Jim and Alex on stage demoing Cortera Circles. Create your Circle today! www.cortera.com

Think of Circles as LinkedIn meets business credit reporting – the ease of joining a LinkedIn group meets the sharing of real deal/hard numbers of an offline credit group. Have a question about a business who you are about to extend credit? Now you can ask your peers with your own credit Circle. In just a few minutes you can create and invite your business friends and best of all it’s free to use and open to anyone. Need insights outside of your own network or entering a new market, simply browse the many existing Circles to the tap intelligence of thousands of others.

Business credit reporting, risk management tools and systems are hardly new – Cortera itself is one of the more successful providers of such solutions. But to date, such solutions run algorithms, business rules, and static, structured data feeds to help companies more efficiently identify risk. Cortera Circles will, in contrast, thrive off of ongoing and ever changing contributions and sharing between like-minded businesses. This dynamic information will be exclusively crowdsourced. Microgroups will serve the immediate needs of localized and project-specific audiences to provide insight into risks that are hyperlocal in nature and far too specific to be accurately addressed by traditional solutions. Today’s report-based solutions as point-in-time snapshots that immediately age—a result of decades old technology that has evolved little despite the social web’s impact on nearly every other aspect of business. In contrast, Cortera’s group sourced approach delivers a live risk assessment, continuously updated by the community.

Have a question about a business’s ability to pay their bills in a timely manner? We make it as simple as asking your Circle.

We are on stage during the first session: 8:30 – 9:45 AM.  Our group includes MoneyAisle, Fiserv, Wikinvest, Worklight, Visa, oFlows, eRollover, Bill.com and Cortera.

Stay tuned…we reveal what’s new from Cortera tomorrow morning.

“I think there should be a website where independent contractors can rate how well or how poorly a company pays. Big companies decide how credit-worthy another company is by going to look at a Dun and Bradstreet report. But what about you as the person who’s working on your own, serving at the pleasure of this non-employer, and they stiff you? We need this for those working as freelancers. That’s how capitalism works. A need is met in the marketplace and your reward for it is money – a real paycheck!!”

Clark is spot on in identifying this need. Freelancers, unfortunately, too often get the short end of the stick when it comes to payment. It’s time we bond together and change that. It relates directly to our company’s mission.

Cortera has built the first true online community where small businesses, freelancers and anyone can check in real time who’s getting paid and who’s getting delayed, or worse yet, stiffed. They can even report the deadbeats to protect the entire community. Check it out http://www.cortera.com/community/. Best of all, it’s free to join.

It’s time that the “little guy” in business has a say and gets heard.

All of the major bureaus compile reports in the same way – voluntary submission of accounts receivable information from thousands of companies, on a monthly basis. Without these contributions, there wouldn’t be business credit reports as we know them today. This cooperation has yielded decent coverage, but we have a long way to go for the level of coverage we see with consumer credit reports.

Holding the full flow of info sharing back are internal policies on keeping information confidential, company culture, or even tactical reasons, like accounting systems that make it difficult to extract the information on a regular basis.

Why should your company contribute?

Data (Accounts Receivables or “Trade”) contribution programs have been around for decades. In the U.S. alone, thousands of businesses participate and benefit from such programs. Participation typically involves securely sending your accounts receivable to the bureau on a monthly basis. Trade contribution helps the provider and other creditors benefit from transparency in the marketplace through commercial credit reports. The more businesses that contribute trade payment experience information, the more likely that you will be able to identify customer payment issues early and proactively — and the better protected everyone is in the marketplace. The whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts.

The primary benefit? You’ll likely get paid faster

Contributing to credit bureaus by providing trade information helps improve accounts receivables performance. By sharing payment experience you are improving the ability to set appropriate terms for credit extension based on actual payment experiences – ultimately improving the likelihood of customers paying on time. Companies are more likely to pay on time if they are aware that their payment experience is reported to the major credit bureaus, like (shameless plug) Cortera. It sounds simple, but most businesses take their reputations very seriously and will pay on time to avoid negative a credit rating. On the flip side, small businesses actually want you to report to help them build their credit report history.

Do you contribute to a commercial credit bureau? If not, we’d love to hear from you. In a future post I’ll answer many of the common questions people have about their contributions.

What made this particular meeting standout for me was that for the first time in memory, there were a handful of new members that had never been to this credit group (or any other) before. When a curious but slightly timid newcomer was tapped to discuss one of his accounts first, he requested “Can someone else go first? I’ve never been to one of these – I want to learn how it works.” It was a reminder to veterans that while this may be an essential part of how they do their job, the process of sharing such information – and the realization of resulting benefits – is something that needs to be experienced to be fully understood. Following the meeting, a 30-year veteran of the group recalled his initial experience and why he’s remained committed to collective information sharing throughout his career. Put simply, he felt like it was his duty to pass along his knowledge, techniques and even his network to the next generation, just as the previous generation had done the same for him. And he credited the group and extended network of contacts it has created with an ongoing ability to perform his job at a superior level.

And therein lies the key to such networks — why members remain so committed. Credit and collections decisions are a year-round effort. On the one hand, such meetings provide a period, invaluable opportunity to gain insights that simply don’t show up on a standard business credit report. But equally if not more importantly, they offer the opportunity to broaden a network of peers who can provide similar insight on a when-needed basis.

Given such the added benefits at a time when so many businesses are looking to reduce risks and improve cash flow, we want to know: Are you seeing an uptick in membership and participation in your credit groups? Are you joining new ones? Do you find yourself tapping into such networks more often? We’d love to hear from you. How are you leveraging your credit network?