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In Focus Commercial Credit Looking to the future


As 2016 came to a close, CCRMagazine and Equita drew together a group of senior professionals to discuss how the collections and enforcement process can be made more effective. They were Martin Kirby, head of order to cash, Kier Group (MK); John Preston, head of billing, Tesco Mobile; Phil Rice, manager – order to cash, Aggregate Industries UK; Jan Smith, external affairs director, Callcredit Information Group; Paul Harbron, DCA manager, EE; Mark Fawcitt, credit risk manager, ScottishPower Energy Retail (MF); Myron Fedak, litigation counsel and relationship manager, E.ON Energy Solutions; James Perry, director technical litigation, recoveries, DWF (JP); Brian Lewis, credit manager, Hanson UK (BL); Martin Wheeler, UK credit manager, CEMEX; John Turner, credit manager, Johnson Tiles (JT); Charles Wilson, chairman, Lovetts (CW); Polly Greenwood, paralegal, Lovetts (PG); Frank Johnstone, partner, Maclay, Murray & Spens (FJ); Marianne Griffin, associate – commercial dispute resolution, Maclay, Murray & Spens; Perry Burns, managing director, Working Capital Partners (PB); Nina Morris, head of litigation, British Gas; Brendan Clarkson, head of creditor services, Moore Stephens (BC); Andrew Mann, Amicus; Victoria Herd, founder, Beyond Funding (VH); James Connolly, business development director (High Court enforcement), Equita (JC); and Alan Smith, operations director, Equita High Court


anything that we can improve upon. If you can talk face-to-face, so that you understand their point of view and they understand yours, then you can be successful.


PB: I am very much a salesperson rebranded as an underwriter! When I first started my sales career 30 or 40 years ago, we used to go out with our credit people. I remember, as a young salesman, that my manager told me: ‘You have two sales to make: one to the customer, and one to the credit manager, because it is your job to convince them that this is a good risk to take. So you need to be good at selling internally to your own people’. Salespeople, who know what they are doing, are really good at doing that.


JT: Credit management has completely flipped. Thirty or 40 years ago, it was a case of someone sat in the corner of the office with a telephone, now it is a profession and highly regarded. I have credit insurance so, once I have the group parent company insured, I


will encourage our salespeople to go out and sell to them and provide them with leads, as they will not be refused credit. It is no longer a case of being told after a job is done that ‘oh, we have agreed this, this, and this’ – now we are providing sales with a list to sell to.


MK: The question is what we can do more to engage with sales and with the wider firm. It is more about the voice of the customer and how we process the order to cash. It is agreeing with the stakeholders how we are going to get feedback from the customer and then what our net-promoter score is going to be at the end of this journey, and what that SLA will look like. Agreeing things from the start is what it is all about, and being with the customer throughout the journey. Being involved in the marketing and the strategy piece is also important in driving the business forward, so we set the agenda with our FD to say ‘we really are taking on too much risk in that sector – we need to look at that in our next forecast’. You can only set that agenda


if you are armed with good marketing and payment data. In terms of payment data, it is very interesting, when you are in front of a client, to see how they perceive their own score compared to the actual feedback you get from the agencies. I have been in front of clients who have told me their credit score is great, and have had to tell them it is not, compared to the sector averages. Payment- performance data is now quite stable, particularly in larger organisations. If you look at any of the undisclosed sharing, it is more of a mechanistic output, so there is no real opportunity to massage the figures.


Where do outsourced agencies fit in with arrears-management work? JP:We look for a close connection with clients, of which there are broadly two types: the ones that want to work closely with you, and want to tell you their story so you can build a good understanding. Then you have the other type of client contact who, unfortunately, takes the attitude of


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Left-right: Nina Morris; Jan Smith; Mark Fawcitt; Martin Wheeler; Brian Lewis January 2017 www.CCRMagazine.co.uk 15


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