The organizers are HighRadius, a niche provider of receivables management solutions; SAP, the leading provider of business software; and CRF, the preeminent not-for-profit education and research organization for credit professionals. Their shared goal is to educate SAP users about emerging Receivables Management solutions covering credit, collections, deductions, and electronic invoice present and payment (EIPP) functions.

This year’s presenting companies include Greenheck Fan Corporation, Rockwell Automation, Roche Diagnostics, and Warner Home Video. Attending finance and IT professionals running SAP will have opportunities to share experiences, issues, and recommendations with their peers and the presenters.

“SAP is pleased to be working once again with HighRadius and CRF to offer this event to help organizations develop pragmatic strategies using financial supply chain management solutions to streamline payments, credit, and cash management processes,“ said Paul Pessutti, Vice President of Finance, EPM, and GRC for SAP America. “This powerful seminar includes current users presenting their real-world stories of how SAP Receivables Management has helped their organizations improve cash flow and customer relationships.” 

“Partnering with HighRadius and SAP has been a tremendous benefit and service to the credit and AR management community,” says Terry Callahan, CRF president. “Facilitated by HighRadius and SAP representatives, the seminar and presentations have received superior reviews by past attendees. Besides learning from HighRadius and SAP, attendees gain invaluable experience through the real-life case studies presented by users of the SAP Receivables Management Solutions.”  

The Dallas/Grapevine Seminar will be held at the Embassy Suites – Outdoor World at Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) Airport on February 16, 2012, from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm.

For more information visit CRF online, (http://www.crfonline.org/events/SAPfullday/SAPwo2.htm).

CRF, HighRadius, and SAP will offer the same seminar in Chicago on June 21, 2012.  

About CRF

The Credit Research Foundation, an independent, non-profit organization working in the field of business credit and accounts receivable management, has a vested interest in fostering and improving the methods and practices of the discipline by focusing largely on the technologies used in the process of credit and AR management. A census of CRF members reveals that over 30% of the companies, primarily large to mid-size businesses, use SAP to run their organization.

About HighRadius

HighRadius provides receivables management software solutions that optimize cash application, credit, collections, and deductions functions. The company’s unique delivery model does not require independent enterprise software deployment and operation and is available either as a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) or as a plug-in that complements SAP^® system functionality. HighRadius solutions lower days sales outstanding (DSO), minimize write-offs and reduce operating costs. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, HighRadius’ customers include Adidas, Avnet, Callaway Golf, Estee Lauder, Georgia Pacific, Hershey’s, Hormel, Ingram Micro, Intuit, McKesson, Medtronic, Newell Rubbermaid, Schlumberger, Sega, Take 2 Interactive, Tech Data, Ubisoft and, Warner Brothers.

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Atlanta, GA, June 7, 2011 – Paymetric, Inc., the leading provider of integrated and secure payment acceptance solutions, announced today that it has entered into a referral partnership with HighRadius Corporation, a niche supplier of Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) solutions. Under the agreement, both companies will actively promote each other’s solutions to their respective SAP customers.

“HighRadius’ FCSM solutions directly complement Paymetric’s integrated electronic payment and tokenization offerings,” said Larry Wine, president and CEO, Paymetric, Inc.“This partnership delivers SAP® customers a complete solution to automate and optimize all of their receivables functions, streamlining the order-to-cash process and improving efficiencies.”

Paymetric’s XiPay™ On-Demand and XiSecure™ On-Demand solutions enable companies to securely manage, accept and integrate virtually every type of electronic payment originating from any enterprise system. Both solutions operate in an extremely secure, cost-effective way, utilizing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery and tokenization technology, respectively. Ultimately, Paymetric’s solutions lower the customers’ total cost of ownership (TCO) via:

• Inclusive monthly service fee, reduced installation costs
• Reduced billing, collection, administrative, customer attrition and IT costs
• Reduced interchange fees
• Minimized cost of compliance
• Reduced threat of a data security breach

HighRadius is the only niche implementer in the market of SAP® FSCM modules: Collections Management, Dispute Management, Credit Management and Biller Direct. HighRadius also provides the following complimentary software solutions to SAP® FSCM:

• Cash Application Automation
• Dispute Resolution Accelerator
• Credit Debit Matching Engine
• Credit Memo Approval
• FSCM Correspondence Automation
• POD & Claims Automation
• Credit Decision Accelerator

”We are continuously looking for ways to bring innovative solutions to the credit and collections departments of our customers”, said Sashi Narahari, President and CEO, HighRadius. Enabling electronic payments can directly impact the days sales outstanding (DSO) of an accounts receivables department. Paymetric electronic payment offerings and their deep integration to SAP® is the perfect complement to our mutual customers in the SAP eco-system” Paymetric and HighRadius will conduct a joint presentation at the One Day SAP® Financial Supply Chain (FSCM) Seminar. The event is put on by the Credit Research Foundation, SAP® and High Radius. To register for the seminar, please click here.

ABOUT PAYMETRIC

Paymetric, Inc.is the leading provider of integrated and secure electronic payment acceptance solutions that enable companies to streamline the order-to-cash process, reduce the scope and financial burden of achieving PCI compliance and improve return on electronic payment acceptance. Paymetric’s solutions support virtually every type of electronic payment in any enterprise system where payment is accepted. Paymetric is recognized as an industry leader and is a three-time award-winning SAP® certified partner. Visit  www.paymetric.com for additional information.

ABOUT HIGHRADIUS

HighRadius provides Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) software solutions to optimize receivables functions such as cash application, credit, collections and deductions. HighRadius’ software has a unique delivery model that does not require independent enterprise software deployment and operation. The software is offered either via the cloud as a hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) model or as a plug-in that gets imported into large scale ERP system such as SAP® and complements its existing functionality. HighRadius solutions enable companies to lower days sales outstanding (DSO), minimize write-offs and reduce operating costs. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, HighRadius’ customers include Warner Brothers, Estee Lauder, Callaway Golf, Adidas, Hershey and Georgia Pacific.

For more information, contact: Jessica Wine jwine@paymetric.com 678-984-4473

Houston, Texas – May 26^th, 2011 – HighRadius Corporation,a Houston based provider of Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) solutions, announced that it has joined the SAP® PartnerEdge™ Program. SAP® PartnerEdge™ Program for SoftwareSolution Partners represents one of the most renowned and esteemed Partner Programs in the market.

SAP Software Solution Partners provide solutions that seamlessly integrate with the SAP NetWeaver ecosystem and help SAP customers derive enhanced value from SAP applications. As an SAP Software Solution Partner, HighRadius will continue to provide FSCM solutions called ‘Accelerators’ to its customers, helping them maximize return on their SAP FSCM investment.

HighRadius offers its solutions through a unique delivery model that covers the entire solution life cycle, without requiring independent enterprise software deployment or operation. HighRadius’ solutions have helped customers improve their financial performance and achieve better Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) within their receivables functions, by helping businesses lower their Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), reduce bad-debt write-offs and still keep the operational costs low. HighRadius has vast experience deploying its solutions for SAP customers across a variety of industries.

 “We are pleased to announce our partnership with SAP.  Our unique accelerators for the FSCM solution space enhance the value of SAP FSCM to its customers.” said Sashi Narahari, CEO, HighRadius. “By partnering with SAP, we will be in a better position to serve our customers; while helping each other maintain our leadership positions in the market. The SAP PartnerEdge Program will help us expand the reach of our existing solutions, while helping us bring new solutions to the market faster”.

For more information, please visit http://www.highradius.com/solutions/sap-fscm or email to info@highradius.com

About HighRadius Corporation

HighRadius provides Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) software solutions to optimize receivables functions such as credit, collections and deductions. HighRadius’ software has a unique delivery model that does not require independent enterprise software deployment and operation. The software is offered either via the cloud as a hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) model or as a plug-in that gets imported into large scale ERP system such as SAP and complements its existing functionality. HighRadius solutions enable companies to lower days sales outstanding (DSO), minimize write-offs and reduce operating costs. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, HighRadius’ customersinclude Warner Brothers, Estee Lauder, Callaway Golf, Adidas, Hershey and Georgia Pacific.

Introduction

‘Trade Credit’ is an arrangement between a buyer and a seller, allowing buyers to buy goods from their suppliers without having to make immediate cash payments. These purchases are made ‘on-account’ with deferred payment terms; most commonly used payment terms being Net 30 (payment within 30 days from the date of invoice), Net 45 (payment within 45 days from the date of invoice) and Net 60 (payment within 60 days from the date of invoice). Payment terms vary from industry to industry; for instance, it is not uncommon to come across payment terms of Net 180 in a high-value, slow-moving goods market, such as the Jewellery industry.  

Credit Management

Financial Health

Payment Behaviour

Operational Indicators

Environmental Factors

3rd Party Assessment 

• Define a risk model
• Collect customer-specific data
• Quantify credit risk of each customer using the risk model
• Classify customers based on credit risk score
• Set credit limits on customers depending on the risk class of the customer
• Impose credit control
• Periodically review customer profiles
• Periodically review and fine tune the risk model based on its performance

Figure 1: Credit Decision Making Process

About the Author:

Mahesh Yellai is Director of Product Management & Marketing at HighRadius Corporation. He specializes in Product Strategy, Product Definition, Product Marketing, Competitive Analysis and New Product Development.     For any questions or comments on this post, please email us at info@highradius.com

In my earlier post, I’ve discussed about various challenges faced by accounts receivables teams using traditional A/R system combined with manual processing to apply cash. This post talks about HighRadius’ ReceivablesRadius Cash Application Automation accelerator and how this helps in automating your cash application process.

Imagine a system which could pull remittance data and lockbox information from myriad of sources, which could understand different formats of data and normalize them into one format, which could integrate paper and electronic data into one single data flow, which could apply complex customer specific rules to produce outputs compatible to your existing A/R system, which could completely eliminate manual intervention while applying cash back to your A/R system. Now, imagine the system works for you as a service, which means no in-house development or infrastructure costs. Also imagine the system works seamlessly with your existing A/R system which means practically nothing to setup if you want to employ this new system. Yes, the system you are imaging is nothing but HighRadius’ ReceivablesRadius Cash Application Automation accelerator in the real world.

Following illustration explains how ReceivablesRadius Cash Application Automation solution fits into your existing A/R landscape without disrupting the setup. The solution can be conceived as a level of abstraction where it acts as single point source for all your remittance and payment confirmation inputs. Behind the scenes (actually, in the cloud), the solution performs all tasks required to aggregate data from various input sources in different formats, applies various pre-defined rules and transforms the data to one unified format which can be consumed by your A/R system to apply cash.

 Figure 1: A/R systems employing HR Cash Application accelerator

Let’s examine how ReceivablesRadius Cash Application Automation accelerator solves the challenges discussed in earlier post:

Hybrid Remittance Environment – Solved:

When you are dealing with cash application, you are essentially dealing with same data (remittances and payment confirmations). However, the data could be coming in different formats depending on how your customer wants to send it. The same data can be sent as an EDI, in the form of Excel or scanned copies of checks. As we discussed earlier, collecting all this data from different sources and entering into your A/R system is manual intensive process. ReceivablesRadius Cash Application Accelerator is equipped with robust data aggregation engine which can receive and digest data in multiple formats

Customer Specific Rules and Lower Hit Rates – Solved:

The distinguishing factor which makes ReceivablesRadius Cash Application Accelerator different from any other solution available in the space is the hit rate it promises. The solution is designed to employ business rules engine at the heart of it which could intelligently transform remittance data taking each customer into consideration.

Infrastructure Issues – Solved:

ReceivablesRadius Cash Application Accelerator is basically a service working out of cloud. The only installation or development on your system would be developing/enabling interfaces to consume the output files generated by the Accelerator. This requires minimal or no in-house technical expertise to work with the solution. Following are few advantages of adapting the solution in this context:

• No local server installation
• Pay- as- you- go model
• Rapid scalability
• System maintenance updates are included in the service; don’t have to bother about technical know-how.
• Reduced implementation time frames.

In conclusion, I just wanted to discuss various challenges being faced in cash application process and possible solutions. In the times where we saw huge financial setbacks recently, adapting innovative solutions to reduce DSO and eliminate manual intervention is very much required for companies’ sustenance. Choosing the right solution is always a tough choice and I hope this post helps in taking that decision. I am going to discuss more technical details about the solution in my forthcoming posts. Stay Tuned!

About the Author:

Seshadri Sastry is java team lead currently leading the development efforts for On-Demand Cash App in HighRadius Technologies with solid business rules background using Drools and SAP NetWeaver BRM.

Introduction

There has been a fair amount of debate in recent times about the marriage of Agile and Enterprise Architecture. More so, because both the topics have been gaining traction over the last couple of years and we are seeing increasing adoption of these by companies across the software development spectrum. The discussion ranges from questions like a) can both of them really co-exist in an enterprise or b) are there any commonalities at all between the two to worth a discussion. To set the perspective of this discussion, let us go through quick snapshots of what Agile and Enterprise Architecture are all about.

Agile

It’s about Agility – in managing the (changing) requirements, in developing and testing the product and in delivering the final product. The iterative and incremental nature of Agile is inherent and common-sensical. Without getting into the Agile Manifesto or the specific methodologies (Extreme Programming and Scrum being the popular ones), let’s just understand that Agile is about involving all the stakeholders all the way and delivering quality product increments in specific timeframes – so that the final product is never away from the “big-picture” envisioned. In simple words – “It’snot the big that eat the small but the fast that beat the slow”.

Source: Agile Development Explained

Enterprise Architecture

The understanding of the term Enterprise Architecture (EA) is ambiguous at best and differs based on how EA is viewed from the perspective of different stakeholders in an organization. Enterprise Architecture is more about organization-wide structures and processes (not just technical but business as well) and how they interact and integrate with each other. EA includes all the domains commonly classified in an organization – business, information, applications and technology. Enterprise Architects model through various artifacts the current architecture and future vision of an entire organization.  Among the popular EA frameworks are TOGAF and Zachman. More often than not, Enterprise Architecture is confused with Solution Architecture. A common analogy to differentiate the two is the case of city planners and building planners. While a building planner is concerned with architecting and raising a quality structure, a city planner needs to look at it at a scale of a city – which would include the buildings as well as planning a city around these buildings.

Source: Wikipedia

The Real Debate

At their core, EA is about detailed study of an organization, evolving the architecture and envisioning the organization’s future in terms of architecture while Agile focuses on project delivery, though both work the iterative and incremental way in order to account for and address the shifting nature of business requirements.

Organizations adopting Agile typically have ‘Iteration Zero’ where the architectural strategy is laid out, with low-level design being part of every iteration. This is one of the places where the two – Agile and EA – can cross their paths. During Iteration Zero, the Agile team can be made aware of the EA goals, EA repositories, shared infrastructure – which could be the base from where the high-level architecture for Agile implementation can be derived at. This will prevent the Agile team from ending up creating vertical silos, creating individual applications, which though might be successful but pose serious challenges in integrating with the rest of the applications in the company’s portfolio and impede the future direction of the organization from both technical and business perspectives.

Again the EA governance can span across the entire iteration, where the Enterprise Architect can play the role of ‘architecture owner’ during software implementation and deployment. TOGAF, an EA framework, refers to a term called ‘transition architecture’ – a stepwise implementation of the target architecture – which is an apt place for Agile implementation. Another area where EA can learn from Agile is how the EA artifacts can be kept as simple and as concise as possible, so that these artifacts become useful to the Agile team as well and not too much effort is spent on creating costly artifacts, knowing these artifacts could become outdated by the time those are planned to be used.

Conclusion

Agile and EA differ on the scale of their respective operations. While Agile is at a Function/Process level (though Agile might have been adopted across Functional/Process levels in an organization), the level of Enterprise Architecture is rolled-up to an organization level. Also, while EA is a top-down approach, Agile is bottom-up. As it stands today, the adoption of the two will remain strong at their respective levels and the two will adapt principals from each other and leverage the best lessons from the other approach. Both Agile and EA can and should be adapted to fit organizational needs. As mentioned earlier, EA practitioners will benefit by working in an Agile way, by following principals that Agile Manifesto is based on. At the same time, Agile will gain by keeping the big-picture Enterprise Architecture in perspective during multiple iterations.

The clarity about co-existence of Agile methodologies and Enterprise Architecture sets in if both can be thought of working hand-in-hand in furthering the organization’s long-term objectives, with both being people-oriented, iterative, incremental and focusing on Business stakeholders.

About the Author:

Ujawal Sinha is a Principal Architect at HighRadius. He is with the Architecture team working on both SAP and JAVA technologies. He holds a  Bachelors degree form IIT, Kharagpur and a Master's degree from University of Southern Califonia, Los Angeles.

The single most important step in Accounts Receivables life cycle is to apply the cash you have been receiving accurately and efficiently.  Inaccurate cash postings will have direct impact on your liquid cash reserves, outstanding receipts, dispute management and above all, customer satisfaction. Even a very efficient accounting department can not apply the cash on the same day if they were to do it manually, as there are lots of challenges (which will be discussed later) and manual work is always error prone and time consuming. The more lag between payment receipt and cash application you have the more unaccounted money and the more mysteries to solve.

As it may sound, the cash application problem is not trivial. It involves fair amount of intelligence to seamlessly orchestrate cash flow from customer’s bank accounts to properly apply them on open receivables. It involves aggregating data from lockboxes and/or direct payments, remittance advices from different sources, matching PO numbers in remittance advice to invoice numbers, transforming data coming from customers to the format acceptable to your system, reason code mappings in case of deductions, credit memo/debit memo matching, et cetera. Traditional A/R systems are not designed to handle all these scenarios. The maximum they could offer you is to identify invoice numbers being paid when there is an exact match with the remittance data and determine whether a cash discount is for the correct amount and within terms. However, over 75 percent of cash receipts may still end up with manual intervention because only few customers provide correct invoice numbers with their payments and on top of it, there are always invoice short pays to deal with. 

Figure 1Traditional A/R systems combined with manual cash application

Let’s examine few challenges with Traditional A/R systems combined with manual application in the following sections:

Hybrid Remittance Environment:

When you are dealing with multiple customers, there is a huge possibility that the remittance advices could come from a myriad of different sources in a variety of forms based on the software systems your customers using and payment methods they have chosen.  Collecting and deciphering data coming from different forms and sources is a huge manual task as your traditional A/R systems are not equipped to do that.  As a result, the cash application process involves significant manual processing with manual workflows and data entry thus reducing the efficiency and eventually increasing days sales outstanding for wrong reasons.

Lower Hit Rates:

As we discussed earlier, the traditional A/R systems could definitely apply cash to some extent. Typically, most cash receipts include some data that exactly matches open receivables without requiring any further processing. The remaining remittances, which are more difficult to match, involve some sort of intelligence to clear them off, like checking against credit memos, to see if discounts taken are as per terms in case of short payment or the verify against purchase order numbers, et cetera. What this means is even the A/R software is able to achieve a 65% hit rate, it would have just cleared the cream off the top and left the hardest tasks to be processed manually. The bulk of the remittances can be processed quickly, whether that is done manually or automatically. Whether it’s traditional bulky software or a specialised auto cash application product, if it is not processing more difficult and time consuming remittances, it’s not adding much value to your cash application process.  Bottom line is, if the software is not promising 100% hit rate, there is no point in using the software.

Customer Specific Rules:

As you grow with your customer base, the more complex and challenging your cash application process becomes. Different customers behave differently with their data and you might have to employ customer specific rules to transform data.  There are two options to deal with this situation using your traditional A/R systems, either asks your customers to change their behaviour so that it fits in your eco system or expand your system so that you handle the new behaviour in house. Obviously, you cannot ask your customer to change their behaviour because he might be dealing with multiple vendors and why would he incur IT costs just because he is doing business with you? So you left with expanding your accounting team to handle new customers. The third option could be employ a new system which could handle any new customer seamlessly within your eco system and transparent to your customer.

Infrastructure:

Last but not the least; infrastructure is a significant challenge when you are using traditional A/R systems combined with accounting teams to apply cash. By infrastructure, I just don’t mean hardware, but the costs incurred towards on-premise installations, ramping up for any system changes, implementing for new customers, expanding accounting teams to scale for larger customer base, et cetera.

All these challenges can be solved in much better and elegant fashion using few accelerators in tandem with your existing A/R system. In my next post, I will discuss how HighRadius’ ReceivablesRadius Cash Application Automation helps businesses significantly improve on-invoice hit rate by automatically matching open payments to invoices. How it solves hybrid remittance environment issues and above all how it employs intelligent rules engine to solve more and more complex customer specific and transformation rules to eliminate human intervention from your cash application process. I am also going to discuss how it is different from existing products in this space and offers more value to your business. Stay Tuned!

About the Author:

Seshadri Sastry is java team lead currently leading the development efforts for On-Demand Cash App in HighRadius Technologies with solid business rules background using Drools and SAP NetWeaver BRM.

Houston, Texas (PRWEB) December 5, 2010

HighRadius Corporation, a Houston-based provider of Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) solutions was ranked 10th among the Houston Fast Tech 50 list based on its year-over-year revenue growth of 97%. This is the third consecutive year in which HighRadius has been selected.

50 fastest-growing technology companies in Houston were awarded at the 10th Houston Fast Tech 50 luncheon presented by the Houston Business Journal. The event was held at the Hilton Americas Houston Hotel.

HighRadius Corporation (http://www.highradius.com) provides Financial Supply Chain Management software solutions to automate and optimize the business processes of receivables functions such as credit, collections and deductions.

“It is a great honor to be featured on this list for the third consecutive year,” said HighRadius’ CEO Sashi Narahari. “The commercial credit and collections market is transforming rapidly in the new economy. A key reason for our growth has been our ability to offer proven solutions that can have an impact on credit-to-cash cycle within months of implementation.”

About HighRadius

HighRadius provides Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) software solutions to optimize receivables functions such as credit, collections and deductions. HighRadius’ software has a unique delivery model that does not require independent enterprise software deployment and operation. The software is offered either via the cloud as a hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) model or as a plug-in that gets imported into large scale ERP system such as SAP and complements its existing functionality. HighRadius solutions enable companies to lower days sales outstanding (DSO), minimize write-offs and reduce operating costs. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, HighRadius’ customers include Warner Brothers, Estee Lauder, Callaway Golf, Adidas, Hershey and Georgia Pacific.

HighRadius CEO Sashi Narahari to share best practices and tips to ensure a smooth Financial Supply Chain Management implementation

HOUSTON – March 9, 2009 – HighRadius Corporation, (http://www.highradius.com), a provider of Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) solutions announced today that the company’s CEO, Sashi Narahari will speak at the SAP Financials 2009 conference (http://www.financials2009.com) taking place taking place March 17th-20th at MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
 
SAP Financials is an annual conference for accounting and finance teams that rely on SAP software, and for the IT professionals who support them. Sashi Narahari presentation topic titled “15 tips to ensure a smooth Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) implementation”, will provide tips and pitfalls to avoid based on real-world insight from several successful FSCM deployments. 
 

About HighRadius Corporation
HighRadius provides Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) solutions to enable companies to proactively control order-to-cash discrepancies and accelerate dispute settlements. HighRadius solutions complement and extend ERP systems from vendors such as SAP by bringing all the information and processes relating to internal departments, service providers such as transportation carriers and customer interactions into a single eco-system to process deductions. HighRadius financial automation solutions enable companies to significantly reduce day’s sales outstanding (DSO), minimize write-off's, lower operating and administrative costs and ensure SOX compliance via accurate revenue prediction.