Next Gen Receivables Management from Customer-to-Cash

Challenges

The ResMed A/R team comprises 17 members including process analysts, financial analysts, managers, a and director. The team is responsible for different credit-to-cash functions including collections, credit management, payments processing, exceptions handling, and financial reporting. It handles the business operations of 7000 customers of different scales across multiple locations in the Americas (Canada, US, Central and Latin America)

Challenges in Accounts Receivables

Disparate systems:

ResMed used disparate systems across credit-to-cash processes, which led to manual work for coordination across systems.

Limited data visibility:

Disconnected systems resulted in critical data falling between the cracks and poor data visibility across business units.

Multiple IT vendors:

The challenge to integrate with multiple IT systems and vendors increased manifold as the business grew around the globe.

Challenges in Credit

• Outdated paper credit application
• Limited flexibility in adding credit data providers
• High response time required for new applications

Credit management was one of the biggest challenges for the A/R department. With a heavy reliance on outdated paper credit applications that were faxed to the credit department, on-boarding customers or releasing blocked orders was a lengthy and tedious process. Credit reviews were performed ad-hoc with no scoring system in place.

Challenges in Invoicing and Payments

• Limited payment options (unable to accept cards from Canadian customers)
• Limited options for Merchants Processors
• Low adoption by SMB customers

Limited options were available for accepting payments from customers. Canadian customers were unable to pay via credit cards which impacted customer satisfaction.
Due to the complexities associated with online invoicing and payment options, low adoption was observed among small and medium business, with paper invoices (69%) and checks (50%) being their preferred modes of payment.

Challenges in Cash Application

• Highly labor-intensive process – manual aggregation of remittance data across checks, emails, email attachments, and customer portals
• Slow and inaccurate cash posting with no support for coding deductions

A manual cash application system not only impacted team productivity and efficiency, but also increased operating costs (higher FTE count).
A lack of support for deductions coding also impacted deductions resolution speed, and the system lacked a panoramic visibility across A/R processes.