After digitizing FICA beneficial ownership declarations, we applied the same playbook to another piece of paper that was slowing the same kind of business down: the consent behind a credit check. South African sales teams still call it an ITC request, after the bureau that once had a monopoly on the answer, and the name has outlived the paper process that went with it. This is how that process went digital.
The friction
Before a credit bureau may be asked about a client, the client has to consent, and the consent has to be recorded. The principle is sound, since a credit report is sensitive personal information. The practice was a form. An agent would send it after the sales conversation, and then the chase began: the client meant to print it, forgot, signed the wrong page, scanned it badly, or went quiet altogether. Consent arrived days after the conversation that needed it, when it arrived at all.
Those days matter more than they look. A credit check usually stands between a willing client and a deal, so every day the consent form spent in limbo was a day the deal cooled. The compliance step was doing its job badly and the sales pipeline was paying for it.
What we built
We digitized the capture and consent flow end to end, and put the entry point where the sales conversation already was. From their portal, an agent presents a QR code. The client scans it with their own phone, confirms their details, and completes the consent declaration on the spot. What used to be a days-long game of cat and mouse became an online declaration the client completes in seconds, during the same conversation, on a device they trust.
The consent lands as a proper record rather than a signature on a scan: who consented, to what, and when, tied to the details the client confirmed. The agent sees it arrive and the credit check can proceed while the client is still in the room. Nobody prints anything, nobody chases anything, and the compliance team inherits a record instead of a filing task.
What we would tell you
- Consent is a moment rather than a document. It exists in the conversation where the client says yes, so the system’s job is to capture it there, before the moment cools into a paper chase.
- The client’s own phone is the best terminal you will ever deploy. It is already in the room, already trusted, and already signed in, and a QR code is all it takes to hand it the work.
- Compliance steps sit inside revenue processes, so their speed is a commercial number. Shortening one from days to seconds does more for the pipeline than most sales tooling.
- The playbook transfers. Declarations, consents, and confirmations share a shape: a person, a set of details, a yes, and a record. Digitize one well and the next costs a fraction as much.
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