I once worked in a company that sold laser medical equipment, especially ultrasound for gynecology and obstetrics.
The company had a very interesting portfolio of customers nationwide, however as the sale of equipment was on credit the level of delinquency became very high. At first I was hired to see what was happening in the Collections Department, which consisted of only one person.
Very kindly I was received by this person who showed me what was her methodology of collection towards customers. Her methodology was adequate, what was lacking there was organization.
Additionally, I have to say that the owner of the company pressured her on a daily basis, however, she did not take into account that the portfolio had more than 1500 clients, and the collection management was performed by only one person.
My obligation was to communicate to the Board of Directors the reason for such high delinquency, they met on Thursdays and just a week in the company I was invited to one of these meetings.
I explained my reasons, and they made the decision to authorize me to talk to the employees of the Accounting, Human Resources and Sales Departments so that they could help and collaborate in the collections.
Something I forgot to point out is that the company was a family business, which is a factor that, believe it or not, I realized influenced the company's delinquency. I will explain this later.
Once authorized, I realized that I had to communicate the news to seven employees, and explain the collection methodology. Both the collections manager and the other seven employees got upset with me, complaining that this was not their job, that it was only the collections employee's responsibility, that they were going to waste their time because the doctors did not pay attention to the collections, and a host of other excuses.
Faced with so many excuses, I gathered them all together, took the words and had to explain to them in the simplest way that if we did not collect the debts the company would not be able to pay our salaries and wages, could not pay its suppliers, and therefore we would be out of a job.
The annoyance was visible on their faces, but I had to take on the arduous task of supervising them all. The department heads were no help at all since these actions were delegated to me, without consulting them beforehand, which is why they were also very upset with me.
Together with the person in charge of collections, I developed a simple collection control in Excel, each of the people assigned to collect were equally assigned the customer files and were instructed to review and update the payments, reviewing we realized that many bank receipts were missing.
We had to reconstruct the entire payment history of the clientele, with each one of the files coinciding in some cases with the auxiliary books kept by accounting and in more than 60% we did not coincide.
The work was arduous and was not carried out very harmoniously, I felt looks from the employees full of hatred and we only talked about work.
The bank receipts began to arrive via Internet and fax and most of the clients were up to date.
But there was a small detail, these individual accounts were impossible to reconcile because the deposits showed an account number that did not correspond to the company's bank accounts. In addition, the name of the account holder was unknown to everyone, apparently.
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All of us who were collecting the payment became aware of this fact, a report was drawn up and signed by all of us.
At the next Board of Directors meeting I had to report the finding, the members of this meeting looked astonished, until I showed the evidence and the name of the account holder to whom the funds were being diverted was made known.
All eyes went to the owner of the company, who began to sweat, changed his expression and looked at me in annoyance. I was invited to leave the meeting room, to which I agreed.
The shouting and insults between them were not long in coming, and we found out given how rudely they were raising their voices that the account holder is a very, very close friend of the majority shareholder of the company, with whom she had an extramarital relationship.
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Although the employees were upset with me, I feel that the cause of the company's high delinquency rate was identified. Technically, an audit was done and a result was reached.
Since I found out that the company was family owned, I noticed the generational clash between the owners and the fact that they were confusing family and business, as it was very clear that they were not clear about the responsibilities of each one of them.
I did not mind causing discomfort among the staff and even the owner of the company, professionally I was hired to find out why there was so much delinquency in collections. Unfortunately, the reason was more personal than business.
My work as a consultant was done, and by the way the payment was done very quickly since the owner of the company was very upset with me and did not want to see me anymore.
Months later, I found out that due to this mismanagement, together with the existing problems between the owners, the company went bankrupt.
My stay in this place was not very pleasant, I had to interact with people who were annoyed with me and who collaborated in the resolution of a problem without really wanting to help. These people helped me to find out through their work who was really hurting this company financially.
I believe that to a certain extent, I was able to bring order to the collections, even though internal interests had caused the company to go bankrupt and more than 25 jobs were lost. In the same way, I identified the evils that family businesses can generally suffer.
Link HereThis is my participation in the initiative created by @galenkp called Weekend Engagement in its 158th week
The annoying you
Write about a time when you were very annoying to others. Explain the situation, what happened, why, what the result was and also what you learned in post of 300+ words - use images you took yourself if possible. 👉 Use the title, I'm annoying for your post.
Greetings to all and happy weekend.
Hard work in that company.
They went bankrupt because they were irresponsible and also something I did not publish, the owner was bipolar, clinically demonstrated.