our ISO 27001 framework. Users have a template for reporting any incidents in our internal Wiki - which is called 'Confluence' by 'Atlassian'. We supply incident responses to client and respond at the earliest possible point but within 2 hours of the incident at a maximum. These are provided by email.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Public sector networks

• Connection to public sector networks: Yes
• Connected networks:
  • Public Services Network (PSN)
  • Police National Network (PNN)
  • NHS Network (N3)
  • Joint Academic Network (JANET)
  • Scottish Wide Area Network (SWAN)
  • Health and Social Care Network (HSCN)

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Fighting climate change
  • Equal opportunity
  • Wellbeing

  Fighting climate change

  Lateral is able to send email attachments and deliver documents through a secure customer portal eliminating the need for printing and sending paper saving costs as well as the planet. In addition, since Covid-19 Lateral has been able to go entirely paperless, having digital copies of all contracts and certifications eliminating the need for as much office space, storage and printing while increasing security.

  Equal opportunity

  Lateral embraces employment of all people regardless of race, gender, age, and beliefs. Lateral has a diverse staff of employees in both England and Wales.

  Wellbeing

  Lateral supports employee wellbeing by offering free meditation session 2x per week on Mondays and Fridays for 15 minutes. There are guest leaders to the meditation and it is an opportunity for staff to receive mental health benefits while working.

Pricing

• Price: £65 to £150 a user a month
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes
• Free trial available: Yes
• Description of free trial: We offer a free proof of concept project to organizations that want to try Lateral before committing. This includes assistance with setting up one workflow and one data set.

Service documents

• Pricing document

  ODT

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  ODT

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at ian@getlateral.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.