About Informa
Informa, a FTSE 100 company and global leader in knowledge and information, operates across diverse sectors, including academic publishing under Taylor & Francis and business-to-business events via Informa Markets. With over 11,000 employees in 30 countries and a turnover in the billions, Informa orchestrates hundreds of large-scale events annually, spanning industries such as beauty, licensing, and technology. As a major player in both the B2B and academic markets, Informa’s operational complexity requires an efficient and robust credit management process to maintain its financial health and global operations.
Informa’s Objectives
Informa aimed to improve its credit control processes by adopting a solution that could reduce overdue invoices and enhance overall cash flow. The company sought to streamline its operations, achieve faster payment resolutions, and reduce reliance on third-party collection agencies. Scalability and ease of implementation were key factors, ensuring the solution could integrate smoothly with their diverse portfolio of clients and existing systems.
Informa’s Challenges
The primary challenge for Informa was the lack of an intermediate step in its collections process. Once internal efforts, including calls, emails, and automated dunning letters, were exhausted, debts were escalated directly to legal proceedings. This approach resulted in:
- Lengthy and expensive legal timelines, particularly in regions like the Middle East.
- Reduced leverage with customers who had grown desensitized to legal threats.
- Inefficiencies caused by outdated customer records, such as incorrect email addresses.
- A lack of visibility into the effectiveness of internal efforts before legal action.
Our Solution
Debt Register introduced a powerful pre-legal solution that addressed Informa’s key challenges. By implementing Debt Register, Informa was able to:
- Automate email communications with customers, offering high visibility through tracking features like read receipts.
- Threaten blacklisting with leading credit agencies (Dun & Bradstreet and Experian) as an alternative to immediate legal escalation.
- Improve ledger accuracy by resolving disputes earlier in the process.
- Streamline operations with easy template uploads and self-service functionality, eliminating the need for IT involvement.
- Centralize all customer correspondence, notes, and next steps into a single platform for increased efficiency.
The Results
The results of using Debt Register were immediate and significant:
- Collected £250,000 in overdue payments during the initial trial, achieving a return on investment before the system was fully implemented.
- Processed millions of pounds worth of overdue invoices, clearing aged debt and improving cash flow.
- Resolved disputes earlier, reducing the number of invoices escalated to legal proceedings and improving ledger accuracy.
- Enhanced team morale through an easy-to-use platform that delivered tangible results.
Debt Register’s intuitive design and low training requirements enabled rapid adoption across Informa’s global credit teams, leading to measurable success.
“Debt Register has been easy, successful, and motivational for our team. It fills a critical gap in our collections process, ensuring disputes are resolved and payments are collected quickly. The system’s simplicity and immediate impact made it an easy choice for Informa.”
– Matthew Walters, Cash Lead, EMEA, Informa