Transforming business operations with credit data integration

Credit data is often viewed through the lens of lending and credit assessments.

However, when integrated directly into your CRM system, you can enjoy value far beyond underwriting.

Businesses of all sizes are increasingly using credit data integrations to support everything from customer onboarding and monitoring to prospecting, marketing and day-to-day operations.

Instead of being used as a snapshot, integrating the data allows it to become a core part of your operations. Here are some of the reasons to integrate credit report data that you may not have even considered.

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Double your productivity

Take PeopleCheck, a London-based organisation that specialises in background checks and employment screening.

As their business grew, their team was running credit checks across multiple sources manually, working case-by-case. Early on this worked, but the bigger they grew, the more inefficient this process became.

By integrating credit data directly into their dashboard, PeopleCheck is now able to complete twice as many checks compared to their manual process. The team no longer needed to jump between platforms, removing bottlenecks and giving them room to grow without increasing workloads.

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Speed up sign-ups, approvals and onboarding

Credit data integration offers the ability to automatically populate company data during applications. When a customer enters their business names, verified company data can instantly populate the form. This results in a frictionless process for customers as they don’t need to provide so many details, while also speeding up internal processes.

The benefits are threefold:

Accuracy

If a business has a complex group structure or a similar name to another company, you can ensure you’re working with the right entity and the right data.
Instant profiling

As the data feeds directly into your business application, you can see a complete company profile as soon as the application is submitted.
Better risk visibility

You can access the wider group structure and key people within the business to see if there are additional risk factors.

This is also valuable in Point of Sale (POS) environments. For example, a retailer of trade tools integrated Creditsafe’s API to streamline trade credit decisions. Using our automated credit decisioning tool on top of integrated credit data, customers are able to select their company, which automatically populates their data, and sends an instant credit decision based on parameters set by the retailer. Not only does this make the process easier, but it means there’s far less chance of human error.

Once a company has been approved, next comes onboarding. This slow and clunky process, often seeing endless back-and-forth collecting documents. For a UK-based FinTech providing digital onboarding, making this process as seamless as possible was a top priority. They also needed it to be pain-free across borders, as they worked with clients globally.

A major benefit of credit data integration is the ability to add additional services that go beyond the reports. In this case, the FinTech added international data but you can perform a wide range of checks such as KYC & AML, bank verification and automated credit decisions all at the same time.

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Adjust payment terms

If your business serves companies of all sizes, flexibility around payment terms is what will help you to maintain strong relationships that last years. However, it’s not always easy to offer flexibility if you don’t have visibility into their financial health, which can put your business at risk.

With a real-time view of a customer’s financial health through integrated credit data, you can adjust payment terms based on facts, not feelings. What’s more, you can continue to monitor the customer on an ongoing basis, to proactively manage risk rather than react to it later down the line.

As a result, your customers are much happier with their terms and you’re far more protected from the risk of missed payments.

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Improve prospecting and marketing

Do you feel you could be sourcing higher quality leads than you are currently?

Having as much data as possible directly from your database enables more precise targeting. If you offer a range of products or services that aren’t all targeted towards the same type of business, this is especially useful.

Tools like Creditsafe Prospects help you to identify businesses most likely to convert and can be embedded straight in your existing database.

For example, you could build a prospect list based on company size, industry, financial health, or creditworthiness. Sales teams can then work from start to finish directly from their database, so that no customers get missed and slip through the cracks.

Considering sales teams spend 40% of their time prospecting, but only 1% of cold calls convert, working from pre-qualified leads dramatically improves efficiency.

Build your prospects list

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Who benefits from API integration?

Integrating credit data into your business applications isn’t just useful for one department. It touches every corner of your business.

Finance Teams

Automate credit risk assessments during invoicing or order approvals. You can also monitor outstanding balances and detect early signs of payment issues. For example, you can trigger a warning if a new order exceeds the customer’s recommended credit limit.
Sales Teams

Identify high-risk clients before offering large credit lines. As a result, you can prioritise customers with better financial health and even use this as an opportunity to upsell.
Procurement Teams

Decide whether or not to partner with financially unstable vendors, reducing supply chain risk.
Customer Success Teams

Monitor long-term relationships to manage risky accounts. This way, you can adjust payment plans before delinquency and be proactive.

Credit data integrations do far more than support lending decisions. When embedded directly into your existing systems, they can improve operations throughout your business.

By making reliable business data instantly accessible, organisations can smooth out any bumps in their processes, making more informed decisions faster. As more businesses look towards automation as a way to improve efficiency, integrating credit data into everyday workflows is a no-brainer.

All the business data you need, directly in your CRM

Access global company information, consumer credit data, ID verification, anti-money laundering (AML) and PEP and Sanction checks all through Creditsafe's API to automate and improve your client onboarding and monitoring process.

Integrate business decisioning data