Credit Manager (B2B)
Also known as Trade Credit or Corporate Credit
Long gone are the days that this position was referred to as the ‘Rottweiller’ or ‘Sales prevention officer’, it is now more liked to an Octopus, lots of tentacles positively involved in lots of areas. The modern credit manager can pro-actively and positively input to many departments, functions and procedures to improve business flow and customer service whilst maintaining focus on the core objective, which is to get the cash in fast and efficiently.
This role is now seen much more strategically viewed and much better rewarded given that large organisations are known to have strategies for either non payment to help their own bottom line profit, or at least significantly delaying payment causing the supplier to finance them at no cost.
Usual Duties of a Credit Manager:
• Proactive query prevention in order to tactically decrease the potential to raise queries, get goodwill credits or withhold cash.
• Creation, maintenance and management of a full credit policy, this is a broad reaching internal document that identifies all set and agreed procedures and policies that govern the credit function
• Dependant upon the size and structure of the organisation, you will oversee the Sales Ledger function, this covers raising invoices in a timely and accurate manner, speedy cash posting and accurate allocation of that cash, agreeing invoice formats with larger customers, ensuring sales order processing are inputting sales data accurately to prevent invoice queries.
• Identification of system or software improvements and being pivotal in implementation, documentation and training of those changes
• Negotiation and agreement of terms of business with new and existing customers, including payment terms and setting up service level agreements and credit limits.
• Assessing risk on new accounts and accounts overtrading by way of credit information providers, reading financial accounts and establishing trading histories.
• Motivation, coaching and setting targets for the credit team, usually collection targets, debtor day reduction targets, unallocated cash reduction targets and ongoing desk side coaching to get the best out of each call and account contact.
• Reporting to Directors on age and profile of debt, potential risks of bad debt, overtrading accounts, areas of suggested training and general customer service observations.
Qualifications and Career achievements
In order to be a credible and effective credit manager you will need to have identifiably superior communication and persuasion skills, be able to play the diplomat in any kind of environment and have the strongest level of commercial awareness and economic savvy, these are the key attributes.
It is preferable for a credit manager to have come through the ranks of being a credit controller and then a credit supervisor, this enables the credit manager to fully understand the function and department at all levels from grass roots upwards.
There are various qualifications that would assist but are not essential to this role, such as:
• ICM – Institute of Credit Management
• Economics Qualification
• European Languages
• Business Degree
There are a lot of companies who will sponsor this kind of qualification as it will ultimately benefit them, don’t be afraid of approaching your employer, but ensure you have researched which type of further education you require first.
You can expect to progress up the ranks to Senior Credit Manager, Group Credit Manager, European Credit Manager, European Group Credit Manager, Credit Director or Group Credit Director, there onwards you may progress to roles that oversee risk as well.
This information has been provided by Instinct Recruitment Ltd, please click on their logo to view all of their jobs;.gif){kind=small}
Useful Credit Manager Links
The Association of Credit Professionals
Institute of Credit Management
Court Service
Credit Services Association
Companies House
CIFAS
Department of Trade & Industry
Credit, Collections & Risk Magazine
Credit Today Magazine
Money Claim online
