5 Ways to Automate Dispute Management for Big Box Retailers

Introduction
Handling 100s of deductions every month is something A/R leaders across the world have accepted as the cost of doing business. However, managing big-box retailers’ deductions?  That’s another ball game altogether.
Here is a survey by iNymbus and Attain Consulting that highlights key pain points of processing these deductions:

As a result of this, deduction analysts don’t have the bandwidth to focus on deductions research impacts the metrics. According to surveys by iNymbus and Attain consulting,

This e-book is for you if

You or your team are exploring scalable options that could help you resolve deductions faster and more accurately to avoid write-offs while keeping your analysts sane.
Here is what we are going to address in this e-book:

• Automating disputes in-retailer portals
• Scaling better with increasing deductions
• Improving the visibility of the process

Like any law/crime series you must have seen, the burden of proof or in this case the proof of the deductions’ invalidity lies on the vendor.
Irrespective of the manual hours involved, bottom-line revenue leaks or time taken to resolve deductions, vendors NEED to dispute all deductions.
The question is can technology help you?
The answer is a resounding YES!
But, how?
Turn the page to find out more about how you could leverage technologies such as robotic process automation and artificial intelligence for automating deductions.

Highly manual processes for disputing in Retailer Portals
Disputing claims on retailer portals such as the Big box retailers’ Vendor Central is a challenge because of a largely manual-driven process coupled with a non-intuitive interface. Some of the key issues associated with disputing on portals are:
1.Claims download
This process involves dispute analysts to login multiple times in the system throughout the day just to check for claims. Every claim has to be manually downloaded from the portal as it cannot be fetched in bulk.
2.Document upload
Documents such as claims, remittance, proof of delivery, bill of lading have to manually collected by analysts from multiple sources and upload individually into the portal for every single claim.
3.Information key-in
Information related to each dispute has to be painstakingly keyed into the portal. Given the large claim volumes, this could delay raising disputes significantly.
4.Manual correspondence
Every time there is an invalid dispute, analysts have to manually type and send the denial correspondence with relevant documents attached, such as claims, POD, BOL, to big-box retailers.
5.Non-standardized cross team collaboration
Given that disputes involve teams from multiple departments, including cash allocation, collections (if handled separately), logistics, sales and supply chain, analysts often end up wasting time in coordination instead of actual dispute research.
As a result, dispute resolution:

• Turns Highly Manual
• Adds little value
• Turns Time consuming
• Misfires on Metrics

Why not let robots do these clerical tasks that just delay the deduction resolution process?

1.Claims and POD Aggregation

“As a result, all claim/dispute information are exported from retailer portals in one single batch eliminating the need for manual download”

2.Auto-coding Deductions

“Time spent on dispute identification and coding is now saved and they are directly assigned to analysts who directly start working on them.”

3.Web Push

“For invalid claims, denial package is uploaded to retailer portals with all the related deductions backup including, proof of delivery and bill of lading.”

4.Dispute Correspondence

“Analysts don’t have to separately write emails, attach documents for each customer”

5.Audit Trail

“Disputing timely with proper backup documentation results in faster resolution”

Before

• Each claim was manually downloaded for resolving resulting in delayed dispute resolution
• Vendors wait for 30 days for repayment and then raise dispute, if not paid
• No option to batch-process deductions
• All data elements needed to be manually keyed in when disputing
• Piling up of unresolved disputes results in more write-offs
• Insufficient time dedicated to research and resolution of disputes
• High Days Deduction Outstanding and low invalid deduction recovery

After

• All claims are pulled from VC in a single batch, along with BOD, POD from portals
• Dispute raised with proper backup as soon as invalid claim is raised
• Deductions can be processed en masse
• Data elements automatically entered into the system with high accuracy
• Automated resolution results in lower write-offs
• With automation analysts have additional bandwidth to research and resolve disputes
• Less DDO and high invalid deduction recovery