More efficient credit management and time savings at Ewals Cargo Care with CreditDevice
- Colin Koopmans & Rene Ramakers | Teamleader Credit Control & Creditriskmanager | Ewals
Lysanne Geluk travelled with Joke Roelofs to Ewals Cargo Care’s headquarters in Tegelen, southern Netherlands, for a customer case interview with Colin Koopmans, Teamleader of the Credit Control department, and Credit Risk Manager René Ramakers. Colin has almost 18 years of experience at Ewals and is an expert in credit management. Like Colin, René also has years of experience in the industry.
Innovative approach to logistics
Ewals Cargo Care is a Dutch logistics company founded in 1906 and , in addition to its headquarters in the Netherlands, has branches throughout Europe. The company offers various logistics services, including road transport, intermodal transport, Control Tower Management warehouse and distribution services and international forwarding, focusing on sectors such as Automotive, Healthcare, FMCG and Industry. Within these sectors, there is a particular focus on Automotive, as as much as 70% of turnover comes from this sector. Ewals Cargo Care is best known for its innovative approach to logistics, such as introducing ‘Mega Huckepack-Trailers’ and the Duo-Trailers. This Super Ecocombi introduced to reduce the number of trucks needed on the road. The company is also active in the field of sustainability and aims to be completely carbon-neutral by 2025 .
Personal working atmosphere and recognition at Ewals
René was pleasantly surprised when he started working at Ewals and discovered that the company goes beyond the flat organisational structure of transport companies. He noted that it employs many engineers who focus on optimising transport lines and that there is much more going on behind the scenes than he previously thought. Colin confirmed that, despite the size of the company, there is a personal working atmosphere and recognition. For example, CEO Bram Ewals regularly chats with staff, which is appreciated by many. Ewals Cargo Care is a key player in the logistics sector because of its innovative approach to logistics and its focus on sustainability.
Work during the pandemic: how Ewals continued its operations
Ewals Cargo Care has a corporate culture where people feel valued and involved. This has helped the company become stronger, especially during the time when a lot of distance had to be kept. But how did they actually experience that period? Lysanne Geluk asks Colin, who explains that operations continued as usual. Of course, they did notice some difference in the number of buyers at the time, but there was plenty of work for the finance department. At the time, they were very intensive in monitoring and mapping specific debtors and their limits.
In the end, Ewals certainly didn’t lose out and instead gained something valuable from it. After doing several analyses and mapping out the market and their customers, they learned a lot. For instance, they have a much better grip on their credit management processes, they engage much more with their debtors and they see the high necessity of credit management more than ever.
Credit management: the role of experts and software at Ewals
But how do you achieve effective credit management? It requires not only a strong team of experts, but also a well-functioning software package. René says that in 2019, Ewals decided to start working with CreditDevice’ s credit management software package. Colin says they chose CreditDevice because of its consistent look and feel as well as the favourable functionalities the software offers.
The search for a suitable software package
But why was Ewals actually looking for a suitable software package? The increasing pressure on credit controllers was the reason. In addition to credit control, there was an increasing focus on credit risk management within Ewals, which created a lot of extra work and responsibility within the credit control department. When a new manager was appointed, there also appeared to be a lot of room for renewal and optimisation of processes in receivables management.
Before Ewals used CreditDevice’s software, debtor management was done from an Excel list. Everything had to be gone through one by one to perform actions on the debtors. René says this was very clumsy and they were completely dependent on the quality of input by the credit controllers and their alertness to spot discrepancies in time. This way of working was very unstructured and error-prone.
Choosing CreditDevice
When searching for suitable software packages to support accounts receivable management , it struck Colin immediately noticed that CreditDevice stood out because of its clear and user-friendly Interface. CreditDevice ‘ s automated workflows were particularly impressive and piqued their interest. After carefully weighing up other options , CreditDevice turned out to be the best choice because of the solutions available and good value for money.quality ratio.
But what was the deciding factor in choosing CreditDevice, was that the PolisManager, CreditDevice’ s credit insurance module.
More efficient credit management with 20% time savings and reduced overdue rate
After implementing CreditDevice, we have experienced a huge efficiency improvement, which has resulted in significantly fewer FTEs needed for foreign administration. “We have saved at least 20% time on credit control since working with the software and we have noticed a significant reduction in the percentage of overdue payments,” Colin says of the results.
Successful partnership between Ewals Cargo Care and CreditDevice
As for working with CreditDevice, René says the process has always gone smoothly. “Since we went live , especially when it comes to the debtor management software, we haven’t needed much help. When we did have questions, we often got in touch with a regular support person who always responded the same day. This was and is super nice for us, as it allows us to work more efficiently and effectively in our department.”
Why CreditDevice?
If we had to describe CreditDevice in one sentence, it is a company that implements its vision throughout the organisation with high professionalism and puts the user at the heart of developing its products. “The structure and clarity that stood out during the selection process is also strongly reflected in practice now that we have been working with your software for several years and have plans to roll it out further across all administrations,” says René.
