Founded in 1908 as a local retailer, Frankonia now is European market leader in hunting gear.

Besides stationary retail in Germany and France, Frankonia reaches out to its European customers (Germany, France and Switzerland) via catalogues and the internet.

In its online shop Frankonia offers a wide range of hunting apparel, equipment, optics, ammunition, weapons, outdoor equipment and clothes to hunters, shooters and trekking- and outdoor enthusiasts.

The company’s strategic direction in e-commerce is a main factor for its success in Europe.

The online shop, with its variety of payment options and anonymity of clients, increases the risk of payment default and bad debt loss. Especially with new customers, who generated 1/3 of all sales in 2012, the company has no experienced data or information for rating its financial standing.

Until now Frankonia had to manually adjust the credit limit for each customer in order to reduce the nonpayment risk. Due to a raising number of customers, Frankonia needs to be able to rate the new customer’s credit limit more efficiently and therefore the credit check needs to be optimized.

With the help of SAP ERP Credit Management the credit rating and identity check of Frankonia clients gets automated and the nonpayment risk is minimized precociously and reliably.

Automated tests in the background during the order transaction

Already during the order transaction the software checks in the background. To do so Frankonia uses internal experience and external information, e.g. Bürgel business information and debt collection.

Different criterias for the credit limit check

As criteria for the credit limit check, the company uses a static credit limit check on open sales documents, open deliveries and open billing documents, open items, as well as a maximum dunning level and a score value from the Bürgel check.

Classification of customers into different risk groups

The classification of customers into different risk groups as well as customized credit regulations, that can be displayed individually, offer transparency: if customers are not credit-worthy, sales documents are reported in purpose-built operations for Credit Management and have to be approved manually.
How the credit limit check works at Frankonia

The Result

The SAP ERP Credit Management solution – developed together with SERKEM – provides a comprehensive picture of the nonpayment risk of Frankonia’s customers. In particular, when purchasing on account for the first time and installment purchases, address and security data is used in order to estimate the risk in individual cases.

he SAP ERP Credit Management solution by SERKEM enables Frankonia a reliable evaluation of customers as well as a fast and secure check of new and existing customers: payment defaults are avoided, the company’s risk sinks.

The optimized and automated credit limit check minimizes time and effort and therefore reduces costs for risk evaluation and decreases loss of accounts receivables.