Businesses need a high-quality source of data in order to monitor their clients effectively. This is especially the case for broking businesses, which can use in-depth data as a competitive advantage to grow and manage risk effectively.
Many brokers across a range of sectors including energy brokers, already use Red Flag Alert to power their businesses. In this article, we’ll take a look at how exactly the data has helped.
Broking businesses need to maximise lifetime customer value. Therefore, it’s important to make sure that spend per customer is optimal – data helps brokers do this.
Let’s take a look at an example in energy broking.
As businesses expand, they will often outgrow their existing energy plans. A change in circumstances – such as an increase in manufacturing output or a significant rise in employee numbers – can lead a company to have quite different utilities needs compared to when they signed the contract.
Using Red Flag Alert’s business monitoring tool to monitor clients, brokers can spot these changes and put clients on a more suitable plan when necessary.
Power Solutions UK is one of the UK’s leading energy consultants. Head of Operations Ben Roberts-Shaw had this to say about how the company uses Red Flag Alert to help them find suitable energy deals for clients:
“The business intelligence is excellent; Red Flag Alert provides an excellent view on the clients we work with, which helps us to find them the best possible energy deals.”
When clients experience financial problems, it can lead to payment issues. Having access to the financial data of clients can allow brokers to spot when customers are struggling and alert suppliers that the company may soon experience financial issues. This can allow the supplier to take steps to ensure the client keeps paying, which will in turn keep the brokers’ commission coming in. It may also improve the broker-supplier relationship because this level of business intelligence provided by the broker will add value to the supplier.
Understanding the financial health of a client is easy with Red Flag Alert; its proprietary flag rating shows the likelihood of a company going bust within 12 months.
As well as warning suppliers, spotting these potential issues early on means brokers can take steps of their own to manage risk. This could include budgeting to lessen the effects of a potential loss in income or stepping up prospecting efforts.
Red Flag Alert’s users can set up alerts that let them know as soon as a client has a change in financial circumstances. This simplifies the monitoring process and allows businesses to begin taking steps to reduce risk as soon as possible.
Wave Energy is an energy broker that used Red Flag Alert to power its business. The company’s CEO Lucy Darch had this to say about Red Flag Alert’s monitoring features:
“Minimising risk is important for any business. When Wave Energy Business began looking for a partner to help us minimise credit risk within our business, we quickly identified Red Flag Alert as a key partner in helping us to achieve this.
As an organisation, we have relationships with thousands of customers and suppliers. RFA’s monitoring function allows us to receive automated updates should there be a change in circumstances so that we can take proactive steps to minimise any potential impact.”
Keeping the data a business uses up to date can be challenging and time-consuming. However, by integrating Red Flag Alert into their CRM, brokers can ensure that data is always current.
This is important for several reasons. It allows brokers to quickly make decisions in full confidence that the choice is based on the most relevant information. Additionally, brokers no longer have to spend time manually updating a CRM with their information, freeing them up to spend time on more profitable business activities.
Red Flag Alert has a team of experts who work with clients when integrating the data into their CRM, ensuring the process goes smoothly. Red Flag Alert cleans the existing data from the CRM before setting up the CRM with the Red Flag Alert API, and also trains staff members on how to use the integration, meaning they can get the most out of the data from day one.
Kenny Allport, Head of Credit Control at Wave Energy, had this to say about the way Red Flag Alert helped to get things set up.
“First-rate; when the joint venture started, we had to train a whole new staff team and Red Flag Alert took the lead on this.”
For brokers to successfully monitor the businesses they work with, the data they have access to needs to be accurate, comprehensive, and in-depth. Red Flag Alert meets these standards in several ways.
If you want to learn more about how your brokerage can benefit from the services provided by Red Flag Alert, click here to start a free trial today.