Declan Flood: Credit Control Is a People Business

In this Mega Podcast episode, Declan Flood — founder of Irish Credit Management Training and lifelong credit professional — shares five decades of wisdom on how credit control has evolved from ledgers and 256k computers to AI-powered platforms. Declan explains why credit management is first and foremost a people business, why invoice disputes destroy both profits and trust, and how credit managers can embrace AI without abdicating responsibility. His message is clear: get the processes right, keep the customer at the center, and remember that people pay people they like.

What You’ll Learn

• The Evolution of Credit: From red ledgers in the 70s to today’s portals, EDI, and AI-driven processes.
• Why Queries Kill Profit: How invoice disputes inflate sales, overstate profit, and erode customer trust.
• The Role of the Credit Manager: Why credit isn’t “sales prevention” but a core commercial function that drives cash flow.
• Owning the Process: How taking control of pricing files, data maintenance, and admin reduced disputes to single digits.
• AI as a Tool, Not a Crutch: Where automation works (low-value, high-volume accounts) and where human judgment must remain.
• The 90/10 Rule: Automating the 90% of customers that represent only 10% of revenue while preserving white-glove treatment for VIPs.
• The Psychology of Payments: Why relationships matter more than process — people always pay people they like.

Key Takeaways

• Disputes = Lost Revenue: Every unresolved query is money in someone else’s bank, distorting P&L and choking cash flow.
• Fix, Solve, Prevent: Correct the immediate error, check the backlog, and fix the root cause to stop repeats.
• Credit Is Customer Service: Sending the right invoice is as important as delivering the right product.
• AI Accelerates, People Humanize: Automate repetitive tasks but keep oversight — bad data in means bad AI out.
• Don’t Abdicate Responsibility: Credit managers must stay accountable, even with automation in place.
• Start Where It Hurts: Identify your biggest bottlenecks and automate those first.
• Relationships Trump Process: A friendly, trusted credit manager will get paid faster than an adversarial one.
• Future Outlook: In the next 12 months, AI adoption will accelerate — those who resist will be left behind.

👉 Declan’s best advice: “People pay people they like.”

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