CM May 2020

INTERVIEW
AUTHOR – Sean Feast FCICM
Steve Fox
and I felt it could be so much more,” he says.
Throughout the course of 2019, Paladin
launched two new services: a Procure-to-
Pay proposition, and a Shared Service Centre
consultancy: “There are plenty of companies
out there who do debt collection; a handful
that focus on Procure-to-Pay; and a number
that provide a classic SSC consultancy. But I
am not aware of any that deliver all three under
the same roof.”
PROCURE-TO-PAY
Procure-to-Pay is defined typically as the
process of requisitioning, purchasing,
receiving, paying for and accounting for goods
and services. It gets its name from the ordered
sequence of procurement and financial
processes, starting with the first steps of
procuring a good or service to the final steps
involved in paying for it.
Steve says that the Procure-to-Pay proposition
is already proving popular. In one example of a
c£0.5 billion business Paladin ‘found’ £250,000
in 60 days, money that in this case acted as a
windfall for the business which they invested
in employee training and development. The
money that Paladin finds from a client’s
suppliers stems from such things as rebate
credits, returned merchandise credits,
duplicate payments, over-payments etc. In one
example Steve cites, a customer had pre-paid a
supplier £2.7 million for future works, but when
the work was finally undertaken, they were
charged again, since no record had been kept,
teams had moved on, and the pre-payment
forgotten! In another example, and in answer
to my question about how difficult it is to get
suppliers to engage when there is no obligation
for them to do so, Paladin approached 4,206
suppliers for a particular client and every one
of them replied with a statement of account.
Paladin’s ‘traditional’ commercial recoveries
service also continues to do well: “Every
company is proud of their revenue and their
margin, but even if you have a 90 percent
margin it’s actually zero if you can’t collect it,”
Steve says.
“Transactions are ultimately based on trust
but if the cycle breaks down then you still need
to find a way of turning that revenue into cash.
Things happen, and our role is to ‘fix’ what
might have gone wrong and do so in a way that
still allows the relationship to continue and
rebuild the trust between the two parties. We
help our clients understand what went wrong
without it turning into a blame game. Very
rarely is it a case of the parties agreeing to split
the difference and go their separate ways.”
WHITE LABEL
So, when should a credit manager look to
engage a commercial collections provider?
“When your debt is 90-days post terms and
you’ve exhausted your usual in-house practices,
that’s the time to call in additional help. We
can white label our service to collect in your
name or as a third party and have teams that
are skilled in both.”
Steve is excited about what the future holds,
and over the next few years is looking to
further grow the Paladin business across all
of its services. And what advice would he give
his younger self if he were starting out again
today? It’s a question that resonates, since his
eldest son has just started work for Microsoft:
“I think it would be to find something that
you’d like to do that you can become an expert
at,” he muses.
“Being a ‘jack of all trades’ is somewhat oversold.
Become technically proficient to the
point that others respect you and respect the
value that you bring. And have some fun while
you’re doing it!”
“When your debt is 90-days post
terms and you’ve exhausted
your usual in-house practices,
that’s the time to call in
additional help. We can white
label our service to collect in
your name or as a third party
and have teams that are skilled
in both.”
Advancing the credit profession / www.cicm.com / May 2020 / PAGE 26