Best Startup
Chaser provides accounts receivable automation and credit control services to businesses globally, helping them reduce late payments and avoid bad debt.
Our mission is to help SMEs worldwide get paid in a quick, efficient and friendly way so that they save time on manual tasks and improve cash flow.
Today, Chaser’s products and services have saved our customers over 10 million hours on their credit control and collected over £9 billion in late payments.
Tell us about yourself?
I have over 20 years of experience working in fast-growing businesses and I’ve led the growth of numerous fintechs, both in Canada and the United Kingdom that specializes in the digitisation and automation of finance and accounting tasks and functions. I was appointed CEO of Chaser in 2021, after serving as an interim-CEO and CMO for the company in 2020.
My passion for helping SMEs and supporting their growth is what led me to Chaser in the first place and I’m extremely grateful and proud to be managing Chaser and to be working with such a brilliant team. Seeing the positive impact our solution has on companies worldwide makes all our hard work worthwhile.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Don’t be afraid to trust your gut.
In the fast paced world of Fintech, new information is constantly coming at you. It’s easy to let that wave of constant information overwhelm you or get you stuck in analysis paralysis so you’re always second guessing yourself.
Sometimes, especially on major decisions, you just need to go with your gut instinct and trust in yourself. It’s important to remember that you got to the point you’re at for a reason and that you know more than you think.
What problem does your business solve?
Small and medium businesses are the worst-hit by late payments, with on average 48% of all their invoices paid late every month! And this problem is only becoming worse, with the CPA noting a 209% increase in the number of late payments since the pandemic was declared. This can have a crippling effect on small and medium businesses’ cash flow, it causes difficulties forecasting and inhibits business growth, and in the UK alone, 50,000 small and medium businesses fail each year due to late payments (FSB).
As we’ve learnt at Chaser, effective, rigorous credit control can put an end to those late and inconsistent customer payments – and alleviate their negative impacts on your business. However, running an effective credit control process is not easy. Often, customers will ignore or try to get out of making payments. And disconnected data can sometimes make it impossible to keep on top of who owes what, when – and when they were last followed up with. Additionally, chasing these payments up effectively can also be incredibly time-consuming. It’s easy enough to send out quick, mass-automated emails trying to remind your customers to pay. But for anyone that’s tried these, they’ll know that these robotic-sounding emails often end up being ignored, or getting sent straight to spam.
Solution
Chaser helps small and medium businesses put an end to their late payments. By providing an effective end-to-end accounts receivables automation solution, Chaser users can credit check, monitor debtors, chase late invoices, collect payments, recover debt and reconcile accounts, all in the same unique platform.
Chaser’s accounts receivable management software automates the invoice chasing process, without losing the human touch. Chaser solves the problem of ignored payment reminders, by allowing users to send personalised automated messages that look like they were hand-typed and sent directly from the sender. Through reporting and insights on customer payment behaviours, intelligent custom schedules, and human-like chasing, Chaser users are getting paid on average 16 or more days faster, and reducing days sales outstanding by 25% or more. Our users are also putting an end to the time-consuming, disconnected administrative tasks and follow ups – with many of our users saving 15 or more hours per week on accounts receivable tasks.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Small and medium businesses are the worst-hit by late payments, with on average 48% of all their invoices paid late every month! And this problem is only becoming worse, with the CPA noting a 209% increase in the number of late payments since the pandemic was declared. This can have a crippling effect on small and medium businesses’ cash flow, it causes difficulties forecasting and inhibits business growth, and in the UK alone, 50,000 small and medium businesses fail each year due to late payments (FSB).
As we’ve learnt at Chaser, effective, rigorous credit control can put an end to those late and inconsistent customer payments – and alleviate their negative impacts on your business. However, running an effective credit control process is not easy. Often, customers will ignore or try to get out of making payments. And disconnected data can sometimes make it impossible to keep on top of who owes what, when – and when they were last followed up with. Additionally, chasing these payments up effectively can also be incredibly time-consuming. It’s easy enough to send out quick, mass-automated emails trying to remind your customers to pay. But for anyone that’s tried these, they’ll know that these robotic-sounding emails often end up being ignored, or getting sent straight to spam.
Solution
Chaser helps small and medium businesses put an end to their late payments. By providing an effective end-to-end accounts receivables automation solution, Chaser users can credit check, monitor debtors, chase late invoices, collect payments, recover debt and reconcile accounts, all in the same unique platform.
Chaser’s accounts receivable management software automates the invoice chasing process, without losing the human touch. Chaser solves the problem of ignored payment reminders, by allowing users to send personalised automated messages that look like they were hand-typed and sent directly from the sender. Through reporting and insights on customer payment behaviours, intelligent custom schedules, and human-like chasing, Chaser users are getting paid on average 16 or more days faster, and reducing days sales outstanding by 25% or more. Our users are also putting an end to the time-consuming, disconnected administrative tasks and follow ups – with many of our users saving 15 or more hours per week on accounts receivable tasks.
What is your magic sauce?
What differentiates us is that we are purely focused on automating credit control from start to finish. We cover all areas of credit control, including credit checking, invoice chasing, payment gateways, payment plans, and more. We are the provider of end-to-end credit control automation.
Also, everything we do in Chaser is driven by our mission, and every new feature and service is rooted in helping our users, and SMEs worldwide get paid in an efficient and friendly way so that they improve cash flow. For example, when COVID hit in 2020, the majority of our users were struggling to get their invoices paid, and many of them came to us asking for help.
In response to these conversations and the struggles SMEs were facing in the difficult financial climate, we launched the services Chaser Collections and Outsourced Credit Control as an extension to our software offering. This gave our users the option to escalate difficult invoices to Chaser’s friendly debt recovery service within the Chaser software in just two clicks. Additionally, when credit control teams needed external support, or someone who simply had the time to pick up the phone and speak with customers about their overdue payments, they could use Chaser’s Outsourced Credit Control service. These new services demonstrate how quickly our team listens and responds to our users’ struggles and how we are working every day towards giving SMEs the confidence that they will get paid for their work.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
In the next five years we want to continue our international expansion and grow our customer base overseas. Even though we are based in the UK, we currently have customers from all over the world and we want to continue to focus on international growth. We believe that in five years, most businesses, regardless of their size and their revenue, will be using credit control automation software, such as Chaser, to streamline their accounts receivable processes, get paid faster and save time. With the new features we have lined up and the continuous improvements we are making to help our users, we are confident that in the next five years Chaser will be the contender to beat in the credit control automation space.
We are looking for additional ways to further automate and improve the way businesses carry out credit control… but that’s a story for another time. Watch this space! 😉
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
I would say that one of the biggest challenges Chaser has overcome was the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did our users face even greater struggles with getting their invoices paid which led us to develop new services to support them and their customers, but we did this whilst becoming a fully remote team. Transitioning our team to work from home, on-board new staff and build a remote culture was a challenge at first, but one we successfully overcame. Since working from home, we’ve seen great results and we’ve made the decision, in collaboration with all our team members, to become a fully remote team. As a result, we have been able to hire the best people from all over the world and our team members are today spread across six countries.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
Companies should visit our website, https://www.chaserhq.com/, and book a call with one of our credit control experts to see how we can help support their credit control processes. Whether you want to optimise your accounts receivable process or if you’re looking to take it completely off your plate and outsource it, Chaser has the solution for you.
