Translation of the satiric pic of Charb:Growth arrives!
What the hell is she doing?
Beginning of the year 2015 is the opportunity to ask some questions.
What are the vows to wish to a business?
A revenue growth, or at least equivalent to the previous year? A profitability in double digits, or at least positive, a flexible cash to meet its commitments and to invest?
As good resolutions whose life generally does not exceed 5 days, these wishes are likely to remain pious if they are not associated with a real desire to streamline its business processes.
The economic environment is gloomy, variable, uncertain. However, it is too easy to put on his back all its difficulties. Opportunities exist in many sectors. Innovation is everywhere possible and serves to immediately differentiate from its competitors.
For this, it is still necessary to be an actor. Actor to seize opportunities that arise. Actor to put his company in a position to seize those that will appear soon.
From a financial point of view, being an actor means optimization. Optimize its sales process to remove the hidden costs, improve customer satisfaction and accelerate cash receipts.
Before you complain about the lack of external financing, you must be sure to have fully mobilized financial resources of your business. Indeed, these are often wasted by internal dysfunctions related to inventory management, purchasing or receivables.
Late payments, delinquencies are the most obvious illustration. So I ask you four questions:
- Are you confident in assessing the creditworthiness of customers to whom you give credit?
- Do you adapt the payment terms granted by the result of this analysis? Do you put yourself in place security tools (bank guarantees, delegation of payment, contract terms, credit insurance ... etc.)?
- Do you have a process in place to identify and resolve disputes as quickly as possible?
- Do you perform a precise and professional collection process? Do you have an effective solution to manage outstanding which are not collectable by this friendly recovery process?
If some answers are no, or if you are unsure, the best hope that I can make for 2015 is to launch a plan for evaluating your sales processes, from trade negotiations to the receipt of the payment in order to draw an actions plan to achieve three objectives:
- Customer satisfaction
- Avoid unpaid, cause of one business failure in four and of the financial difficulties of many others.
- Improve your cash flow by releasing your own resources of the accounts receivable to assign them where they would be much more profitable for your business.