Weekly Blog by Philip King, CEO of the ICM - 'Setting the future agenda'

I attended the ICM's 15th Regional Roadshow yesterday. Held at The Royal Armouries in Leeds, the attendance was excellent and so was the content. Gerry Barron focused on the concept that this is the time for credit managers, whereas James Perry, a solicitor from DWF, talked about what credit professionals can do to improve the chances of recovery in legal action to recover debts. I also shared my thinking about the credit management profession and the professionalism of those working within it.

The event prompted three thoughts to stand out in my mind: firstly, Gerry's statement that credit managers should be setting their own agenda in the current economic times; secondly, that we should be proud of our professionalism and the real value we add; and thirdly, that we should be smarter in the way we communicate to the audience beyond the credit professional.

Gerry worked through an example showing how the profit on a simple debt of £50 was eroded by late payment or, worse, non-payment and set out in absolute terms the impact to the business. The Benchmarker module for ICM Online Services available at: http://www.icmos.org.uk/ has a profit erosion calculator that demonstrates the same realism. It's a good way of making you think, and would be usefully shared with colleagues across our organisations as an indicator in real terms of the value we add. There is, after all, a positive impact to contrast with every negative impact - the opposite of profit erosion is profit generation - and that's where our professionalism can make a real difference!

The first and third thoughts are linked: if we're going to set the agenda, we also need to communicate in the right way and using the right language. All too often, we talk about DSO which means everything to a credit audience and almost nothing to anyone else. I believe strongly that DSO is a good and useful measure, especially on a trend basis, but it's rarely appropriate for a wider audience who would understand alternatives such as the amount of available cash collected for the additional amount of cash released into the business. Guess what, if we use graphs for the last two, an upward line is good news that matches the graphs used by our colleagues in almost every other area of the business. Credit people are, by their very nature, good communicators and a simple, subtle change to language and presentation could generate an exponential rise in the way we're perceived in our own organisations. It's time for us to set our own agendas!