Guest blog by Sue Chapple, Head of Revenue Management of EDF Energy Plc - 'No pain no gain?'

For three weeks in July every year, our household becomes totally and utterly obsessed with the Tour de France.  This is a relatively new phenomenon, which has crept up on us over the last five years – but still now, our total immersion with the event, takes even us by surprise.  The ‘phone goes unanswered, ironing builds to a veritable monster, the weeds gang up on us and the dog has to remind us he wants to be fed and walked!

 

So as the 2013 edition draws to a spectacular close and we are left feeling bereft, I wonder what, if anything, I can draw from the experience.

 

I suppose the overriding observation, every year, is the total and unswerving dedication to the cause.  The absolute commitment from every single rider, to every kilometre of the race, regardless of pain, weather, or gradient is remarkable.  Does this type of dedication exist at all, outside of the sporting arena?

 

Is it possible to harness just a tiny bit of this focus and desire and capture it for our own worlds? Or are the participants, by definition, simply a special breed that cannot be ‘recreated’ in any other environment?  Could we look at the Sky Team approach to ‘process improvement’ which, in the words of the great (Sir) Dave Brailsford, is all about marginal gain: if you work, methodically, to remove variances over which you have control and which have a negative impact, and aim to do 100 things one percent better – the impact in any walk of life will at the very least be noticeable and at best, incredible.

 

So far so good, now I wonder how my team will feel about the lycra suits………

 

Next week Philip King’s guest blogger will be Sue Kettle, Director of Membership & Support Services for the ICM.

Weekly blog by Philip King, CEO of the ICM - 'Firing the imagination'

I talked last week about the flurry of consultations being launched by government ahead of the summer holidays and, guess what, there have been even more since I wrote those words.  It feels like I have spent every waking hour of the last ten days ploughing through page after page of government documents and preparing questionnaires and summaries to share with our members so they can comment and offer their views.

The latest to hit my inbox was HMRC's consultation document: 'Sharing and publishing data for public benefit', a set of proposals that "form a significant development in HMRC's Open Data Strategy".  Judged by the title, you wouldn't imagine this has much to excite credit professionals but ­ as is so often the case ­ there are nuggets hidden away that are very interesting.  Indeed, I would go far as to say that this one has genuinely excited my imagination. Why is that?

In amongst the detail, the paper suggests the possibilities of releasing of basic non-financial VAT registration data as public data, and sharing more detailed VAT registration data on a more restricted and controlled basis for specific purposes, such as credit referencing.  It also considers whether VAT registration data could provide a foundation for private sector business registers.  It is this last point that lights my fire! I'm old enough to remember the Business Names Register (I think it was called) which allowed a supplier to identify a business.  It ceased to exist years ago and no doubt someone reading this will remember better than me the background as to why, and when.  Since its demise, the ability to identify a business that trades as a sole trader or partnership has been incredibly difficult, and the proportion of businesses on which the credit reference agencies are able to report is incredibly low because of the dearth of data available to them.  I know the VAT threshold is currently £79,000 so the smallest businesses wouldn't be picked up but it would still be a huge step forward.  According to HMRC, around 800,000 VAT registered businesses are not incorporated so making basic information available to credit reference agencies would at least enable a business's existence, location, legal status, and trade classification to be verified.

Of course we'd prefer to have financial information as well but let's keep our feet on the ground; that's not going to happen any time soon.  In the meantime, please let me know what you think (the ICM In-Brief newsletter published on 14 August will have a link to the document but it can also be found here so we can make HM Government aware of our views.

I'm off to Scotland for my summer break shortly and I'm grateful to Charles Mayhew, Sue Chapple, and Sue Kettle who've agreed to do me the honour of writing guest blogs while I'm away.  If you too are heading for some time of relaxation in the coming weeks then make the most of them.  This is the only time in the year when I genuinely turn off emails (despite what I may tell Mrs K at other times!).  I'll look forward to returning refreshed and re-charged.