As finance executives look forward to 2022, they see a rare window of opportunity to enable business scalability with revenue growth by leveraging technology. CFOs would want to work with A/R leaders to allow their teams to move ahead of transactional tasks and take up more strategic decision-making roles that help them create an actual working capital impact.

In this webinar, Mark Harrison, Founder & CEO at Callisto Grand, shares his insights with A/R executives on building a long-term cash culture in 2022 that enables proactive liquidity management with strategic investment opportunities.

On Demand Webinar

Achieving Long-Term Cash Excellence in 2022 With Digitally Accelerated O2C

Session Summary

As finance executives look forward to 2022, they see a rare window of opportunity to enable business scalability with revenue growth by leveraging technology. CFOs would want to work with A/R leaders to allow their teams to move ahead of transactional tasks and take up more strategic decision-making roles that help them create an actual working capital impact.

In this webinar, Mark Harrison, Founder & CEO at Callisto Grand, shares his insights with A/R executives on building a long-term cash culture in 2022 that enables proactive liquidity management with strategic investment opportunities.

Key Takeaways

Proven Strategies to Optimize Cash Flow in the New Economy
[06:24]
Highlights:
  • What are the finance executive’s business objectives from the new economy?
  • How to deliver improved operational efficiency by freeing up cash trapped in receivables
  • How to minimize risk exposure & maximize past-due collection by leveraging technology
How to Build a Sustainable Cash Culture Across the Finance Function
[17:00]
Highlights:
  • Why do A/R teams need to prioritize cash excellence instead of cash preservation in 2022?
  • Enabling cash excellence by collaborating with sales to establish a seamless customer-onboarding process
  • People, process & technology: The three pillars to building a sustainable cash culture framework
What is the Next Normal for A/R Leaders?
[28:48]
Highlights:
  • For People: Looking for ways to improve the operational agility of teams by upskilling them to adopt technology effectively.
  • For Process: Identifying gaps exposed in the new normal and optimizing existing strategies for quick course correction.
  • For technology: Leveraging real-time analytics to provide 360-degree visibility to all stakeholders and track receivable health and team productivity.
Creating a difference with digital transformation
[39:03]
Highlights:
  • Why 80% of A/R Executives across industries are planning to accelerate their digital transformation to meet CFOs objective
  • How enabling end-to-end visibility across teams can help A/R teams stay on top of KPIs directly impacting cash flow
  • A sneak-peek into the world of order to cash in 2022 with HighRadius

(Host [Tanya] 0:01)
Hello everybody and welcome to today’s webinar. My name is Tanya, Marketing here, at HighRadius presentation today is agenda 2021 achieving long-term cash excellence with digital accelerated order to cash. I’d like to introduce my two presenters today. So we have Mark Harrison, CEO and founder of Callisto Grand, and Sam Dhingra, AVP solution engineer at Highradius. Welcome, guys.

(Mark Harrison 0:38)
Good afternoon. Thank you. Welcome everybody

(Sam Dhingra 0:40)
Yeah, thanks, Tanya. Welcome, everyone.

(Host [Tanya] 0:43)
Wonderful. Okay, so I’m just gonna go briefly over a few housekeeping notes. So we do have three polling questions. So do keep your eyes open for those I will be playing some lava cheesy music, while polling questions will run so look forward to that. So the agenda today will kick off with the financial landscape in 2020. Struggling with a crisis will then flow through to building a sustainable cash culture framework, followed by Q&A at the end. Okay, so let me kick off those slides and hand them out to mark up the presentation.

(Mark Harrison 01:22)
Okay, so yeah, so welcome, everybody and thank you to Highradius for the opportunity to meet up with you guys today. We’re going to talk about the situation that occurred in 2020. And really how it’s gonna look in 2021. And going forward, and collectively what are the areas that we need to address to move from a kind of being reactive to becoming proactive. I think it’s, it’s fair to say that there’s a number of things that are happening simultaneously and it’s an interesting fascinating sandbox to be a scary time, it’s the first time that I can recollect where we’ve had so many challenges all happening at the same time, and we’ve got them listed here on largely on the right with these icons, we obviously there’s a downturn in revenues, business investments, rising unemployment, a lot of pressure on finance, distressed businesses. And as it says, demand and supply shock, and I think we can probably add to this as well that there’s the Brexit is a big one as well. That’s that. I think the reality of the Brexit situation is going to roll out very quickly in quarter one, and it’s going to bring a lot of unprecedented and unforeseen challenges. Also to the cash flow. There will be an I think there’s already evidence that there’s going to be increasing costs as well, that businesses are going to be impacted by at the same time that businesses are looking to take costs out of their business and reduce them. The increase in costs is going to come in many different ways that there’s going to be many, many, many incremental, small incremental increases in areas like taxation. So you’re probably starting to see that VAT will go up by say 1%, corporate taxes will go up by 1%. Medical costs will go up by one or 2% maybe because of all these furloughs and government support that have taken place over the last year or so. They may well continue for a while longer, and the reality is eventually we’re all going to have to pay for it. So there are going to be lots of little increases there’ll be increases in fuel and things like that as well when there are increases in fuel as increases in supply chain costs, that ends up at the point of sale. cost too. So many, many, many different challenges, all happening at the same time. So it’s and this is whereas we talk later, you see that the need for technology to work alongside. Investing in technology working alongside investing in talent is going to be absolutely critical. Because they need to be able to look at big data in our area of credit or credit or order to cash. We are right in the middle of big data. Everything that contributes to entering an invoice is all whether it’s the name and address of the company, the prices, the products, the product numbers, and so on VAT right? They all culminate in big data, and particularly when we’re in a shared service center environment. The need to break out of a silo mentality if there is one as in each country, each business unit working independently. It’s going to be more essential that the data that’s looked at, in order to the cash area is looked at as a whole. So if you’re responsible for 15 or 20 different countries, that information is brought together. So like Who Who are we selling to and it’s most likely will be found that each country each business unit is very often selling to the same company but in different countries. So the risk from your company, when you add it all together is probably a lot more considerable than is deemed effects if it was looked at within each individual business unit segment. So many different challenges to come. But also I think from the point of view of the whole credit function, order to cash function. It’s an incredibly exciting time because in our area we’re often just looked at as being something back office, a necessary evil if you like, you know but right now we’re you know, we’re hearing the phrase cash is king all the time. Every organization is going to be looking at all of us working in our area, too, as it says here in these slides, to optimize working capital and improve the cash flow. This is probably another area where this is particularly difficult and challenging is over the last 10 years really since the last recession. The vast majority of companies have been very sales orientated now there’s nothing wrong with that at all but often at the expense of the overdue on the trade receivables so it’s quite common to see across many companies that the overdue are in double figures 10-15- 20% And now in amongst all the other challenges that I mentioned earlier, the C suite is going to be expecting that to be brought down brought down very quickly. But that’s going to be a very tall order. Because when you build in these kinds of bad habits, if you like over many years, it’s not something that can be changed overnight. So the emphasis has to be on the quick wins to start with and how do we move how do we improve this cash flow? And again, this is a combination of first of all looking at your data, measuring it, analyzing it, and then seeing where you can reach out to get the biggest cash flow quickly. And also upskilling your people at the same time to improve and to alter their negotiation skills to actually have these conversations. So, various areas we need to look at as we say we need to, we need to look at minimizing the risk exposure. As I was saying earlier, by not working within each individual country’s silo or business unit sign we’re looking at it as the whole region or territory or globally even really, look at the strategies and the practices that have taken place in the past. And I think the word we use these days is disruption and to challenge everything and not just keep doing what you’ve been doing before. And then also looking at different ways for customers to be flexible and how they pay us particularly around electronic payments, and various other things but even within there and as we’ll talk about later, we also need to look at what payment methods do we have with each of our customers, what payment terms do we have and there’s a lot of it’ll be found I’m quite sure that there’ll be a lot of duplication, a lot of variation, and as I’m sure many of you have done or familiar with Lean training. The Lean philosophy is to take out as much waste variation as possible. And to have very simple processes. Again, this comes back to big data. And when you look at all the different component parts of what’s on the receivables ledger payment methods, payment terms, customers credit limits. There’ll be a lot of areas that can be streamlined. So yeah, so over to you, Tanya for the first polling question.

(Host [Tanya] 10:24)
Indeed. So according to you how much of your cash overdue juice is best in class, so is it A) under 5% B) 5% to 10% C) 10 to 15% or D) 15% and above. So we’d like to make that selection so I will play some very beautiful music that is very jazzy. That’s for sure. So it looks like we have a resounding winner of under 5%. So yes, Sam, Mark, would you like to kind of have your point of view upon that.

(Mark Harrison 11:42)
Sure. Sam, do you want to go first?

(Sam Dhingra 11:46)
So it’s exciting. Everybody has said the best in class is under 5%. I think what would also be important to know would be where they stand today, right and as rightly pointed out by everybody obviously best in class would be targeted to be under 5%. And I think COVID Especially making everything digitized has made that even more possible because whether it’s big companies themselves or the smaller companies the overall economy of making payments, getting the payments collected has digitized wide and that is making all this possibility of reducing the overview substantially. Obviously, it varies a little industry by industry in certain industries depending on the payment terms, it may not always come down overdue because some large customers may continue to pay the way they are so it also depends on the customer mix that you have in terms of large customers and the SMEs and also how much of your business is with your top 5% or 10% of your customers. But definitely, I think what COVID has resulted in the A/R space specifically, is the use of technology on both sides, not just the large corporations but also the smaller SMEs. Use of portals, use of direct debit getting increased and bundling the collections and receiving payments together. I think those different use cases enabled on both sides of the buyers and sellers ecosystem have definitely made companies more confident about getting to the best in class.

(Mark Harrison 13:30)
Yeah, I agree with that. The Callista grand our world-class benchmark for receivables essentially is two and a half percent or below overdue. And that is being achieved there. There are large multinationals that are achieving that. There largely comes from the top when there’s a culture, right from the chief executives through the sales teams and so on who are focused on collections, then these are the organizations that tend to achieve these. These are low overdue. Sam said that there are exceptions to that. Particularly I think in the medical industry. I think it’s very often that the selling company is never going to stop deliveries that’s for sure, particularly when it’s a life-impacting product that they’re selling. But there are times when the government departments allocate their budgets and there’s a period of time when the budget has been exhausted and you have to wait for the next allocation. And that’s understandable. And that’s so long as you know, that’s happening that’s fine. I think also conversely, right now and through 2021. And going forward. One of the realities also is that when you’re negotiating with your customers that are distressed that are struggling, it is going to become part of everyday practice. And negotiation to actually allow customers to pay over a long time through Pay repayment plans and other similar methodologies to that. So I don’t think it’s certainly not going to be a negative thing. If the strategy of the company but it has to be communicated through all areas that when your customers are, are saying that they’re struggling and you give them the long term so it’s going to be is going to become a reality that DSOs are going to go up and overdue are going to go up. But I think the significant difference is that these are managed strategic decisions, rather than just a lack of attention to detail and allowing bad habits to occur as I was saying earlier. So yeah, so basically, I think we, one of the lessons to take away from this year is that we can’t allow excessive overdue to happen again and when you get to below the 5% Two and a half percent, that this becomes kind of a mantra throughout the organization because there are plenty more black swans to come as listed a few listed a fear at the beginning of this talk. And I think if COVID has shown us nothing else that we just don’t know what’s going to happen in the very near future. So let’s not take it for granted that everything’s gonna be hunky-dory. Okay, so I’ll hand it over to you Sam. Now and thank you very much.

(Sam Dhingra 17:06)
Thanks, Mark. So yeah, I think that getting from the theme, right like, we talked about how the changes are happening in the way companies are focusing on cash. Cash is the king was pretty much the statement or the tagline for 2020 During COVID for every organization, and what that has led to is specific cash working groups, cash working capital groups, and so on and so forth. And each organization is looking at all the expenses, so every expense has been scrutinized, but they’re also looking at how to retain more and more cash from all their financial processes. And that looks at their customer finance, as well as how they are getting the money back. From the customer side. So both on the vendor side and on the customer side, and that has led to every company believing that the cash that they are able to reserve during COVID is due to those strict measures. Actually, they could frame long-term policies and become a cash excellent group rather than just a cash preserving group, right. So all those cash working capital groups that were formed when the COVID head to kind of look at all the possible avenues to retain maximum cash without having an impact on the business is now turning out to be a long term strategy for most companies, and that’s where the cash excellence groups are being formed. And when we talk about that specifically in the accounts receivable area, that’s will be kind of specialized and we talked to hundreds of A/R leaders. What has happened in their organizations is that each of the themes within the order to cash on the accounts receivables has been kind of reshaped and looked very differently across the organization. When you look at the credit team, it’s not just about mitigating credit risk. It’s also about driving revenue, right? Because they work very closely with sales and the risk that you are able and okay to kind of extension to your customers and client base is driving the sales. So it kind of was very interesting how companies were looking at safeguarding the exposure at the same time continuing the sales and we saw some industries which are much more impacted COVID. Obviously, for them, it was a bit different but most companies who were still running a hard, sustained business during COVID, were able to convert this focus group to a revenue-focused group. Similarly, when it comes to collections, it’s all about customer experience. Now, you don’t want to just be chasing customers, you want to give them delight right? You want them to have a unified digital connection with your company, not seeing collections as one customer service as the other. So how do you provide that unified customer experience is where the companies are looking in terms of changing the strategy of interacting with their clients across different processes, collections being one of them. Let’s look at deductions. It’s all about preventing erosion. This was something again, most companies especially around the CPG and the high volume low-value industries. They were writing off a lot of money because of collectible disputes. And that is what has, again, given the strategies using both processes and technology to actually prevent those in collectible deductions or disputes from even reaching that stage. So companies are going ahead of the curve and preventing those deductions to get to the stage where they become collectible by deploying the right processes and technology and that’s gonna change the way our disputes were seen before 2020. And finally, when it comes to the process of cash application, it’s not just getting the money in, it’s also about clearing it and making sure that all the downstream processes are getting impacted immediately. So from having SLS of one week to five weeks, with BPO vendors and with third parties to apply cash, companies are getting into safe cash application and posting to impact the downstream processes to have a right view of the cash flow that has been coming in for those companies. And Mark, maybe you could also share a bit about what you have learned, right, so pretty much high level, more digitization, across the accounts receivable use cases on both buyers and sellers side. Adoption of contactless payments was normal for B2B space but has picked the base in B2B environment across the word or just in few countries and getting visibility and making sure that the entire workforce has key KPIs defined and are able to work on those KPIs has been sort of high-level buckets of what companies have changed in 2020 their view on that?

(Mark Harrison 22:29)
Thank thanks. I think we just combined the previous slide and this one. The previous slide talked about the credit team, collection teams, deductions and Cash App, and so on. And I think one of the key areas there is when we’re talking about looking at different ways of analyzing our data and our methods are working methodologies. They are kind of traditional ways of going to a credit reference agency and looking at the credit numbers and so on. That’s still important. However, most of the business intelligence in real-time is going to be found from the other areas from the cash on location from the disputes from the collection teams because they’re, talking to the customers every day. And as we know that the best will in the world the data from D&B DRM is always there’s always is always going to be lagging information, right? It’s always going to be reasonably out of date and a customer’s situation is changing every day. And the advantage of working with Highradius is that when you start to win eventually you become somewhat pessimistic and you’re looking for negative trends. Is there an upswing in disputes from certain customers in certain territories or certain business sectors? Are they slowing down their payments? Did they use the pay on the third now they’re paying on the eighth? Yeah, and just the information that’s being received from making telephone calls to the customers and I can’t stress that enough to hear the different changes by actually talking to customers, being skilled in negotiating, asking the right questions. To, to then to be empathetic when they reveal that they are struggling, right. So then it’s and this is so taking that element and then coming back to this slide. So yes, it’s to manage this big data to be able to see these, these trends taking place. Very, very quickly. As Sam said, if you’re allocating your cash by nine or 10 o’clock in the morning, that means you’ve got the whole working day and you’re good to go and then start working with real-time data. So, so yes, it’s absolutely right that companies should be looking to increase their, their digitization, but then the next critical phase is actually understanding what that means. So that still comes back to the point I’m making the everybody involved from all levels of the business have to be you have to be understanding what the data is telling them and then what to do with it. You know, how to how to react to it. And for the whoever’s talking to the customers too, to responding, perhaps different ways that we have done historically. Back to you Sam.

(Sam Dhingra 25:55)
Yeah. No, good, good insights Mark. And as you say, rightly, the way back that provisioning was done before COVID happened, right companies were a bit reactive. And as you mentioned, now, people want to manage their risk in real-time. They want to know what should be their bad debt provisioning, right. And everybody is looking for ways both in terms of process and technology to be able to better forecast, the bad debt in six months horizon because when COVID head, I think that has kind of brought a new type of downtown, where the uncertainty has become more continued, right, because this can happen again, any time and this can be for way longer than people expected. So that has kind of increased that uncertainty which means the way credit and the way bad debt provisioning used to work before 2020 has changed completely. And companies want to take a much granular view, more real-time view on what should they be doing for the next three months. And that has been one of the biggest shifts that we see for example, with most of our clients and prospects as well, that the focus has shifted towards how to look at credit more proactively rather than just having a credit policy. Getting data from credit bureaus. And similarly, the other change that I talked about briefly is has been around. How do you make collections proactive, right, because again, it’s all about knowing when do you reach out to a customer and which customer to reach out at the right time because your customer experience is the key? Everything going digital means the stickiness is also getting impacted a little in terms of how most of the companies are doing business across various industries. And that’s why they’re all focused on this. So kind of very commonly used framework but still applicable, how companies are looking at building a sustainable cash culture, using the people, process, and technology framework. So this is one of the ways to debate how companies are approaching it. Right, especially from the executive perspective, because you as executives are managing your workforce. The messaging that you pass on to your departments plays a key role, the types of processes that you’re defining plays a key role and the technology your organizations are on board, and the mindset that you create for getting the technology incorporated into your processes to play a key role and how your cash culture would be coming along from here on. So, first, I’m talking about people and maybe Mark you could also jump in here, based on the surveys that your organization has run, what has been sort of the biggest change in the terms of what finance executives are sharing, both externally and internally. What has changed their views? Would you like to share your views?

(Mark Harrison 29:05)
Yeah. What we’re picking up is that and one of the pluses I think of people working from home has been that there’s been kind of coinciding with this, this top-down view on the cash is king and to collect as much money as possible. So it has actually reinforced that message from the C suite right through the organization. It’s been very encouraging that the switch down organizations that the relationship between the whole credit function and by the credit I mean, the whole order to cash function, and the field sales teams, in particular, has in a lot of cases gone a lot closer. And actually, sales areas are actually realizing the value of having a very, very competent credit and collections area. So that’s one of the positives. And as you say here, it’s essential that that that message comes right from the top and that everybody is on board with that and it’s a very clear message you know, that but a strong message also combined with the understanding that the world that we’re in so there has to be a large degree of empathy as well. So the practical policy frameworks are to basically ensure that the bad debts, the actual losses are minimized and that the KPIs reflect that as well. Because it’s, it’s a well-known I think it’s a well-known thing that the best strongest relationships are built through difficult times through adversity. So the customers that where you’re going to them as a selling organization, and you’re saying look if you’re struggling, be honest, and tell us and we’ll find a way through this, these are the companies that are going to be with you for the next 10, 20,15, 20, 30 years. Right rather than just putting a block off. Yeah, so and also then something else to fall into this as well, that we haven’t really covered is don’t be afraid to work with third-party collections as well. It’s not a sign of failure. And you’re going to need or when you have a high volume of accounts, particularly lower value accounts, you’re going to need help and they’re in the same position as well that they’re not Hitman or anything like that. They’re also very professional people who can help you to collect the smaller accounts in particular and you can work, on your, your top 20 key accounts. So that’s I think that’s the biggest thing that’s coming through. And those are the positives and then the technology side actually enhances these relationships and the visibility of reporting and so on.

(Sam Dhingra 32:25)
Yeah, I think the very valid point that I was in one of the panels recently when we were interviewing a few execs from our customers, and one of the key changes that those execs shared that they have had is how to define more value-added KPIs for all the task force because it’s not just about doing the day job, right? Whether you’re a collector whether you are a cash application analyst and how are you contributing to the team’s overall KPI is something that has happened, obviously, it used to be there, but now the importance has become much more and it is also important for the employees to have more value-added responsibilities because engaging and retaining talent has been also a challenge through COVID. Because everything is not digital, virtual people are not going into offices and things have changed, and especially for all these shared service organizations, working as back offices for finance for these large corporations. That has been one of the biggest challenges for all the leaders and that’s where they have they have changed the way they approach the people as well. And in terms of process, I think we’ve covered this but just your view Mark in terms of how important now is it to for execs to look at global processes in one unified view and the ability to drill it down for regions because one key thing that we see very often with most enterprises that we deal with, there is always a common requirement about their processes are in a silo. Each region is working in silo back office doesn’t know what front office is doing and so on and so forth. So in their view, companies are investing heavily in providing a unified view to the executives. What is your view on that?

(Mark Harrison 34:22)
That still sadly, that’s still the case largely but there is a shift and there is a realization and it’s the whole point of investing in Highradius is to do exactly that, you know, that you can bring together as I said at the outset all this big data, and then through business intelligence, look at it in whole so many different ways and to inform people in the field that were perhaps not engaged fully before like the sales guys, you can, you can create a report every week that gives them all the outstanding accounts on their portfolio and that can happen automatically, for example. And that’s how you build the relationships because they’re still this kind of phenomenon that people don’t know what they don’t know. Right. So you make up your own kind of preconceptions and opinions based on just kind of what you think it is. You know what people think credit is what credit thing sales are so, so but it is shifting, but there needs to be more of that, you know, and one of the phrases as always irked me is when everybody working in the credit order to cash areas called back office. It’s just a personal thing. Right? But if you’re responsible for your company’s single biggest current assets, and trade receivables are the single biggest current asset in every organization. This is a job that needs to be taken seriously and the people responsible for this need to be invested in all ways. They need to have the best tools, the best talents that you know the best investment, the best relationships, and the best focus and stay there steadily. This is one of the outcomes of what’s happened in the last 12 months or so. So the investments are all levels and yes to look at this globally as as as you said it’s it has to be because that that is the whole point of working with Highradius and having a shared service center, you know is to have everything centralized.

(Sam Dhingra 36:44)
Yeah, yeah. And I’ll share one more insight which I learned recently with more details right before we go into the fourth one, one of the new concepts that you’ll hear more about this year and in coming years will be virtual check services because the whole concept of onshore-offshore back office that is getting revisited because of the digital economy. And virtual shared services is something that you’ll hear more of. I was in one of the shared service events recently and that’s where I learned about it and how companies are approaching it. And technology is a key enabler. Right, because now whether you said, Asia, you said in Europe who said them, US, you’re pretty much working on the same thing, and that will completely transform the whole shared service space as well. With that over to you, Tanya

(Host [Tanya] 37:36)
Fine, wonderful. Thank you very much. Great conversations there. So polling question number two. Do you believe that right now is the right time to undertake the digital transformation project for finance? So A yes, absolutely B No, absolutely not. Or C, I’m sure so I’m holding and while swearing, we’ve waited too long, so I think I can place them as hopefully not quite so exciting music once we wait for that feedback. So let’s see how this little tune goes. What is the end of the poll so guys? What do you think? About this? Most? Yes, absolutely. But there’s a couple of undecided.

(Mark Harrison 39:15)
Sam, do you wanna? Do you want to go first? Yeah, I think that’s a fair sort of summary that you shared that Tanya. So most companies are looking towards that. I’m not surprised that a lot of people have said yes, absolutely. Whereas others may be in a type of industry where the challenge is completely different and the transformation that’s needed is more on the core business aspect, rather than digitizing it. And for them, it could be a slightly different way of looking at it. Maybe towards the q&a site. I would be interested to hear who kind of felt that not sure. Maybe it would be good to hear their perspective. From my side.

(Host [Tanya] 40:02)
Okay, great. Okay. Let’s move on.

(Sam Dhingra 40:06)
Okay, so this is talking about technology. Gartner claims that enterprise software spending is speculated to see an increase of 7.2% this year. And, and obviously, that is quite significant as compared to usually around a year increase and no surprises right with COVID. That change has happened. And it’s not just within AR even outside AR But when we talk about accounts receivable specifically, a lot of CFOs right, they are looking at it from different perspectives. And they are evaluating digital transformation in finance, across different aspects, whether it’s looking at mitigating risk, whether it’s looking at accelerating the deliveries, so that they get the cash faster, or whether it’s looking at completely making the process of connecting with different systems realign so it’s not just the core finance process that the CFOs and the finance executives are looking at. They’re looking at broader processes for digital transformation. And the investment amounts have gone up even though you may feel cash reserves, being the mantra for the last six to eight months, companies are more focused, they are more scrutiny for projects, but the overall spend in digitization has still gone up, which is a pretty interesting fact. Maybe, Mark, you may want to share some insights based on your surveys as well.

(Mark Harrison 41:47)
Yeah, I think there’s always going to be a good reason not to do it if you want to find a reason not to do it. And they say like well now, now’s a difficult time is uncertain, so we won’t do it. And then where things improve again in the world relaxes I say well, we don’t need it. Now because everything’s okay. But I think those that are more looking to the future, it absolutely has to happen the days of working on spreadsheets and all this other kind of stuff has to go and if nothing else, the people working in these companies in the shared services. They are going to be moving to companies that are technology savvy that is embracing this because this is the way the world is moving. There are going to be millions of jobs created or jobs that are going to be called data analysts data scientists in the future. So the people that are working in credit and collections and so on today, have a great career that could still be in credit and collections if they are can be combined with the technology implementations. And if they realize they’re in an environment that is not going in that direction, then the talent that they have is going to move somewhere else. And that’s going to be a downward cycle for those companies.

(Sam Dhingra 43:15)
Yeah. That was a good summary of a sneak-peek into 2021 Mark. That’s how technology is going to create a difference, right? You talked about how digitally bringing everybody together to create a better remote working environment is going to be one of the key challenges or key initiatives for 2021 because that has kind of become the new normal, and we will see a lot of changes in making that even better. Right? And how do you make easy collaboration across the staggered teams, typically through central platforms? And that’s where technology is making huge inroads across the organizations in finance. Specifically, I can share more finance given our space but that has been kind of a key trend that we have seen. More and more companies are looking at a global solution rather than optimizing problems regionally because they want a central platform to perform all those activities and have the right visibility because that’s sort of one of the key attributes that have certainly picked the importance. Over and above just standard operation and improve operational performance improvements. So with that, I will just take a minute to kind of talk about vision 2021 for Highradius, and we’ll open the floor for Q&A. We talked about quite a lot of different aspects. But one key theme which is new and over and above individual products and platforms that automate and make the audit to cash processes proactive is visibility. And that’s why we talk about duotone performance which is our new analytics platform that basically provides you with visibility on how all your customers are performing, how your individual departments are performing. It also gives you the different KPI definitions that you may just configure based on your company’s KPIs and tells you also how your products are performing the products that you may use for individual processes across cash application, credit management, collections, disputes, payments, you can track all of that in one place and find out how individually each customer is contributing because you want to know how much of your bad debt is being governed by our top 10 let’s say not so good customers, right and that’s the kind of insight this performance platform will provide you insights should not be deemed as let’s suggest performance. It’s more like a performance and KPI-driven platform. And our philosophy has always been becoming a dot one company but not going means is 1000 and we believe that we will become not one when you become dot one as let’s say our clients or as an organization. And that’s the theme I would leave with before the Q&A. Anything from your Sitemap to add?

(Mark Harrison 46:26)
No no, I think I think you summed it up very nicely. Thanks, Sam. And it just nicely rounded off everything that we that we’ve been talking about in the last 45 minutes or so.

(Sam Dhingra 46:39)
Good. So back near Tanya.

(Host [Tanya] 46:40)
Yeah. Okay, so we’ve got this last polling question. So I will read it out. And I will let it run and then we can kind of move on to the questions. So let me start that poll. Would you like to learn more about AI-powered A/R automation by high radius? A Yes. Send me some material for my research. Oh, we seem to have another and I think it might be B This time though. Yes, I would like to connect to an expert at C. Yes, but not at the moment or D? No automation for me. Okay, so I’m going to move this back. So everybody has smiles on back to our video portion. Hello. There’s not an Oh, you seem to have lost mark up there. Wonderful. Great. So I see we have some questions.

Sam Dhingra

Director Solution Engineering
HighRadius

“It's not just the core finance processes that CFOs and A/R executives are looking to transform digitally. They are looking at broader processes of the organization for digital transformation.”

Mark Harrison

Founder & CEO
Callisto Grand

“If the back office is responsible for an organization’s biggest assets, then this is a job that needs to be taken seriously, and the people responsible for it need to be invested in all ways. They need to have the best tools, the best relationships, and the best focus.”

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HighRadius Integrated Receivables Software Platform is the world's only end-to-end accounts receivable software platform to lower DSO and bad-debt, automate cash posting, speed-up collections, and dispute resolution, and improve team productivity. It leverages RivanaTM Artificial Intelligence for Accounts Receivable to convert receivables faster and more effectively by using machine learning for accurate decision making across both credit and receivable processes and also enables suppliers to digitally connect with buyers via the radiusOneTM network, closing the loop from the supplier accounts receivable process to the buyer accounts payable process. Integrated Receivables have been divided into 6 distinct applications: Credit Software, EIPP Software, Cash Application Software, Deductions Software, Collections Software, and ERP Payment Gateway - covering the entire gamut of credit-to-cash.