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Our Subscribers Say...
I think Credit Today is fantastic. You cover many practical topics in the credit field that I use regularly. Just one recent example—a conversation on the ListServ about preferential payments—gave me tips that I used in an actual case. The specific information I picked up from this one discussion saved me $10,000, enough to cover my membership for many years!
- Steve Savino
Manager of Credit & Collections, ASSA Abloy Americas Division, New Haven, CT
Credit Today's Resource Directory and their online e-mail forum (ListServ) provide information on almost any credit-related topic you can think of. It is a great way to exchange information with other credit professionals. As the saying goes, "You don't know what you don't know."
- Scott Goen,
Credit Manager, Big Lots Stores, Inc., Wholesale Division
"We've recently started using the ListServ tool within Credit Today. This is phenomenal and powerful forum for gaining immediate feedback, ideas, and suggestions, relative to any credit topic under the sun, all in a real-time e-mail format."
-Javier Vela, Senior Credit Manager, Global Credit Services, JDA Software Group Inc.
"Being a part of the Credit Today online community is like having the expertise of hundreds of credit managers at your fingertips. These credit execs are willing to help you solve topical business issues as they arise. In the current environment of ever increasing competing priorities which reduce our opportunities to meet peers out of the office face-to-face, this is the most valuable tool you can have on your desktop! It's important that we have a mechanism to reach out to our counterparts quickly to exchange knowledge as well as to stay on top of industry trends."
- Victoria Artis, Director of Customer Financial Services, Pfizer, Inc.
"Over the last 10 years I've seen Credit Today evolve from a monthly credit publication into a quality source of information and guidance for the B2B credit community. The website, with its user friendly form downloads, will take you from examples of new account credit applications to bankruptcy forms and everything in between.
The Credit Today ListServ has become the pre-eminent online forum, providing an opportunity for discussion and comments (and occasional humor) from an impressive list of credit professionals."
David Dungan, Director of Credit
Justin Brands, Inc. (A Berkshire Hathaway company)
Fort Worth, Texas
"There are numerous credit periodicals available to the credit professional today. How good is Credit Today? Is it relevant? I always have to read it late, or online because my credit analysts want to read it the minute it comes in. When my staff wants to read a publication before I have a chance to read it then something is working in that publication. We have cancelled our other subscriptions. When you have the best you do not need the rest."
Ron Woods
Corporate Credit Manager-World Wide
Thales Navigation, Inc.
"The newsletter, coupled with the website and the ListServ, are to us, more valuable than any other credit publication, bar none. I try to use at least one article out of each newsletter for departmental training/discussion sessions."
D. Mark Constantine
Corporate Credit Mgr
Fulton Paper Company
"I love Credit Today and read every issue cover to cover. For me, the greatest perk of a subscription is ListServ. I believe Credit Today's ListServ members may be the most knowledgeable Credit brain trust in existence today. I have saved and categorized hundreds of contributions on a wide variety of topics which I refer to often. It's an easy and cost effective way to network and learn."
Doug M. Thomas
Kimberly-Clark Customer Financial Services |
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Credit Management Issues Today
Here, you'll find the critical issues that impact credit management: reducing DSO, handling mergers and acquisitions, analyzing cash burn rates, the importance of working capital, how to use credit applications, sales vs credit, and more. Also, check out our exclusive Credit Department Profiles, where you can learn how some of the world's leading credit departments get things done. To name but a few - MGM, Georgia-Pacific, Welch's, Serta Matress, Hachette Filipacci Magazines, Shell Canada, VF Jeanswear, Phillips-Van Heusen, and Franklin Quest.
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Nurturing Cross-Company Sales Teamwork with a Credit Department Dashboard
Ever get the feeling that you're invisible, that nobody notices Credit unless DSO or bad debts shoot up? This credit professional tackled that problem with a weekly dashboard detailing for management just what Credit is accomplishing. Then he went on to build on this new visibility by recruiting other departments to join Credit into a sales-building team. Learn... - the key elements of this company's dashboard
- how long the accompanying memo is and what is included
- how this helped the credit exec get closer to sales and in fact made him and important asset to help on sales calls
- how he has taken credit out of the backroom to a much more visible and critical role
. . .
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Red Flags Rule Compliance - B2B Companies Aren't Necessarily Exempt!
By Loral A. Narayanan
According to the latest Javelin Strategy & Research report, there were 12.6 million identity theft victims in the United States in 2012 (up from 11.6 million in 2011). This data indicates an identity theft is taking place nearly every three seconds. As incidents of identity theft increase, the problem is gaining momentum as a serious problem worldwide. . . .
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Designing and Implementing Your Ideal Credit App
Just about every customer relationship begins with their filling out your credit app. So there are few investments in time and effort that you can make with more lasting payoffs than designing an app that elicits exactly the information you need in a form that you can use most efficiently. Get the story behind one of the best online credit apps we've seen: - How it is structured in order to capture the most information possible
- What has been done to make the form as user-friendly as possible
- What has been done to have different answers cause different questions to be directed to the applicant
- The advantages of automation that go well beyond the data captured
- How it helps back office efficiency and accuracy as well as sales
- What the development challenges were
. . .
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Solving Payment Processing Problems Permanently with a High Performance, Cross-Functional Team
Pulling a team together to solve a cross-functional problem is standard procedure at many companies. And it's often a flop. Having more important things to do, team members often lack interest and commitment. Leaders many times lack experience in organizing meetings or driving effective change. Immediate problems may be cleared up, but root causes are left to fester. This is a company that is driven to change that course. Learn... - What this company has done to cut DSO substantially and save over $600,000 in just 9 months
- The five basic team skills required for success
. . .
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Credit's Mission Statement: Are You Framing it the Wrong Way?
A truly effective credit department should operate with a central, driving mission statement, surrounded by the four specialized activities of credit approval, billing, collections, and monitoring. Before being able to set goals for these four activities, though, you need to create your mission statement--your declaration of what your credit department is all about. Before creating your mission statement, you first must define what credit is. Ask some credit managers, and you may get answers such as: . . .
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Smoking Out Terms-Extension Chiselers with a Meet the Competition Form
Looking for another tool to stop extended terms requesters in their tracks? Most customers who request extended terms from this firm are turned down. Some, depending on the circumstances, receive their "Meet the Competition" form, which requires them to certify, over their signatures, specifically who the competition is and in detail what they are selling and what terms they have offered. To learn how this works and why, as well as get a copy of the form itself, read on. . . .
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Measuring Collector Performance: Benchmarking the Key Metrics
By David Schmidt
Measuring the performance of your collectors is a critical task, and there are many metrics in use by credit departments today. This portion of our latest benchmarking survey takes a deep dive into the metrics being used. Learn: - What the most popular metric used to measure individual collectors' performancel; and is that really the BEST metric?
- How many metrics do most firms use to track collector performance?
- What are the primary metrics? How do they stack up?
- Which surprising metric is most popular with credit departments that are missing their collection goals?
- What is the minimum number of contacts expected of collectors? What is considered optimum? What is the range of these two critical metrics?
What is the impact of automation? . . .
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When Can Your Customer's Customers Become Your Customers?
By Ann Morales Olazábal, MBA, JD
When relationships go sour, sometimes they really go sour. For years PRL--a big American manufacturer of mining and extraction equipment--had had a great informal distributorship arrangement with Chastain, a regional seller of spare parts and attachments primarily to mining and construction companies. PRL would sell and deliver to Chastain, who then sold to its third-party buyers or, at Chastain's request, PRL would drop ship directly to Chastain's customers. The relationship was mutually lucrative for years. This case study examines a situation in which a supplier starts selling directly to its former customer's customers. Is this going to cause the top supplier any legal problems. What are the issues at stake? . . .
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Be Alert for Customers Dependent on a Growing Field of High-Risk, Asset-Based Lenders
Loans to small- and medium-sized, high-risk companies to be packaged for sale to investors who are looking for high returns and willing to accept high risks. That is the gist of the mission of Harbor Capital LLC, a new venture being launched by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. There are now a number of these business-development companies which use borrowed money to invest as asset loans to smaller companies that often don't even have credit ratings. But until now they have been run by private equity firms and other types of investment management companies. Liberty Harbor Capital will be the first to be operated by a bank. . . .
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Have Toolkit, Will Travel
One smart credit exec we know doesn't leave home without his "credit manager's toolkit"--a well-stocked expanding folder stored within his briefcase. "The toolkit contains everything I need when I'm travelling to visit our dealer outlets or our customers," he tells us. The documents he carries include the following . . .
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Are Those 'Secured Creditors' Ahead of You in Line in a Bankruptcy Really Secured?
Several years ago while in a brief consulting assignment at a West Coast Sumitomo Electric affiliate, something caught Credit Management Director Chris Finch's eye. In the files of four customers that the affiliate had assumed it had UCC-1 security interests, there were none of those little green slips showing the notifications had been received by other secured creditors. Had those security interests ever been perfected? Learn Finch's simple (and easy) ways to double-check the status of other secured creditors. . . .
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Selling Where the Risks Aren't
You have plenty of information telling you where credit risks are. The same information also tells you where the risks aren't. It shows you which customers and prospects will be willing and able to pay if your sales people can get their orders. Are you using that information systematically and regularly to drive sales? This credit manager is. Learn how this credit exec uses positive data to motivate sales and add value for the customer financial services department! . . .
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What Demands for Longer Credit Terms Can Tell You
Rather than a show of arrogance, a demand for longer credit terms may be a blustering attempt to conceal financial problems. So such demands should prompt immediate and thorough investigations of these accounts. Are they revealing something that the customer wants to conceal? "We are going to change our payables policy to 60 days, and we anticipate your cooperating with us." So begins the standard terms-extension demand letter. Customers who send them to this credit exec are barking up the wrong tree. . . .
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Dispatch: Mergers and Acquisitions Are Back--Expect High-Handed Treatment of Trade Creditors
Five years ago Anheuser-Busch suppliers were stunned when AmBev bought the U.S. beer giant and notified them that, whatever their payment terms had been before, they would now be 90 days. Although rough handling by big customers is nothing new, that kind of abrupt, high-handed treatment of trade creditors largely went out of the news when merger and acquisition activity dried up in the Recession. But look for it to come roaring back. Dealogic reports that there has been nearly $160 billion in M&A's just since January, with more than $40 billion on Valentine's Day alone--perhaps portending a Valentine's Day Massacre of trade creditors. What can you do about it? . . .
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What Chargebacks Should Tell You
Chargebacks are often seen as a kind of institutionalized chiseling--a systematic, annoying and unjustified nibbling away at your margins. And, to a certain extent, this may be true. But a chargeback can also convey a serious message, with the customer saying, "Do this better, or we'll find someone who will." This 30-year credit management veteran has created the best system of coping with that kind of chargeback that we've ever seen. Learn... - the real reason chargebacks occur
- the secrets of his success
- how you can profit from that knowledge, as well as
- how to make your case against unfair or poorly conceived compliance requests from big customers
. . .
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Too Many Metrics?
Over the holidays, I visited with a friend who's head of sales for a big division of GE. He was relatively new to the GE culture so it took a bit of adjusting, but he's a smart and adapatable individual and he has done a great job figuring out how to make do in that rough and tumble world. GE, o . . .
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Dispatch From the Credit Front: Taking the Bite Out of the Swipe
That two to three percent you've been giving up each time you accept payment by credit card may be a thing of the past. But it's up to you to notify VISA or MasterCard that you're taking advantage of the settlement of a class action case that has now been tentatively approved by a New York federal court after nearly a decade of litigation. . . .
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Writing Collection Emails for Maximum Effect
The skillfully crafted email has become the silver bullet in commercial collections. When major problems stem from errors and confusion between computerized billing and payment systems, it's the concise, forceful yet diplomatic email that can best penetrate through system complexities and achieve payment results without threatening the customer relationship. . . .
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Bankruptcy Issues
