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Monitoring

With an ever fluctuating and sometimes volatile environment, there’s an increased pressure on companies who need to be able to anticipate and proactively mitigate business risk before it’s too late. Flexibility and the ability to respond quickly to a changing business environment are necessary traits that companies need to adopt, in order to keep up with the competition and the latest developments. By closely keeping a watchful eye on your business relations, you’ll be able to make swift and informed business decisions.

Monitoring

What is monitoring?

Monitoring alerts are triggered based on certain criteria which you define as important to your business. Alerts are sent out straight into your email inbox as soon as they happen, so you can be assured that you’ll be notified on an important event and be in the know. Remember, it’s not only negative events which you can define and be alerted on. Rather, leverage the monitoring functionality to possibly create business opportunities e.g. a change in a positive credit rating for a customer may result in extending better credit terms to gain more revenue from increased orders on credit etc. Some examples of what can be tracked through monitoring can be along the lines of:

  • Did the company file for bankruptcy?
  • Did your business relation publish new annual financial statements?
  • Did your customer increase or decrease its authorised share capital?
  • Was a new CEO appointed?
  • Did your customer change its address or trading name?

Graydon collects data from various sources, notifying you accordingly without any delay. This puts you firmly in control to make informed decisions and mitigate business risk.

What does monitoring chart?

We’re all aware that situations change within companies due to the nature of business. As changes occur, you need to be informed. We also understand that keeping up with these changes would virtually be impossible without being prone to errors. Thankfully, our monitoring capabilities track a wide range of events and instantly update you as soon as they occur. Make business decisions based on intelligent data.

Amazingly, the monitoring system follows all Belgian entities with respect to over 110 elements. This includes informative, positive and negative signals.

  • Was the new CEO recently involved in a bankruptcy of a different company? Everyone deserves a second chance - but it may be wise to closely monitor this customer for some time.
  • Or perhaps the new CEO is also at the head of other flourishing businesses? This would give you an opportunity of gaining a foothold in the other companies.

How does monitoring work?

Through the online Graydon portal, you can nominate the companies you wish to monitor continuously. As soon as you set a business relation to ‘Monitoring’, you will receive a flashback report. This is an overview of any negative messages in the past, allowing you to make a correct assessment of the current situation immediately.

If something else changes in your business relation’s organisation (in a positive or negative sense), you will receive an immediate notification in your email box.

The importance of monitoring your customers and suppliers?

Monitoring ensures that you always have full information at hand, preventing any nasty surprises. This enables you to quickly and efficiently take measures when necessary. For example, if a customer goes bankrupt. Furthermore, monitoring also informs you of opportunities. For example, a customer announcing new investments or a customer being taken over. This is a good time for your sales team to call the customer.

You can also follow your suppliers via monitoring. Certainly if it concerns a supplier that is vital to your own production process. Naturally, you would like to know immediately if things are heading in the wrong direction. After all, you cannot afford to risk your stock levels.

What is the point of closely following your relations?

Undoubtedly, you are already doing that, but at a more limited scale. Rumours you hear, checking your business relations’ websites, consulting annual financial statements, reading newspapers and chatting with business relations - it really is all about taking the pulse of your environment.

For larger customer portfolios, however, you would need an army of employees to consult, check, verify and interpret all sources. If you have loyal customers, you should not be doing business without monitoring. It is then not always necessary to review a credit report.

Also consider larger projects that involve huge amounts of money over a longer period of time. Upon acceptance, the customer had a perfect credit score - but that may no longer be the case. Perhaps the customer is confronted with difficulties due to the wrong investments or faulty budgeting. It may have a major impact on invoice payment behaviour.

As any event may affect your payments, continuous monitoring is really a necessity.

Monitoring reduces risk

Use monitoring to mitigate business risk as well spot opportunities. Being in the know allows you to make the critical decisions which matter most to your business with confidence.

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