Since 1935 American Tire Distributors has supported the nation's tire dealers, service repair shops, and automotive performance shops with prompt and convenient delivery of the products, tools, and programs they need to service a country on the move.
Challenge
American Tire Distributors (ATD) CFO contracted with Perficient to perform a six-week benchmarking study on ATD’s Credit function. The CFO had received a question from ATD’s CEO as to whether the Credit department was overstaffed for the amount of work performed.
Additionally, ATD, which is currently owned by a venture capitalist, had experienced significant growth over recent history, and the trend was only expected to increase within the next 12-24 months. The Credit department’s ability to absorb this growth will be key in maintaining the financial performance experienced to date.
Perficient was tasked with performing a benchmarking analysis of the Credit function, comparing ATD’s performance to industry standards. This benchmark data would validate the staff size and provide a high-level assessment of the Credit department’s capacity for absorbing company growth. Additionally, Perficient agreed to provide recommendations for areas of immediate process improvement and areas for additional study, as applicable.
Solution Deployed
Perficient researched viable benchmarking comparison sources before recommending that the Credit Research Foundation (CRF) be used for the study. Internal ATD Credit and financial data was then submitted via electronic survey to CRF, where it was entered into their database with the data from more than 280 participating companies. Results were provided to ATD via .PDF file, with ATD’s data compared against several benchmarks.
Additionally, the team gathered manual data around the number of Release Requests process, the number of Credit Limit Reviews performed by credit managers, and the percentage of checks that auto-process vs. those that require manual intervention, though the of process research and study was scaled back at the client’s request.
Business Value Delivered
Perficient provided ATD with the benchmarking study results and high-level process recommendations (based both on the benchmarking analytical data and anecdotal evidence). The benchmarking data was very positive and also provided insight that ATD is operating at or near capacity, with limited ability to absorb additional growth without process change, resource growth, or more likely, a combination of both.