Ferrero | Integrated Receivables with Ferrero

Challenges

With such a massive volume of customers and operating from several business units, Ferrero faced three significant challenges that made them switch to integrated receivables:

Lack of Executive Visibility

Finance executives had limited visibility across business units because of the decentralized system in place. They were also unable to monitor important accounts or have a holistic view of customer data to enable smarter decision making.

Inability to take Real-Time Action

With siloed systems, the A/R team was failing to take real-time actions. There was no flow of information between the systems and various departments. There was also a lack of inter-team visibility regarding customer communication.

Poor Customer Risk Management

The lack of inter-team visibility obstructed them from making better decisions and enforcing customers’ rules falling into various risk segments.

How did Integrated Receivables Help?

Ferrero improved its overall A/R efficiency by leveraging the HighRadius integrated receivables solution. Read below to learn how exactly an integrated system enabled inter-team collaboration and better visibility to bring significant changes to the order to cash process overall:

Enabling Better Visibility for the Senior Management

With a centralized system in place, enabling visibility across levels, it was easy to share working capital reports, and a major accounts overview with executives. With real-time visibility into working capital reports and a summary of important accounts, they could make faster decisions. The above thus helped the company survive and thrive in the economic downturn.
The reporting focused on high-value and high-risk accounts, their past-dues, and balances with intelligent risk forecasting. Quick identification of at-risk accounts reduced lousy debt and enabled management to make strategic decisions based on the risk.

Remote Workforce Enablement and Management

Through the integrated system, the company gained visibility into any factors contributing to a change in KPIs. Aggregated information from multiple sources was used to make informed decisions, thus enabling Ferrero to maintain existing KPIs, which were better than industry averages.

Balancing Customer Expectations and Business Objectives

The system automatically identified customers with real cash flow constraints against those who use the crisis as an excuse to delay payments. This, in turn, led to better customer services for genuinely at-risk accounts.
By identifying at-risk customers and the economic crisis’s impact on different customer segments, the IR system created targeted collection strategies.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Ferrero is an Italian manufacturer of chocolate and confectionery products. Founded in 1946 it is the 2nd largest chocolate producer and confectionery company globally.

HEADQUARTERS

Alba, Piedmont, Italy

INDUSTRY

Food & Beverages

REVENUE

€ 11.4 billion (2019)

PRODUCTS

Credit Cloud
Cash Application Cloud
Collections Cloud
Deductions Cloud

How did HighRadius Help

Ferrero partnered with HighRadius to automate their A/R landscape and trusted HighRadius’ integrated receivables management to bring in the next level of change and customer satisfaction. They received an integrated platform for all the A/R processes that connected their teams with their customers. The platform further enhanced information flow between their systems, personnel, and internal and external business partners.

Timely Deduction Resolution with Cash Application Collections & Deductions Collaboration

The solution enabled automatic deduction coding and provided collections analysts with all the information. Once the payment was made and cash was applied, the deduction case was automatically closed with limited interactions. The inter-team collaboration due to an integrated system accelerated the entire process, enabling faster and timely deduction resolution and blocked order processing.

Releasing Credit Utilization

In the case of an alert on credit limit utilization, an automated correspondence is sent to the customer from Collections Cloud. Once the customer receives the email and the payment is made, cash is applied automatically through Cash Application Cloud, and the credit limit gets updated. Thanks to the centralized, integrated system in place, allowing swift interactions and intelligent actions, Ferrero delivered an enhanced customer experience.

Ensuring Collaboration Between A/R, A/P, And Treasury Teams

Cash forecast reporting enabled by HighRadius gave the treasury manager visibility into reports. These include the significant customer forecast and the weekly actuals vs. forecast, allowing better decision making.
Ferrero leveraged automation and technology to align A/R, A/P, and Treasury teams across six different business units in North America.

Leveraging Automation Capabilities to Stay Updated

The solution, automated correspondences, and follow-ups for collections.
The solution deployed different rules to put orders on hold for customers belonging to different risk segments.
The solution automatically identified customers with deductions, thus helping them to manage their cash flow.
The Cash Application Cloud within the solution allowed for real-time payments with no lag.

Not every task needs human attention. Ferrero proved this by letting technology handle all of the above mentioned by giving teams much-needed time to focus their energy on essential tasks. These include collection strategies, studying KPI reports, and identifying gaps/improvement areas, etc.