Credit Matters Newsletters

Unfortunately, the best laid plans of mice and men as they say, means that there are no new features to report this month. Sometimes we just get so busy, our best intentions go unfulfilled. Hopefully a few items we have in the pipe-stream will be available next month

Last month I sent a questionnaire with the newsletter because unfortunately, there were no entries for our Professional Development Award. I would really appreciate if a few more people could help out by answering the attached questionnaire so I can understand how to make the award more viable next time, thank you.

Advertising via Credit Matters

If you are interested in reaching business prospects who need your services or products, contact Kim to see what he can do for you. There are many different opportunities to advertise your business via Credit Matters and it may not be as expensive as you might imagine.

This month, you will find attached another interesting article from the Bank Doctor, a new product introduction from CreditorWatch and an introduction to a Conference by the Polish Institute of Credit Management.

Operating a "lean and mean " business or expecting your people to work harder all the time, is a poor business strategy. Rarely will your business benefit over the long term because your employees will always be trying to catch-up with yesterday's work objectives. As a consequence, your employees will rarely have the time to plan for the future. In turn, your business and employees are ill-prepared for the future and the new work environment which results.

People have limited ability to work constantly under pressure. They can certainly succeed in short bursts to complete extra work to achieve specific objectives or overcome any emergencies. The proviso is of course, they have not been under too much pressure in the preceding periods.

The greatest problem when working under constant pressure is, as they fall behind in their work, you employees become increasingly stressed. They also become more emotionally and physically exhausted, and inevitably, lose their drive to maintain their work output. If extra work is required, your employees are less able to complete that work satisfactorily.

When the future arrives therefore, the business and your employees are unable to adapt quickly to the operational requirements of the new environment. Rather the business and its employees are still stuck trying to achieve yesterdays' objectives.

We also know the pace of business has increased over the years as have, customer expectations. "Time waits for no-one" as we have always been told. Nowhere do we see this statement being more valid then in sales and accounts receivable operations.

If you are unable to get a product to the customer on time, you may lose the sale and the customer. Failing to quickly answer an enquiry may be the difference between the sale proceeding or losing the sale. In addition, if you are time poor or working with outdated operational systems, you inevitably miss out on other business opportunities.

Not following up on an outstanding invoice in a timely manner could see you miss the next payment run and waiting an extra 30 or 60 days for the payment. Alternatively, the person who authorised the purchase may have left the customer's business or the customer has changed its billing requirements.

A strategy which can help make your business ready for the future, is to make sure your employees have all the resources they need to complete their work as quickly as possible. It is almost impossible to plan and prepare for the future if you are still trying to achieve yesterday's objectives. A failure to understand this principle is to find, the future has arrived before you are ready. More importantly, you will watch future opportunities disappear and/or find your business operations are no longer suitable for the modern business environment.