Want to Fit-In or Stand Out in the O2C Cycle?
Why Not Do Both Using E-Invoicing?
With more technology and less time, everyone is adapting to methods that can get any work done in a faster, simpler and cheaper way. We know how important invoices play in the order to cash cycle. Be it the collections analyst or the deductions analyst, everyone is revolving around invoices and payments, isn’t it? What if we could make invoice presentment and payment more electronic and less hectic?
Before taking you to the new world of invoicing, let’s find out,
The Need for Electronic Invoicing:
- Lower Print and Mail Costs: With electronic presentment and payment of invoices, we are able to cut short a lot of expenses that are involved with papers, printers, ink and so much more. Thus, automating invoices acts as a one-time investment that lowers the cost, boosts the bottom line and yields higher results.
- Less Prone to Errors: We are humans and hence, we tend to make a lot of errors when things get manual. By adopting E-invoice, most of the processes become automatic from billing to their payment and automation is always less likely to make errors.
- Better Customer Experience: A single platform for presentation and payment of invoices make communication between the customer and the company easier. Nevertheless, organizations are able to maintain transparency and build a trustworthy relationship with their clients which boosts a customer’s personal experience.
- Faster Work: Electronic invoicing introduces electronic billing, electronic payment of invoices, statement delivery, and online dispute management. As a result, a two-hour task is completed in twenty minutes with much better accuracy.
This is how one can fit into the order to cash cycle and yet stand out with better customer experiences, fewer errors, fewer expenses, faster work, and overall better invoice management.
But how to make customers adopt electronic invoicing? This is a tricky part but here are some of the strategies to make the process easier.
Let’s hop into a Three Pronged Approach for E-Invoice Adoption:
Client Segmentation
Segmenting clients on the basis of Invoice Value and Invoice Complexity is the first step to increase electronic invoice adoption. Depending on which customer owes how much to the company, certain other higher-value customers and complex invoices including various discounts and incentives for such customers, we need to segment them and prioritize accordingly.
Audience Customized Outreach Strategies:
Now that clients have been segmented according to the above-mentioned factors, we need to ensure that customers are adopting electronic invoice processing. But how do we do that?
Here are three different strategies to implement adoption and automation.
- Push Adoption: This is a force utilization technique of e-invoicing for customers who’re already onboard. Under force utilization process all customers adopt to the portal within a certain number of days. Customers can opt-out to keep paper invoices at any point and one can auto-enroll new customers at any time.
- Incent Adoption: Here, individual and social incentives, tracking of ROI, multifaceted campaigns of communications to drive adoption and optional incentives are offered according to the customer segmentation, type, and preferences. The more the benefits, the merrier the rate.
- Custom Adoption: Here we can custom programs for high-value customers. Discounts, customized plans, customized invoices and a lot more are offered according to a customer’s preferences.
Optional Incentive Programs:
Now that we have segmented our customers and implemented various strategies to ensure they are adopting e-invoicing, our job is done right? Well, maybe not! There are certain optional incentive programs according to certain timelines and preferences for certain high-value customers.
Here are a few examples of illustrative timeline strategies that will give a high-level overview regarding the implementation.
So why are we waiting? Let’s hop in!
Push Strategy:
Incent Strategy:
Sample Messages & Incentives for E-Adoption:
“IT’S NOT THAT CUSTOMERS DON’T WANT TO PAY.”
Customers tend to seek comfort and transparency. With a single platform for invoice payment and presentation, companies can build that trust and brand among their customers resulting in the betterment of the cost, experience, bottom-line, working capital and in general, the whole order to cash cycle.
