Expert View on Credit Control
Whether in a time of economic prosperity or uncertainty, access to knowledge, experience and talent needed to grow businesses doesn’t have to be about increasing headcount.
Our client base, which includes architects, accountants and recruitment firms, is not only benefiting because more people are choosing to do things such as alter their home, pay closer attention to the books and finding times literally a pain in the neck.
There appears to be a much more preventative business medicine going on out there.
More are taking a long, harsher look at the projections and thankfully, an increasing number of businesses that we help realise that it’s not a weakness to outsource credit control.
Like Warren Buffet has always contended, always employ people better than yourselves- a business philosophy that could be applied equally to the MD of a business or your amateur DIY enthusiast on the way to B&Q.
And like we say to prospective clients, the value we add and the time we save them by letting us handle their financial workload makes very good business sense.
It’s not ironic that we have accountants as clients.
Even lawyers, who are at the peak of their profession, are no longer reluctant to acknowledge that it makes no sense to spend fee-earning time ‘faffing’ with the likes of outstanding invoices.
Moreover, how many of us in the past as SMEs have been faced with that horrible dilemma; how to get paid on long overdue invoices and yet still retain a healthy client relationship.
Admittedly, the credit control industry doesn’t have the best record for simplifying matters for clients, so we’ve decided to take the lead through internet marketing.
Most companies think credit control is just about chasing payment when invoices become overdue. But effective credit management should look at the whole order to cash process as everything that happens even before you start to trade with a company, effects your ability to get paid.
Things to look out for include terms and conditions (making sure you have terms and conditions of sales that are up to date and relevant to your business), credit risk assessment (many smaller companies focus on sales and forget to make sure their customer will be around to pay when the invoice is due- investing in a ‘credit check report’ helps to reduce your businesses exposure to bad debt) and disputed invoices (resolve any customer disputes quickly to help maintain a good working relationship with your customer).
The list goes on.
Overall, the general point is that outsourcing isn’t just about a quick fix solution. It’s a far more strategic management decision to achieve longer-term goals of better practice, a fundamental objective of any business in good times or bad.
