Jan:Feb 2017 Credit Management magazine

focus their efforts to release more cash for the
business. For collections teams, you can track
cash forecasts and monitor the effectiveness
of each member of your team. You can also
learn from the performance of the consistent
high achievers in their peer-group and what
changes could be introduced to replicate
those results elsewhere.
The true beauty of BI beyond being able
to easily visual large volumes of data is
to use the statistics and analysis that can
be produced from them to make smarter
decisions as a business, and support the
cases for change with the only detail that is
totally free from any bias – data.
MAGNIFIED EFFICIENCY
Bill Gates once said: ‘The first rule of any
technology used in a business is that
automation applied to an efficient operation
will magnify the efficiency. The second is that
automation applied to an inefficient operation
will magnify the inefficiency’.
If ever there were tools to enable you to
discover what makes your business work,
and what makes it stall – they are big data
and business intelligence. If you couple these
with the AI tools now available, you will be
greatly assisted in your analytical quest – and
by an immensely intelligent and hard working
assistant – who costs you nothing, but will
empower you to understand your business
much better and more thoroughly, so you can
make smarter decisions.
Information and analysis enables and
changes the cultures that will directly benefit
the bottom line. But don’t take our word for
it – check the data.
and highlight exactly where you can ease
bottlenecks and increase productivity within
the business.
The right dashboard suites will save
you countless hours. No more sleepless
nights working those pivot tables and
v-lookups, trying to manually find trends in
the ocean of numbers only to find the data
is no longer valid by the time you have it
ready. With today’s BI you have everything
you ever wanted to know and more at your
fingertips. Now, at a click, you can drill down
to see exactly what is happening within
your collections department and see where
your team can step in to add real value.
For instance, BI tools let you highlight the
clients that are impacting your bottom line
by showing their payment trends, profit
margins, sales volumes, and time taken, to
resolve disputes and aged debt analysis –
bringing total transparency and visibility to the
business. Do you want to expose the high-risk
clients who are a drain on administrative
resources, time and profit? No problem.
Do you need scorecards for departments,
clients, collectors and sales teams to monitor
their effectiveness in comparison with their
sales and collections targets? Piece of cake.
POWERING UP
Ask yourself this, is it easier to change
processes or change culture and behaviour?
If process alone is the answer there is need
for your collections teams. Behaviours are
so difficult to shift within individuals precisely
because the status quo becomes ingrained.
If things have always been that way, what
incentive is there for a person to change or
undertake ‘extra work’ if they cannot see the
direct benefit to them?
This is where true BI software such
as CreditForce Insights can support your
business case for change. For non-finance
teams, you can show them exactly where debt
is sitting, which payment promises are being
fulfilled or being missed, and where teams can
CHECKLIST
• Maintain a complete picture, in near
real-time, and track the metrics that
really matter
• Categorise every customer by risk rating
and performance
• Scorecards for every department,
territory, and collector
• Dashboards personalised for every
level of management – CFO, operations,
billing, collections
• Big data is the now.
Jay Inamdar is Business Development
Manager at CreditForce.
The recognised standard
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