Risk solutions provider Inoxico believes effective debtor management is central to maintaining a healthy cash flow and, as a result, launched its predicative credit management solution, Inoxico Tradeshield, to its customers, in Johannesburg, last month to demonstrate the benefits of eliminating the risks of dealing with debtors.

Inoxico CEO André Stürmer said at the launch that Inoxico Tradeshield actively monitored and managed how debtors performed, and were likely to perform, and also enabled businesses to manage credit risk more effectively.

The solution provides internal debtor management capabilities and is an intuitive and customisable software application, with the benefits of a central debtor management platform, the visualisation of age analysis and risks, as well as automated scoring. The solution can also generate a consolidated view of extended credit.

“It is important for us to understand our customers’ needs. What makes us unique is that we combine exclusive databases and a strong research pedigree. We enable our ser- vices and data for customer consumption using analytics and software, which result in strong technology. Our service lines are debtor management, supply chain governance, counter- party risk and compliance, market intelligence and opportunity assessment,” Stürmer said.

Credit management was evolving from being a reactive activity to being a proactive process that was increasingly information driven; maintaining a healthy credit portfolio required more insight now and it should consider borrowers’ current as well as future financial status and payment behaviour, he stated.

He said to solely rely on traditional bureau reports and manual internal processes were no longer enough, adding that companies needed intelligent systems and context in terms of their specific industry.

Accurate and timely debtor intelligence helps curtail bad debt, assists with collection prioritisation and can drive revenue by identifying qualified buyers already on companies’ books that have not used their approved credit lines.

Inoxico Tradeshield enables companies to compile insight across key risk areas.

These include credit profiles that analyse debtor payment history, industry credit pro- files that provide comparative analysis of credit exposure within industries, external risk factors that assess debtor credit worthiness in real time using external risk indicators, as well as director profiles that assess debtors’ principals and their likely effect on the credit- worthiness of the company using innovative solutions.

Further, the Inoxico Tradeshield enables companies to optimise debtor management resources by automating credit policy and, through consistent debtor analysis, they can continuously monitor debtor risk on an individual and consolidated basis, proactively identify high-risk debtors and implement corrective measures to pre-empt bad debt.

The solution also improves responsiveness through real-time flagging and notifications, based on a company’s unique credit-risk rules. It also generates leads and up-selling oppor- tunities from within a company’s existing debtor pool.

Inoxico chairperson Dieter Ammer stated that many customers could be better off if credit scoring and management processes were more transparent.

“We introduced products and ideas in the last two years and we want to create new relevant products. That is what drives us. We have a good team, consisting of people in the industry, who drive these processes,” he said.