How Credit Teams Can Become Drivers of Profitable Growth
Credit teams are facing ever-greater demands for insight and analysis, and this can be especially hard on understaffed departments. Here are five ways small credit teams can overcome resource constraints and contribute to growth:
1. Grow the Influence of the Shrinking Credit Team
Many credit departments are shrinking in an era of exploding data, new technology, globalization, and digitalization. Yet, the volumes of customers, credit applications, and work aren’t necessarily decreasing. In fact, credit teams are often being asked to collaborate in strategic endeavors such as driving enterprise growth.
2. Gain Big Efficiencies by Innovating Micro-Processes
Monthly sales quotas, revenue recognition requirements, and quarterly forecasts demand we make the most of the hours. Stopping to account for needless reports, miscommunications, and manual work—and doing away with those processes and needless kinks that slow down productivity—help the organization accelerate revenue generation.
3. Replace Microsights with Insights
Most companies have no problem generating analytics. The problem many credit managers face is knowing whether the insights they’re seeing and producing are true insights, or inside-out analytics that send false signals and tell irrelevant or misleading stories. Asking the right questions of your data is the key to unlocking true insight.
4. Integrate Disparate Technology
Technology has made integration both simpler and more difficult than ever. Figuring out how to integrate the technology and tools at hand—from purchasing software to CRM systems—is a major challenge finance and credit leaders are facing today. Collaborating with departments such as sales can help identify the right tools and reduce the headaches caused by disparate systems that, like estranged siblings, don’t speak to each other.
5. Make Sense of Small, Big Data Sources
Data is in short supply nowhere. But, 100 different data sources that aren’t tied together and exhibit questionable quality don’t help derive insight. It’s essential that data sources provide the foundational quality of insight your company needs.
Discover 4 more ways credit teams can drive profitable growth with the whitepaper, “Credit Departments as Drivers of Profitable Growth.”