Accreditation will
elevate but will it change perception?
Been a bit quiet these past few months but a total hip
replacement in February followed by a skin complaint, moving home, holidays and
entertaining overseas relatives took priority.
Not sure about you but a good long lounge in a warm tub
after a few hours graft in the garden with no access to mobile, tablet or TV
and just marble to look at and your soapy knees, is a great way to get brain
cells working and free the mind.
Among many musings while soaking, my thought turned to the
well documented and written ‘perception’ of credit management which in the eyes
of one well known and esteemed credit colleague is aptly described as ‘the ugly
stepchild of finance’; but why does this view still hold true and what can we
do to change it?
The recent accredited chartered status achieved by the Institute of
Credit Management can be the spur to change but will it have the desired
effect while the function and role of credit permanently resides within a
finance function? In some cases, I’m sure it will but suspect two
generations from now, someone will be writing on this same theme.
Training, education, accreditation are all wonderful aids
but if they fail to increase the value businesses see in their credit teams, if
quality credit people are still the ones to be laid off when businesses cut
cost, and if many still see us a finance function that carries cost and
delivers no profit, none of this means we have made any tangible progress. We
do of course deliver profit in managing receivables and keeping bad debt low
but these are core competencies and can easily be replicated by a piece of
software, outsourcing and automation; that sadly, is how CEO’s and worse, CFO’s
often see it.
To change things requires a supreme effort, primarily on the
part of credit people themselves and
credit institutions in raising the profile of credit not just through
accreditation but through lobbying and definitive actions, raising one’s game
effectively and showing how much extra value we can offer when given the tools,
trust and empowerment to deliver. It won’t come to us; we have to market, package and sell it.
When I first got into credit in the early 70’s I was acutely
embarrassed to be referred to as a ‘debt collector’ and set about trying to
change that perception throughout my entire career in credit management. It was
certainly not easy and I met pretty stiff resistance along the way, more so
when I entered a pretty staid and traditional credit function in an established
old engineering company in the early 80’s. What swung it for me were a number
of things, sure, reducing DSO was one along with less bad debt and lower
third party costs but the defining moment for me was the time I insisted of a
client visit to one of our major clients in the North of England who had refused
to pay a significant retention balance and against which we had carried a 50%
and growing provision. In those days, a credit manager was simply not permitted
anywhere near a client, let alone one of the biggest but mercifully, the new
CFO saw logic and I took a flight to Leeds, meeting our Sales Director and then
meeting the client. We had a very productive meeting with the managing
director, discussed issues and in particular the unpaid retention and within
two hours had agreed a way forward. I also had an assurance of a further
payment against the unpaid retention. The flight back was quite enjoyable as
was the week thereafter. The Sales Director was hugely impressed, the client was
also massively happy that someone had taken the time to go up and meet them and
all this got back to our own CEO, who was also happy or forced to concede this ‘new’
approach was worth exploring further. It helped that the promised payment came
in the following day and the final concession to the client was a fraction of
what we had provided. The importance however of this was the attitude and
approach I encountered thereafter from both my employer and our clients whenever
I introduced something new or different in what I did, over and above what was
in my original job specification.
My repertoire of career anecdotes on what I call 'value add credit' could fill a book, nonetheless, we all occasionally do similar things but fail
to use them to their fullest extent or obtain the desired reward and recognition;
in other words, we don’t press home the advantage and this is absolutely
pivotal in getting noticed, respected, rewarded and above all, acknowledged and
valued.
My path in credit was one of credit evolution, continually
looking at ways in which the information and knowledge I had or gleaned along
the way was used to enhance and add value to final delivery, continually
challenging boundaries, breaking that horrible mould of debt collection.
EP Credit Management & Consultancy
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