“100,000 Businesses in Rome have closed during
the first 9 months of 2009”
The headline in the “Economia”
section of Milan’s daily “Corriere della Sera”, details the
Confesercente (body representing small and medium-sized businesses
in Italy) reseach that 100,000 businesses in the Capital have been
forced to close their doors during the first 9 months of the year.
This number is to be added to the 144,000 casualties of the
recession in 2008. Unfortunately, the number of new business opening
is only compensating in part and the closures and employment levels
in the sector have seen a drop of between 3.4 and 4%.
In such a complicated business climate, how should companies act
when dealing with the Italian market? We can easily extrapolate
these results and apply them to the whole of the Italian economy,
and it is clear that many parts of Italy (particularly in the south)
will be hit even harder. One of the major attitude changes that we
have seen since the beginning of the world economic downturn has
been that businesses have been driven to greater vigilance when
considering the financial state of their customers and business
partners. Once it was possible to regard famous companies and
household names as a “sure bet”, but now maximum prudence is
necessary to avoid having an unduly risky customer portfolio.
Cosetta Massetti, Sales Manager for Comas in Italy (providers of
Italian Commercial Information and Debt Recovery) says: “since the
start of the economic downturn in Italy, many of my clients are
asking how they can protect their business from the effects of
non-payment. My advice and that of my colleagues has been
crystal-clear: prevention is better than cure. It is now relatively
easy and cost effective to place a whole client portfolio under
periodic or even continuous monitoring. We at Comas offer
tailor-made packages (to suit our individual clients’ particular
needs and size) whereby they receive
company credit information in the form of e-mail alerts,
identifying potential payment problems before they compromise our
clients. Comas also deals with
Italian Debt
Recovery, Cosetta continues, but more often than not, the
clients who have had the good business sense to monitor their
customers rarely have to revert to Debt Recovery procedures; they
simply avoid doing business with risky customers.”
For further information on Business and
Company
Information Services, see Comas homepage.
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