Five Ways Red Flag Alert Helps Start Ups And Scale Ups Grow

Managing startups and scaleups isn’t for the faint of heart. From having to cover numerous roles and departments to the constant need to find growth opportunities it can feel like a constant juggling act.

The driving force at these companies is the need for growth and all available resources go towards this constant drive for expansion. Whilst this generally makes startups and scaleups more driven and fast paced than their larger competitors it is also the source of some of their greatest vulnerabilities.

With all available cash needing to be invested back into the business, costs need to be kept as streamlined as possible and a growing, uninterrupted cashflow needs to be maintained.

Headcounts need to be kept as low as possible, these growing businesses are especially vulnerable to being mired in slow processes that suck in the time of staff, or even managers, who have numerous other roles to fill at the business. Leading to a ripple effect of inefficiency that ultimately has a detrimental effect on your business process.

Any major interruption to cashflow is usually also terminal as there are usually low cash reserves and incoming revenue quickly goes towards paying debts and investing in future growth. Losing money to bad debts, or having clients that can very quickly mean that your debts can’t be paid

These mean that you face a major problem when running your nascent business, you need to practice excellent credit risk procedures and client due diligence but you can’t afford the time to spend hours doing it or the cost of hiring a dedicated staff member.

Fortunately, we have you covered. With Red Flag Alert’s market leading data, reports, and tools you can provide your company with the protection and insights usually reserved for much larger companies and reduce your process time to just minutes.

Five Ways Red Flag Alert will help your business grow

Protect your cashflow and avoid bad debt

Proper credit risk procedures are often neglected at young companies but it is them who need them most. Too often the focus is on making as many sales as possible and turning them down on due to credit concerns is seen as hurting revenue rather than avoiding loss. This lack of credit control turning into bad debts is one of the leading causes of failure in startups and scaleups.

Our market leading business credit KYB reports contain all of the data you need to make safe credit decisions quickly and effectively, as well as all the rich data you need to truly understand your prospective clients’ businesses.

We provide you with a credit score, suggested safe credit limit, payment time data, and the UK’s most accurate insolvency score and that’s just on the first page! Our reports also feature UK first CCJ data, early winding up petition data, full group and director information, and much more.

But we don’t just help you avoid bad debt, we let you know who you should be doing business with. Our reports also highlight which companies have solid financials and are likely to grow; letting you know when you need to role out the red carpet and go the extra mile to land a sale that will lead to more in future.

Find where your customers are

The majority of young companies can’t rely on prospects coming to them and instead must rely on outreach marketing campaigns and outbound sales activities, both of which are made harder by a lack of brand awareness.

Unfortunately, these are often inefficient, unoptimized, and expensive in both time and resources. This can be further compounded by the business focusing their attention on an area or sector they think should be lucrative but actually contains few suitable prospects.

Our B2B Prospector tool allows you to perform powerful market research to find where your customers are and build sales lists of only creditworthy companies that fit your ideal customer profile.

Giving you access to over 100 search filters including location, growth score, creditworthiness, sector, turnover; our tool allows you to perform prospecting searches as high level or granular as you like in just seconds.

For added clarity, a built in analytics tool allows you to run detailed risk and sales analysis on your results so you can see if they’re worth your time.

Monitor your debtors

As anyone who has worked at a startup/scaleup can tell you problems can arise when you least expect them and the same is true at your customers. By having robust credit check processes in place you doing much to protect yourself from suffering bad debts but you still need to keep an eye on your clients.

Should one fail whilst owing you money it is highly unlikely you would receive any meaningful amount back and certainly not in time to prevent an interruption to your cashflow.

Our customisable monitoring tool puts you in control by allowing you to segment your monitoring into separate portfolios, choose which events matter to your business, and which members of staff need to receive alerts.

Paired with our lightning fast data feeds, you will be among the first to know and be able to react ahead of the market, whether that is chasing your money or adjusting future credit terms.

Fight fraud

Fraud is one of the biggest threats facing UK businesses, with billions of pounds being stolen each year. It accounts for 40% of reported crime and experts advise that only a fraction of frauds are ever reported to the police.

One of the most popular schemes is for criminals to create fake companies and identities then receive goods on credit. These are then sold on with no intention of the debt being repayed.

Fraudsters actively target newer firms who they expect to not have proper anti-fraud processes in place and to be naïve when it comes to spotting fraudulent activity.

Our platform gives you the tools you need to protect your business. From advanced mobile, bank account, and IP address analysis through to a more simple IDV and document verification check you can easily and cost effectively deter and detect those that would exploit your business.

Reduce time spent on processes

Time is one of your most valuable resources, with the need for growing companies to be dynamic, agile, and able to provide their customers with prompt service. More often than not the reality of day to day processes means that key staff are mired in processes and procedures.

Our platform allows you to reduce the time spent on your credit risk, anti-fraud, and prospecting processes to just minutes whilst increasing their accuracy and making your business more effective.

Meaning that you wont just have a smarter and safer business but one where you and your staff have more time to focus on growth and expansion.