Although Matthew Thomas has been chief executive of debt collection agency Collection House only since September 2010 he has heard all the stories about what went wrong after the company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2000, and then went on ill-conceived expansion programme.Last week, Thomas announced that the company would be launching two new businesses, a training company and a risk-management advisory company.Thomas insisted that the two new ventures were extensions of the company's core business and not completely new ventures. "We have learnt our lessons from the past," he said.The training company, Collective Learning and Development, is an existing operation providing internal training that will now offer its services to third parties. Thomas said: "We have had an internal capability for some time and we were getting approaches from the market to provide services."There is more demand because of the amount of legislative reform in industry. There is a fair amount of training required for licensing under National Consumer Credit Protection and there are a lot of back office changes accompanying the introduction of Personal Property Securities." The advisory business, Cashflow Accelerator, will offer consulting services on debt and cashflow management, as well as credit policies and reviews.Thomas said: "Our core business is dealing with companies that want to outsource their credit management. But many companies want to maintain an internal capability. "We can use our core skills by giving them advice."After Collection House was listed in 2000 it acquired a portfolio of businesses. These included Insurance Claims Solutions, a claims assessor and handler; the Australian business of Rapid Ratings, a US ratings agency; Australian Business Research, a credit reference company; National Tenancy Database, and National Receivables Corp.As the group's portfolio of business grew, its performance suffered. There were too many businesses for management to handle, and the core business, debt collection, performed badly.The company reported a net profit of A$18.6 million for the 2001/02 financial year, but by 2006/07 its net profit was down to $3.8 million.In 2006, the company started an asset sale programme, with the aim of returning to its core business. This was completed in 2008.Thomas said: "Many of the skills we have in banking and finance translate into other areas. The skills in credit management that you observe in financial services are not practised in other industries. We can add value there."We are not trying to do any more than extend our core business in a couple of areas."He said the business development was not capital intensive and the new companies would deliver a material benefit to the group in the 2013 financial year.