Wake up to O2C Automation
What you’ll learn
- how to strategize your A/R operations with AI-driven processes
- how different industries are overcoming O2C hurdles during the pandemic
- a customer case study: the integration process and benefits from using cloud solutions in their business
Introduction
Recently, HighRadius and CICM joined forces to grab a virtual brunch with peers across different industries, to discuss O2C automation. For 5 Top Tips, check out our Invoicing guide. An evolving technological ecosystem requires companies to keep up with advancements and make sure that they remain current with the times. The order to cash space has seen immense growth over the last decade, with the introduction of faster and more efficient processing methods being innovated. The latest Hackett study on CFO priorities in 2020 shows that 75% of organizations took steps to optimize working capital practices, and 79% intend to make these changes permanent to bolster cash flow.The Current State
The spread of the pandemic has not only enhanced but accelerated the shift from manual to digital workflows. The change from offices to work from home made it crucial for companies to get systems in place to help them tackle issues in collecting and processing payments. The Covid-19 Response Poll conducted by Hackett (April 2020) found that almost all finance organizations are powering ahead with digital transformation initiatives. Some are even accelerating them. Even more encouraging, 64% of finance organizations are launching new digital projects.
“Robotics helps analysts save tremendous amounts of time, cross-department collaboration is very streamlined and goes by very quickly.”
-Kay Rogers, North America Financial Transactions Director, Ferrero
Challenges that companies faced included ensuring long-term and short-term efficiency, effectiveness, and visibility without compromising customer and user experience. Collections as a process became extremely difficult, with companies facing issues such as:
- clients not being able to honor promise to pays
- heavy increase in the amount of correspondence
- collectors shifting to target only critical accounts
- a steady rise in delayed payments
Making Sense of the Automation Sprawl
“What HighRadius does is it feeds off of our master data. And it goes off with the customers’ DSO, which is stored in your master data in ERP, which hence makes your payments your customers’ individual payment habits. So our cash forecast is not on the due date or guessing or picking.”
– Tony Hiatt, Global Credit Manager, Ivanti
The addition of automation tools like AI & machine learning in the workspace allowed for faster and better-managed operations. Along with the efficiency increase benefit, the solution also helped cut down on operational costs, reduce manual work and create structured work.
In Collections, the use of automation technology helped in –
- Increasing analyst productivity by introducing prioritized work lists and segmenting customers into aging buckets.
- Introducing automated correspondence based on whether the customer was high risk or high priority.
- Providing real-time visibility into analyst performance and customer data for C suite executives.
- Automated call logging and data recording.
“We started seeing immediate results upon implementation. 100%+ efficiency gain.”
– Marinko Marijolovic, Director, Corporate Credit Services, Shurtech Brands on the HighRadius Cloud Solution
“Our DDO reduced by 50% from 65 to 33 days and Open Deductions reduced by 58%. We had great success in using the system, and I think it’s only going to get better.”
– Kay Rogers, North America Financial Transactions Director, Ferrero on the HighRadius Cloud Solution
Automation enables faster workflows through the elimination of mundane activities and helps boost productivity by moving analysts to higher priority tasks. The use of automation also brings streamlining in two processes like collections by having a centralized data repository to keep track of all the information gathered, which helps maintain visibility throughout the department. A cloud solution is beneficial as it supports transparency and eases acquiring data, which allows faster processing.
“The time that we’ve saved on just the cash application team itself, earlier we had four full-time employees on those 10 business units, now we’re down to just two full-time employees now.”
– Cindy Scott, Senior Manager A/R & Billing, BlackHawk Network Holdings
There’s no time like the present
Get a Live Demo of Collections Cloud for Your Business
HighRadius Collections Software automates and optimizes the credit & collections management process to improve collector efficiency, minimize bad debt write-offs, improve customer relationships, and reduce DSO. It provides a complete set of tools to optimize and automate the credit collections management process and enable the better prioritization of credit collections activities All the information you need (invoices, dispute information, POD, claims, tracking info, etc.) on each case is automatically presented in a collections work-space and is ready for use. Apart from the wide variety of benefits that it has, it also comes with some amazing features like CADE (Collection Agency Data Exchange), collector’s dashboard which has prioritized collections worklist, automated dunning & correspondence, dispute management, centralized tracking of notes, call logs & payment commitments along with cash forecasting functionalities. The result is a more efficient collections team that contributes to enhanced cash flow and reduced DSO.
