On Wednesday 5 July, CreditorWatch and the Australian Promotional Products Association (APPA) hosted a round table at CreditorWatch HQ in Sydney.
A group of promotional product industry leaders, business owners and managers participated in a discussion around managing customer credit risk with technology.
The event brought about discussion over challenges faced in the industry from a credit risk perspective as well as how procedures could be improved with the help of cloud automation services. The main technologies identified were Accounting Software, Collection Solutions, Payment Gateways and CreditorWatch.
When asked about accounting software, participants agreed that cloud services such as MYOB and Xero had helped improve the efficiency of collecting payment and keeping track of outstanding invoices.
Supplier hopping was identified as a common issue faced in the industry. A participant that operates as a boutique supplier explained that even though they had performed due diligence on all of their customers, some turned out to be malicious based on the fact that they didn’t make regular purchases thus didn’t care about having a positive credit history with them.
It was evident that bad debtors could hurt the industry by having a flow-on effect all the way up the supply chain. As one participant explained, “we all want the order but we don’t want to be the last person that gets paid.”
