Weekly blog by Philip King, CEO of the ICM - 'Sharing the golden nuggets!'

I spent a day this week at the ICM's Quality in Credit Management Best Practice Conference in London. The event was for organisations that have achieved, are on the journey towards achieving, or aspire to achieve the Quality in Credit Management accreditation award. What a great day.

 

I'm not going to bang on about the benefits of the Quality in Credit Management Award accreditation scheme (though clearly I could) but rather I'm keen to talk about the benefits of sharing best practice. When you get a group of people in a room who are at the top of their game - either personally or from an organisational perspective - it's amazing what comes out.

 

At the conference, we heard a series of speakers sharing their experiences and giving examples of best practice. Of course, what works for one organisation might not work for another, but hearing and filtering ideas is a great opportunity to improve, and helps meet one of the objectives of QICM, that of facilitating continuous improvement for people and organisations.

 

Some of the ideas were incredibly simple and others far more sophisticated. For example, we heard about the huge impact of introducing very simple and cheap 'music on hold' which made a great positive impression on both customers and the internal organisation.

 

More than one presenter talked about their plans to educate customers to improve their own credit management processes and procedures on the basis that, if they were more effective at collecting cash, they'd be better able to settle invoices promptly. A good example of sharing best practice with the wider business community and particularly with SMEs and micro-businesses who may lack relevant experience and expertise.

 

We saw some impressive dashboards and an explanation of how they can be used to best effect. Letting commercial people understand the value of overdue debt in terms of a number of new salesmen or replacement delivery vehicles, for example, is not a new idea but is very powerful.

 

Afternoon presentations addressed how to energise and motivate teams through periods of change and how to make step changes in performance. Some innovative and invigorating ideas on how to create a culture that is focused, cohesive and driven. The case studies came from large organisations but contained concepts that could be adopted in a variety of environments.

 

What's even more interesting about events like this is that people can contribute more than they realise. Participants turn up expecting to learn from the wisdom and experience of the presenters without realising how good they are themselves, and what nuggets they also have to share. Whether we call it networking or by some other grand name, sharing what we know, what we do, and what we've learnt is one of the most powerful business tools, and we should do more of it.