The challenge
Inspire Healthcare operates annual service contracts for regulated waste, invoices are generated in advance for a year’s service. Customers often delay payment, so tight credit control is essential to ensure that there is sufficient cash in the business and that the day’s outstanding figure is kept firmly under control. The department handling credit control tried external debt collection, but being a paper system, this was unsuccessful and very inefficient in terms of the time taken to recover debts. Invoicing is dealt with by a bespoke system, which used to print and post around 150 invoices, three times a week. Copy invoices and credit notes would also be printed, faxed or posted to customers and then filed manually, taking several hours each week and incurring postage and stationery costs.
The solution
Inspire Healthcare was introduced to Credit Hound and Spindle Document Distribution by Harley Grove in 2008. Both products are fully integrated with the company’s Sage systems, which have also been successfully upgraded by Harley Grove. Inspire uses Sage 50 Accounts, which has been integrated with Spindle Document Distribution, allowing invoices to be emailed straight to customers and automatically archived electronically, for easy retrieval. Harley Grove provided all installation and training and is able to log into the system remotely, which allows for fast troubleshooting when required. Inspire have found that the combination of Credit Hound and Spindle Document Distribution is very time and cost effective. With all notes from previous calls recorded on screen, Inspire can be much more factual when handling objections and excuses for outstanding payments. They can explain when they last called, what the response was and so on. Samantha Rawlins, Credit Hound user at Inspire said: “Credit Hound is overall a very good system. It creates diary reminders when a customer needs to be contacted regarding their outstanding debt. It also creates automated letters to send out to customers when their account is becoming increasingly overdue. It allows you to diarise exactly what was discussed with customers to enable you to record exact information. Credit Hound can be set up exactly to your needs, which as a company we find very beneficial.”
The results
Monies owed reduced by £150,000 in first 6 months
Credit control is faster and more professional
2-3 hours a week saved, per person, by improved efficiency with invoice runs
Enabled company to migrate to paperless and post-free system
Products
Document Distribution
