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Food Beverage - SAP - Credit Management Platform

Credit Management Suite chosen for seamless integration

Rational AG's objective was to have a global IT solution to fully integrate its customer service processes. It implemented Credit Insurance Management to achieve higher levels of coverage for accounts and better data quality.
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For more than 40 years Rational AG has been providing its customers with the best tools for cooking. Today Rational is a technology leader in cooking solutions for professional kitchens all over the world, with some 120 million dishes prepared daily using its units. Rational’s patent of a combi steamer – the SelfCookingCenter© – as well as the VarioCookingCenter© have revolutionised commercial kitchens. More than 80% of Rational’s annual output is committed to exports with particular focus on Europe, America, Japan and China.

The Challenge

Whole-turnover policies with two major credit insurers cover Rational’s receivables above 10,000 EUR per customer (‘datum line’). Customers regularly showing open items below 2,000 EUR are not insured at all, and accounts between 2,000 and 10,000 EUR are subject to individual decisions with regard to securitization.

For customers that do not qualify for insurance coverage due to bad credit standing or increased country risk, pre-payment or letters of credit are required.

Due to the company’s philosophy to set up sales subsidiaries in all relevant markets, there are sub policies for the 22 sales organisations in countries where legal or tax regulations need to be adhered to or country-specific requirements (e.g. special payments terms or methods) have to be observed.

Business with customers in other markets run through the subsidiary Rational International AG. These direct export sales and the sales of all subsidiaries in Europe, Asia and Latin America are insured with Coface and their local partners, while sales in the fast-growing North American market are covered by Atradius.

As Rational has implemented a so-called process-oriented organisation, the Customer Service department is in charge of the credit limit application process, order and delivery checks as well as the entire dunning process. Therefore, the handling of the credit insurance policies requires a high degree of automation and utmost process reliability. Manual handling was definitely out of the question.

Benefits

  • More than 90% of accounts receivables are now covered
  • Before the introduction of the tool, insurance
  • High process reliability and realistic premium calculation
  • Time saving on credit limit applications and improved data quality
  • Security against non-payment

Learn more about Credit Management suite

“We observe a kind of triple jump: In the beginning, we appreciated the cost savings, resulting from single item based – and thus: correct – reporting for premium calculation. In the next step, clear and straight forward routines and the insurer interfaces contributed to increased process stability. Now, using analytical features, we enter into something you could call proactive credit insurance management.” Carolin Teicht – Group Credit Manager in charge of system, projects and reporting