TotalEnergies Power & Gas Belgium is the fourth largest energy supplier in the Belgian market and one of the five Belgian entities belonging to the TotalEnergies Group. It has around 600,000 B2C customers and just under 100,000 B2B customers. Quentin Jemine, Credit & Collection Manager in the company, won't fool you in terms of credit management. He has a team of 25 people responsible for everything to do with credit. And you can take that very broadly.
"From credit checks, over credit vetting to debt collection. We also do everything in terms of customer administration. We do payments as well as direct debits, credit notes, collection reminders, formal notices and everything necessary for any legal action."
Quentin has already worked with several business information vendors and in a previous life worked at - competitor - Trends Business Information in the information gathering team.
"I know all the players active in the Belgian business information market. Thanks to my past, I also know what goes on behind the scenes of those offices and how information is processed. And, from experience, I know how to extrapolate data to create models and make decisions."
A non-event
So, he is well placed to weigh up different players against each other. In 2017, TotalEnergies Power & Gas Belgium chose Graydon, now GraydonCreditsafe.
"At that time, we issued a ‘Request For Proposal’ to scan the market and challenge our then supplier. Graydon came out on top then. Two years ago, we did that exercise again, but it changed nothing. GraydonCreditsafe came out as the winner again, even though other competitors had emerged in the meantime to take their chances."
So, the merger into GraydonCreditsafe did not deter them.
"For me, that was a non-event. TotalEnergies Power & Gas Belgium only operates in Belgium and nationally I don't see any major changes. Creditsafe was strong internationally but lacked data on the Belgian market and for Graydon it was the other way around. So, the unification is very interesting for companies operating in Belgium and abroad."
Easy integration and the price
To choose between the different players on the market, two elements were decisive for TotalEnergies Power & Gas Belgium.
"Firstly, we want easy integration with our systems and secondly, price. We don't use sophisticated solutions; we just extract raw data and combine it with our internal data. So, we have our own algorithms and models. The integration but also the quality of the data are the main arguments for continuing to work with GraydonCreditsafe. By the way, we have never had any complaints about that external data. There is sometimes disagreement about a decision we take based on the data, but it is not the case that the data is incorrect. That is also a strong point."
There is sometimes disagreement about a decision we make based on the data, but it is not that the data is incorrect.
Quentin Jemine
Credit & Collection Manager, TotalEnergies Power & Gas Belgium
A check of every prospect
"Whether it's a few hundred euros or a hundred thousand or even millions of euros, every prospect has to be analysed. Add to that a number of customers and you're looking at several hundred analyses every month. Sales cannot enter into a new contract without performing a credit check. That is even technically blocked in our systems.
But that credit check costs sales little effort. We have developed a functionality where the employee simplymust enter the company number. Via API, data are called up at GraydonCreditsafe, after which our algorithm processes the data and gives an easy-to-interpret result: green, orange or red. If someone disagrees with that outcome, sales can escalate that decision and we look at it more thoroughly. But that all happens within the tool, there is no email traffic involved, and in that sense it is a nice tool."
Via API, data is called up at GraydonCreditsafe, after which our algorithm processes the data and gives an easy-to-interpret result.
"For smaller companies, 80 per cent of our decisions are based on the data we get from GraydonCreditsafe. For larger companies, we sometimes look at the financial data a bit more carefully, simply because it is more extensively available. For smaller companies, it is less obvious."
Without GraydonCreditsafe, it would be difficult
The question arises whether TotalEnergies Power & Gas Belgium could still operate without GraydonCreditsafe data?
"That would be very difficult. It would mean doing all the work ourselves, gathering the data from all available sources. I do not see myself running through the Appendices of the Belgian Official Gazette to read all the publications and try to understand what is happening. GraydonCreditsafe has built up years of experience in that area. It knows what the signals are of a failing company. Without GraydonCreditsafe, we would have to rely on the experience of our own analysts, but then we would no longer be completely objective."
"To be clear, I don't think it's impossible. But then, we might have less information to assess companies and we would undoubtedly need a bigger team of analysts. Or we would have to divest some markets so that we can only focus on companies where margins are high."