Migrating Collections Exemptions to Real Time
Reframed a collections platform migration around compliance, resilience, and operating cost.
- Platform migration
- Real-time systems
- Collections compliance
- Roadmap prioritization
Siddharth Mishra
Lead Product Manager at Zeta
From their time as
Product Manager 2
PayPal • 2021 - 2023
Overview
Siddharth led product alignment for migrating collections exemptions from ETL jobs to a real-time service. The team reduced the estimate to five to six months and cut reported compliance violations by 90 to 95%.
The Story
Siddharth owned product work for PayPal negative balance collections while the team considered a move from ETL-based processing to real-time, API-driven services. The migration required a substantial share of engineering capacity while business stakeholders continued to prioritize revenue work.
He framed the investment around concrete operating and compliance outcomes. Real-time evaluation could prevent exempt accounts, including bankruptcy cases, from returning to dialer files after a delayed system update.
Engineering initially estimated that migrating exemption management would take eight to ten months. Siddharth asked the team to separate dependency analysis, technical constraints, and bandwidth needs, then explored what could be parallelized.
That work reduced the estimate to five to six months. After launch, reported customer compliance violations fell by roughly 90 to 95%.
Ownership Snapshot
Broad role
Product Manager for PayPal negative balance collections.
Goal
Move exemption management to a scalable real-time platform.
Direct ownership
Aligned business and engineering, challenged estimates, and prioritized migration scope.
Team execution
Partnered with engineering, business, and compliance stakeholders on delivery.