TOWN AND COUNTRY CHEMICAL REACTION Sean Feast FCICM talks to Tim Vine about business information, the future of credit management, and the relevance of a degree in Chemistry. THERE are worse places to meet than the Ivy in Marlow, a stone’s throw (assuming you have the arm of Ben Stokes) from the UK headquarters of Dun & Bradstreet where I’ve arranged to meet Tim Vine, part of the company’s senior management team. Tim is the Head of European Trade <strong>Credit</strong> but, as I discover, wears many hats that include promoting D&B <strong>Credit</strong>, the company’s online credit product suite, on a global basis. It’s quite a step from a man who graduated with a degree in Chemistry from Birmingham University. “There is a logic and methodology to credit that is very similar to chemistry,” he laughs. “Everything has to have a process that leads to a result, which in the case of credit means getting paid.” FRAUD ANALYSIS Tim fell into the world of business information by accident. A university friend with a degree in Maths had taken a job at D&B to conduct financial statement analysis, and while Tim had never heard of D&B, neither was his heart in a career in Chemistry. Six weeks later he was gainfully employed, on the phones, researching and analysing potentially fraudulent businesses: “What I learned very quickly,” he says, “is that fraudsters tend to tell you everything, whereas as genuine business will ask you why you want to know!” Working initially in the company’s Birmingham office (in the days when D&B operated a branch network reflecting the need for ‘feet on the street’) he eventually moved to the firm’s purpose-built headquarters in High Wycombe: “It was the days of discs and tapes whizzing around the offices like a scene out of Monsters Inc,” he laughs. In 2012 he moved to Toronto in Canada with a particular remit to promote the company’s Portfolio Manager product, a role that evolved into spearheading the development of the D&B <strong>Credit</strong> product suite throughout North America. For two years he lived in Hoboken in New Jersey, on the opposite side of the Hudson River to Manhattan: “We had all the advantages of the Manhattan Skyline but at a fraction of the cost,” he jokes. INVESTMENT DRIVERS Moving back to the UK in 2016, he was given responsibility for accelerating the promotion for D&B <strong>Credit</strong>, not just for the US market but also tailoring the product for a UK and European audience. The drivers behind the investment in D&B <strong>Credit</strong> was partly to increase and grow the company’s trade credit customer base, but more so to genuinely add value to the credit decisions taken by credit professionals: “Rather than the ‘traditional’ spreadsheet approach to credit reports, we were adding news-feeds and even social media reports about a business to give the customer a cleaner and more holistic view of a company’s credit-worthiness to support better, more informed decisions,” he explains. Certainly, D&B <strong>Credit</strong> seems to have been well received, not just in the UK but by a global audience. It is now actively promoted and used in more than 40 countries across Europe, North America and Asia. “It is especially useful in accommodating the needs of multinationals with a shared service centre (SSC),” he explains. NOTABLE SHIFT Businesses use D&B <strong>Credit</strong> to manage the entire customer base, a notable shift from the days of simply pulling credit reports as and when they are needed: “In a finance and credit role today you are expected to have ownership and visibility of the whole customer base, and not just their individual DSO figure,” he says. “But D&B <strong>Credit</strong> is not just for the larger firms with a sophisticated credit management function. It is intentionally all things to all people. Business owners have many responsibilities from Treasury to Sales and see credit as a necessary evil. Whatever decision The Recognised Standard / www.cicm.com / <strong>Jan</strong>uary / <strong>Feb</strong>ruary <strong>2019</strong> / PAGE 18
The Recognised Standard / www.cicm.com / <strong>Jan</strong>uary / <strong>Feb</strong>ruary <strong>2019</strong> / PAGE 19