That was the year that was…. Message from the MD.

No one allegedly has any money but we were all at Oxford Street, Bond Street, Westfield and Bluewater flashing plastic like Jordan flashes her…….smile!

Who is this guy John Lewis and why is he the only one making any money during one of the most serious economic downturns in living memory? is it because he allows people to sleep in his beds when they get locked in a snowstorm or is it that people love to hand over money to well dressed, well spoken, human beings as opposed to giving out their details to a blank screen? Or maybe it allows MP’s to shop until they drop with no regard for expenses!

I am not sure I have the answer but one thing I do know, is that Christmas is fun and in January is when all debtors have to pay for their sins! I have just seen an article in Credit Collections & Risk magazine which forewarns of a wave of bad debts as most businesses (not John Lewis) struggle to survive after poor Christmas sales.

How that fits in with your business is another matter. 2009 was the year of what I call the “Sofa Effect” where smaller firms tried to recover old debt much in the style of Students searching down the back of their sofa for beer or pizza money!

It wasn’t big and it wasn’t clever and in practical terms it achieved nothing that a decent, well-managed, debt collection policy would not have achieved if applied as soon as 90 days had passed.

Hopefully this will be part of your New Year Revolutions. Resolutions never seem to last for very long, but the impact of a revolution can last forever.

On a lighter note, I am pleased to say that there have been some changes at PRMS House and after years of avoiding it, we have caved in and got ourselves on Twitter, MySpace & Facebook! What have you been doing all this time you’re saying?

Whilst social networking is a great invention, we at PRMS Ltd have always felt that the subject matter (due to confidentiality issues) was inappropriate for public broadcast and in essence we still do.

However, we are also aware of the fact that the more people know about Debt Recovery issues in relation to their business, the more they will be able to grow and prosper.

So what will be tweeting about? Well, new cases, wins, lessons learned, topical issues and just life in general. We hope you take the opportunity to follow us; we’d love to have you onboard.

Kind regards

Clayton M Coke
Managing Director
PRMS Ltd