How well do you know your customers?
It's an essential question that every business should ask itself before deciding to work with a new organisation. Yet the amount of due diligence needed to thoroughly research and vet trading partners requires time, resources and specialised experience that many firms simply don't have.
Without this insight, however, your business may be exposed to nonpayment risks and other issues. Not only does Coface offer trade credit insurance (TCI) to protect your operations from such risks, but also business information reports to help you avoid problematic situations entirely and preserve business continuity.
What is business information?
Mitigating non-payment risk begins well before an order has been placed. Prevention, in reality, starts with gathering relevant and up-to-date information on buyers, their value chains and their environments. This data is priceless intelligence that can help guide decision-making and risk assessment. Being able to peer into the financial fundamentals of a potential trading partner or to better understand the liabilities of an existing partner can generate crucial insights that help businesses determine strategy, risk and other metrics.
Business information helps you and other business leaders better know your customers, both current and potential. These resources can deliver benefits like:
- Simplified access to core financial information about suppliers and partners.
- Automatic notifications for commercial scores and credit limit indicators.
- Analysis of potential payment or supply chain problems.
However, despite the proliferation and availability of such data, the amount of time and effort needed to collect, organise and analyse this business information is too much for many firms to spare. The actionable insights that lay deep within raw data may elude some organisations
How Coface can help
As part of our services for supporting operations, Coface also provides business information reports, in addition to traditional products like TCI. These services range from the provision of raw data to intensive analysis that generates personalised recommendations on risk-taking.
We rely on a powerful network for global business information gathering and risk management data. Our databases are fed with intelligence in real time, ensuring we always have the most relevant and up-to-date information. From there, we process the data and reproduce it into more digestible and actionable forms, including a summary indicator of singular and global risk levels, as well as various risk-taking recommendation tools.
What's included in a Coface business information report?
The scale of finding and collecting data for global partners can be daunting. We break down those barriers to deliver you a report that's arranged for instant comprehension and which can be referenced throughout the decision-making process.
In a typical business information report, you'll find:
- Company vitals, including principal address, contact information, ICON number, Easy number, VAT number, status and date of last major update.
- Order details including Cofanet request ID, source order reference, delivery speed and language.
- Credit information including records of insolvency and legal events, information provider credit assessment, Coface adjustment and maximum credit recommendation.
We offer different levels of business information reports, including SnapShot Reports for simplified access to key financials and full reports that extensively detail more granular data on credit and risks.
In all, it's a relatively straightforward process from wanting this business information to having it in your hands.
- You submit an information report request on a subject company through the Cofanet online system.
- Coface or a Coface Partner manage the acquisition of structured, standard data sets.
- Coface add this data to a commercial information report database.
- Depending on the report type, a manual or automated process is completed.
- Coface loads the data into a standard global style sheet so information reports are globally consistent.
- We consult credit insurance late payment notification history and make adjustments to the report when necessary.
- The process is finalised and commercial information report is delivered with a Coface adjustment for credit insurance late payments.
Sometimes there are some added steps required for an extensive company search.
Why choose Coface?
Ultimately, our strengths boil down to four core pillars:
- Extensive and up-to-date business information, with exclusive insights sourced from our internal claims records.
- Straightforward intelligence that is ready to use.
- Multiple service options.
- Among the best geographical coverage in the world.
Also, in Central Europe, this global line of services is complemented by an extensive range of business information products aimed at companies that lack credit insurance, so you can have as full of a risk assessment picture as possible.
There is no substitute for having accurate, relevant insights on your trading partners. Such intelligence is hugely valuable to risk-taking decisions and optimisation of business operations. With our credit risk assessment services, you can more efficiently manage your sales development efforts.
If you're interested in learning more about Coface and our business information services, visit our site and contact us today.
