By working with Altares Dun & Bradstreet, Stertil maintains neat compliance
If one performs maintenance on a municipal transportation company bus in New York City, chances are it will be done on a lift bridge from the Frisian company Stertil. The company, housed in the village of Kootstertille, sets the standard worldwide when it comes to lifting bridges for heavy as well as light vehicles.
Stertil
100
Distributors worldwide
80
Service engineers
61
years of experience
The organization therefore sets the bar high for all customers and suppliers it does business with. Douwe Groenendijk, CFO at Stertil: "We are a down-to-earth, neat company that does everything by the rules. And Altares Dun & Bradstreet helps us with that."
1. The Challenge
Shaping compliance
"We obviously don't want to do business with individuals or organizations that are subject to sanctions."
Stertil makes heavy duty vehicle elevators for heavy vehicles such as buses and trucks, light duty vehicle elevators for passenger cars and dock products for the logistics world. The global company has distributors and end users as customers, but sometimes also municipal transport companies of large cities. Not only New York City, but also Paris and Beijing count on the solid quality of the lift-bug manufacturer when it comes to maintenance in parts of public transport. Furthermore, the company has maintenance engineers in several countries to work on its own products, as well as those of third parties.
Whoever the customer is: Stertil holds existing and prospect customers to the light with a credit check (through Altares Dun & Bradstreet's D&B Credit services) and with indueD, a background check that reveals, among other things, who is behind an organization and whether the party appears on international sanctions lists. Groenendijk: "We obviously do not want to do business with individuals or organizations that are subject to sanctions."
2. The Solution
Global data
“We gebruiken indueD nu zo’n drie jaar, en we verkopen er geen hefbrug méér om,” zegt de CFO, “maar we hebben een zorgplicht. We mogen en willen niet verkopen aan gesanctioneerde partijen. Lijsten daarvoor zijn online te vinden, maar met Altares Dun & Bradstreet kunnen wij heel snel vaststellen of mensen of instanties gesanctioneerd zijn.”
So before, that was time-consuming human work. So about three years ago Stertil went to market to automate the background check process. "We approached three parties, but Dun & Bradstreet turned out to be the right choice for us," says Groenendijk. "We trade globally and they have data from all over the world. We literally asked: how would you do this? They had a good answer to that." Altares Dun & Bradstreet came up with the solutions and personalized them so they became workable for Stertil.
8000
m² plant area
1961
Year of establishment
50
Active in 50 international markets
3. The result
Not overstepping the mark
If a customer's status (sanctioned or unsanctioned) changes indueD, or legislation does, Stertil needs to know quickly. The company therefore chooses to check on existing customers periodically. The war in Ukraine made such checks even more relevant last year. Groenendijk: "There are international sanctions in place against parties in Russia. We don't want to do business with those parties then."
"It's very simple. If you are overstepping the mark and do business with a sanctioned party, for example, the consequence could be that you are excluded from procurement processes by government agencies in America." That briefly sums up the need for compliance. "And what is also an advantage: the reports are internationally transferable," says Groenendijk. In other words: if, for example, it turns out that a customer of Stertil has unexpectedly ended up on a sanctions list, Groenendijk can hand over documents showing that he did his homework on his side when, at the time of the transaction, this was not yet the case.
Comply with the rules
Aan de regels voldoen. “Méér sexy dan dat, kan ik het ook niet maken”, lacht de financieel directeur. “D&B Credit geeft ons een inschatting van de financiële status van een klant. Zijn ze goed voor hun geld? Kunnen ze betalen? Met indueD weten we zeker dat een klant is, wie hij zegt te zijn, en dat er geen sancties op hem of haar gelden. We werken met Altares Dun & Bradstreet samen omdat we een positieve, nette club zijn die zich gewoon netjes aan de regels wil houden.”
