Has Your Credit Dept. Gone South...Literally?

In This Global Economy Anything Can Happen and We Should Expect It

With the weakening of the U.S. dollar compared to other world currencies, jobs that were once performed by the Canadian divisions of American firms are now being repatriated - including the credit underwriting and accounts receivable management functions.

More American owned companies than ever before are moving jobs back to the United States. Wage costs and raw materials are now less expensive in some U.S. states than compared to Canada or Europe. This natural flow of jobs and capital will create opportunities for nimble risk management firms.

Procedures for credit underwriting, performing credit checks, accounts receivable management, and cash posting will become challenging for firms as they attempt to bring these functions back in-house. An area of considerable risk for American creditors is the recovery of slow-paying Canadian accounts. American firms are hiring U.S. debt collection agencies to recover their Canadian accounts; however very few U.S. agencies are doing it legally. More information may be found at www.collectdebtincanada.com.

When doing business in a foreign jurisdiction, it may make sense to retain the services of an in-country specialist to leverage their knowledge and local expertise to maximize your chances of success. This is known as Knowledge Process Outsourcing, or KPO. If you are the Canadian manager of an American owned business or the CFO of a U.S. firm trying to better manage costs and risk; it may make sense to use a company like Credit Process Advisors Inc. to help achieve your cash flow and receivable goals.

Knowledge Process Outsourcing, or KPO, can provide cost savings and process efficiencies and allow companies to focus on increasing revenue growth. KPO can also provide challenging and progressive positions for employees that want to move into supervisory and monitoring roles. The probability of failure is high due to the risks involved so a structured approach and program management should be used to execute this type of strategy. Organizations will succeed if the KPO strategy is used augment their services and performance, and not just to cut costs.

With offices in Canada and the United States, Credit Process Advisors Inc. (CPA) outsources credit management resources to financial executives who want to focus on their core business. CPA's professional knowledge, business systems, qualified staff and external vendor management practices combine to provide our clients with risk mitigation and qualified credit management services.