In business for over 75 years, Mayer Electric is a distributor of electrical supplies throughout the southeastern U.S. Headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, Mayer has annual sales in excess of $500M. Mayer is committed to customer service, but in 2005 growth through acquisition had been putting a strain on customer service levels.

In 2005, with sales abandonment rates rising and a decentralized credit department taking as long as 3 days to review a credit application, Mayer Electric was in need of an automated credit management solution. Brenda Lovell, Corporate Credit Manager, Mayer Electric, looked at several products on the market before selecting eCredit. "We looked at a number of competitive products," said Lovell. "After a rigorous evaluation process, we settled on eCredit. eCredit would not only help us automate approvals and better manage our customer portfolio but it could provide us access to the all-important industry-specific information."

During the evaluation process, Mayer Electric discovered that they had approved approximately 800 customers in 2006 that had never purchased anything. More research indicated that the same thing had happened in 2005. Antiquated credit approval processes were resulting in a high sales abandonment rate, as potential buyers walked away rather than wait three days to have their account approved. After implementing eCredit, Mayer has drastically reduced the time it takes to approve a potential customer - from 3 days to 30 seconds! "With eCredit our customers are not forced to wait for credit approval, and we expect our sales to increase due to the quick turnaround," continued Lovell.

Another improvement in customer service enabled by eCredit has been the capability to conduct in-depth account reviews. Credit managers now have more time to call customers and gain tighter control over credit lines, and closer monitoring means prevention of potential bad debt. Using a scorecard of elements and weights determined by Mayer, eCredit automatically scores the existing customer base and credit managers can then more easily identify those accounts that merit an increase in their credit lines. Not surprisingly, the sales team at Mayer is thrilled to be equipped with this knowledge.

Prior to implementing eCredit, credit operations were decentralized at Mayer and different credit analysts would issue different decisions - there was not a lot of consistency in the way credit lines were issued. With eCredit, Mayer Electric has been able to centralize customer files and the automated scoring has enabled a consistent, enforceable credit policy. "With eCredit's automated scoring, there is now built-in consistency," said Lovell. "The credit analysts at Mayer don't even touch an application unless it is one of the 2% that does not meet the criteria in our scorecards."

Additionally, through eCredit, Mayer Electric is able to access credit information from a variety of sources. With access to all major credit bureaus, eCredit can create a process whereby the least expensive data is accessed first. In addition, eCredit provides trade information that is specific to the industrial supply industry, which while being less expensive, is expected to be more predictive.

eCredit's partnership with IDEA (Industry Data Exchange Association) will also create a database to which other electrical distributors can contribute their accounts receivable information. With access to information on how businesses are paying its peers, Mayer expects to gain significant benefits.

"Since we have been live on eCredit, we have seen considerable gains in credit application turnaround time and in the quality and consistency of the decisions issued by our department. In the near future, we expect that the industry-specific payment information provided via eCredit will increase our ability to predict a customer's delinquency and also save us money," added Lovell.