Give the bean counters some slack

I found out yesterday that a reseller I know reasonably well went into administration this week. I won't mention their name here as I don't think it's fair to broadcast it any more than is necessary, both legally-speaking and in terms of protecting the owner's dignity. Suffice to say, they were a Citrix partner, although (thankfully) not one of ours, and were heavily involved in the server-based computing/thin client world.

To be perfectly honest, I hadn't really noticed much in the way of a slow-down in the economy or any real tangible signs of a credit crunch yet, but maybe it is more serious than I had originally thought. Of course there are any number of reasons why a company goes bust, it may not necessarily have been the credit crunch. Sometimes I guess it only takes one late payment from an end user to tip things over the edge and the cleaners are called in. However this reseller had been around for a while and I wonder if economic factors did play a role.

Which got me thinking a little bit about the way we regard our accounts departments, otherwise known by many as the "sales prevention departments". In sales, we concentrate solely, as we should, on getting as much business in as possible and, if we had it our way, every deal would go through on 30 days credit. The finance directors and credit control managers of this world, however, are paid to ensure they actually get the money for all these purchase orders and it's fair to say they don't have an easy job. We do all the hard work by getting the deals in and, at the last minute (literally), we are prevented from closing that deal by our own colleagues. They then get it in the neck from both us and the customer.

But do we actually do all the hard work? Who pays our salaries? Is it sales, by getting the deals in, or accounts, by getting the hard cash for those deals in?

When I told our accounts department of the above news, I found the reaction, which was of genuine personal frustration, really interesting. I guess it's a black mark on their book - they authorised the credit for the deal so it's sort of their responsibility when it goes wrong.

I, for one, have suffered some frustration with accounts departments in the past few years but, knowing this particular reseller as well as I do and seeing the pain that the news of the reseller's plight caused our finance team has made me understand their situation much better. We in sales have no idea of company backgrounds and general financial health and, to be honest, it's not our role to care too much about it, as long as they place orders. But somebody does need to care. They're not the evil dark side, they are securing our future, both as a company and as an employee.

I think I will go easier on the bean counters from now on. Well, a bit anyway...