I recently sat in on the CRF educational webinar “How to Implement a Digital Credit Application” and found myself intrigued by the candid response to one of the top productivity opportunities in the B2B credit space. The speaker was Bill James from Creditsafe (CRF Platinum Partners), who spoke about an agnostic approach to delivering value in today’s digital world. What was very refreshing was the candid approach to sharing what Bill has seen in the market when thinking, what should be considered, the questions that should be asked and how to measure your success based on your individual business requirements. Here are several highlights:
What should be considered:
- Is your goal to have a stand-alone tool or will it be integrated with a CRM?
- What data is required for your department’s process and others within your business?
- Include the Terms and Conditions (Ts and Cs) within your application.
Questions you should ask from your digital application provider:
- Is there a limit to the number of fields that the application can support?
- Does the tool allow for the integration of multiple sources of data?
- Is the tool for data gathering or does it include analytical capabilities?
Measuring Success
- Measure your turnaround time pre- and post-implementation.
- Track your approval ratings and contrast them to your accepted default rate.
- Align your corporate goals to your results by building a dashboard to measure your results.
In addition to the above, Bill shared several best practices he has seen during many implementations and across multiple industries. Here are a couple:
- Establish Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with your internal customers and commit to delivering against the same.
- Build the process flow around exceptions and who and how they will be handled.
CRF, through its research, has found that many organizations have or are researching the implementation of a digitized credit application to support the automation of the front end of their business. This is especially true given the explosion of ecommerce activity. Not only are they finding success in its implementation but additionally, greater adherence to their corporate policies, consistency in the approach and improved relationships with their sales organizations.
The webinar can be found on the CRF website – members can download free of charge: CLICK HERE