Brilliant Business Systems, a Softline Company, today announced the launch of CreditPartner for Brilliant Accounting. CreditPartner, a fully integrated credit vetting and risk management tool, allows small to medium enterprises to proactively manage their debtors books, providing peace of mind when extending credit to customers.
Traditionally only large corporations have had access to credit reports while organisations in the SME sector have had to function largely on instinct when assessing the credit risk of their customers. However, as SMEs have become more central to the economy, and SA`s bad debt problem continues to grow, it has become crucial for SMEs to integrate credit risk management into their businesses.
"The current credit risk scenario in SA is placing an intolerable burden on many SMEs," says Craig Firman, one of the Managing Directors in the Octagon Group, which has partnered with Brilliant Accounting in the provision of the credit vetting solution. "There is a growing trend of downsizing in the corporate sector, reflected in the recent spate of delistings, while the SME sector is dominating the economy and therefore carrying the burden of SA`s unhealthy credit risk status. At the same time, SMEs have not had access to information required to make informed credit decisions. The effect of this is reflected in SA`s staggering insolvency rate - the last two years have shown an average of 15.7 insolvencies every working day. That amounts to two companies going bankrupt every working hour," says Firman.
Brilliant Business Systems` initiative to empower SMEs with a credit risk assessment tool is a critical advance given SA`s bad debt crisis. There has been an average annual increase of 18% in bad debt since 1997 with a total of R7 billion lost to bad debt annually. Consumer judgements for 2000 totalled R5.9 billion - that means R24 million per working day is lost to consumer bad debt. Commercial judgements for 2000 clocked in at R1.1 billion - a total of R4 million lost to commercial bad debt every working day.
"Bad debt cripples the economy by depriving the government of billions of rands in tax revenues that could be used in crucial budgets like health, housing and education," says Pete Whalley, Managing Director of Brilliant Business Systems. While bad debt amounts to R7 billion per year, the health budget stands at 6.6 billion, the education budget at 8.2 billion and the housing budget at 3.7 billion.
Brilliant Business Systems has equipped their customers to attack the problem of bad debt head on through the provision of credit risk management capability as part of the Brilliant Accounting solution. This is an unprecedented capability for an accounting solution focusing on the SME sector. The CreditPartner tool integrates seamlessly into Brilliant Accounting, allowing access to a secure online system for viewing detailed credit reports. CreditPartner for Brilliant is a joint venture between Brilliant Business Systems and Octagon, a leading business solutions provider with extensive experience in the credit industry.
Online credit vetting provides businesses with a number of benefits over the outdated manual credit vetting process. In the past, credit reports were usually faxed to the concerned party, an approach that failed to protect the privacy of the individual under investigation. Manual credit checks are also a time-consuming process involving the locating, photocopying and faxing of documents, with unnecessary information often being sent. In contrast, an online credit check takes 30-40 seconds to perform and offers enhanced security as the report appears on the monitor screen and is only viewed by the person initiating the request. Online credit vetting also offers the advantages of viewing an audit trail on an individual`s past credit checks and selecting only the credit report information relevant to a particular enquiry.
Initiatives such as CreditPartner are part of Brilliant`s Third Party Development Strategy whereby Brilliant partners with niche specialists in order to bring added value to their accounting software subscriber base. "
Our Subscription Alliance Partners such as Octagon, allow us to focus on our core competency - the provision of leading-edge accounting solutions - while providing our customers with the benefit of integrated value-added services like credit vetting," says Whalley. "Brilliant has a vested interest in the success of our customers` businesses as our business model is based upon an ongoing subscriber relationship with the users of our software. By empowering our customers to take a more calculated approach when extending credit to clients, we can help to ensure that they stay in business longer." CreditPartner for Brilliant Accounting allows SMEs to perform online credit checks/verification on both companies and individuals. The CreditPartner tool sources detailed credit reports online from KreditInform, SA`s leading commercial credit bureau. Whalley points out that credit checks on an individual consumer, as opposed to a company, require written permission from the individual concerned. KreditInform provides a risk assessment score on the company or individual that the enquiry has been run on. Should a company or individual obtain a failing KI score (rated on a sliding scale with 1 indicating the least risk and 10 the worst) it will be clearly illustrated on the Risk Grade Graph. Additional functionalities of CreditPartner include the ability to view a company`s monthly debt distribution and average monthly exposure. The tool also allows for the investigation of liquidation details, wind up and judicial management issues as well as providing information on the number of credit checks run on an individual or company in the last 28 days.
Share
Editorial contacts