At Company Watch, we empower organisations to make confident, data-driven decisions by providing clarity in financial risk. One such success story comes from Tarmac, the UK’s biggest heavy building materials business. Here, Company Watch provides the stable data foundation behind the credit team’s decision-making across a wide range of sectors, supporting stronger scoring, fraud detection and a documented standard process that has helped Tarmac avoid bad debt.
Client
Tarmac is the biggest heavy building materials business in the UK, holding the number one position across a variety of different sectors. Simon Howell is Senior Manager, Credit Management; a role he brings 20 years at Tarmac and 30 years in the industry to.
That length of service gives Simon an unusually clear view of how much the discipline has changed. Credit management once rested largely on the ability to connect with people. Today it is data-driven, increasingly involves AI, and plays out against constant change in the financial, geopolitical and governmental landscape. We sat down with Simon to find out how his team keeps pace.
Challenge
When Tarmac began looking for a partner over three years ago, the problem wasn’t a shortage of information. It was stability. Simon’s team needed a dependable source of data, a clear sense of where to look first, and a framework robust enough to support consistent credit decisions across a business operating in multiple sectors.
Alongside that sat a compliance requirement. Tarmac’s compliance function was asking for a documented, repeatable approach to credit assessment; a standard that anyone in the team could follow and evidence, rather than a process that lived in individual heads.
“The problem we were looking to solve, was very much having something which provided stability. Stability of data, stability of knowing where to look, and to provide the framework to be able to make those decisions.”
Simon Howell, Senior Manager Credit Management – Tarmac
Solution
Tarmac joined with Company Watch over three years ago, and the platform now provides the base and foundation the team works from.
Scoring sits at the centre of that, including the H-Score® and our most advanced score to date, the Probability of Distress® (PoD®), launching soon. Vigilance™ contributes fraud information that would be difficult to surface elsewhere. Just as importantly, the ability to mine Company Watch data means Simon’s team can combine it with Tarmac’s own, giving them a single, richer picture of a customer rather than a set of disconnected views.
Simon also worked directly with his Company Watch account manager to map out a standard route through the report: what to look at first, and what to look at next. That sequence has since been uploaded into Tarmac’s own procedures as a documented standard process — exactly what the compliance team had been asking for.
“Company Watch has some great information from Vigilance™ on fraud. It’s got the ability to mine data so that we can combine it with our own data. All of those sort of things really combine to be able to make a great partnership, and it’s certainly something we rely on.”
Simon Howell, Senior Manager Credit Management – Tarmac
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Results
The clearest commercial result is in how Tarmac now handles risk at the top of the range. Customers flagged as higher risk are treated differently, and because the team has acted on those indicators and trusted them, that has saved Tarmac money and helped the business avoid bad debt.
The reporting standard now written into Tarmac’s procedures has given the team consistency and given compliance the evidence trail it needed. And critically, none of it has come at the cost of judgement. For Simon, better data doesn’t replace the credit professional; it gives them more to work with.
“This is not about cutting corners. This isn’t about taking the human out. This is very much about getting the best out of the human.”
Simon Howell, Senior Manager Credit Management – Tarmac
A Trusted Strategic Partner: Company Watch and Tarmac
What Simon values most is the combination of a reliable data foundation and the freedom to apply it his own way. Agility, he argues, is one of the most important qualities a credit team can have; trusting your own processes, while making sure they are supported by the right partners and the right data.
His advice to anyone considering Company Watch is to bring that same mindset: be agile in your thinking, embrace what the platform gives you, and don’t go down a very standard path.
“Company Watch is a professional product for professional people. I would recommend it, because it provides what we need. It will encourage you to be very much your own credit manager.”
Simon Howell, Senior Manager Credit Management – Tarmac
See what Company Watch could do for your credit team. Speak to a member of the sales team today.
