Wake Up To O2C Automation
An evolving technological ecosystem requires companies to keep up with advancements and make sure that they remain current with the times. 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 Artificial Intelligence & 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.”
