Following a difficult trading year in the retail sector in which our client operated across 750 stores, it had to reduce costs in order to remain competitive. This was done at both store and Head Office level and resulted in a freeze on headcount with leavers not being replaced and moving to a new, smaller Head Office facility.
As well as retail our client also supplied the goods sold in-store to businesses on a trade credit basis which also suffered as a result of this headcount reduction.
Following these changes, it became very difficult for our client to manage all Credit Control activities with a significantly reduced team and as such, a consultation was set up with Credit Style’s expert team to identify potential solutions.
Within the trade credit business, there were a number of differing ledgers which were set up according to the type of organisation they traded with. Certain ledgers connected with the NHS and central and local government were extremely high maintenance and we designed a full cradle to grave outsourcing solution for these ledger items.
A team of very experienced collectors were pulled together and a very simple, daily file transfer mechanism was created in order that we could run a duplicated sales ledger to our client whilst being able to gain the significant benefits of Credit Style’s advanced collection software.
The solution we created consisted of collections activity in our client's name in a pre-agreed manner to reflect good credit management practice. If payment was not made on any overdue items the collection strategy quickly flicked to Credit Styles name and was then latterly followed up by our legal team.
This three pronged, cradle to grave approach has allowed our client to utilise their scarce resource into areas where they are needed the most leaving the specialist team to manage the ledgers they cannot service.