Reducing DSO and improving customer experience by integrating financial software in the customer journey

Reducing days sales outstanding (DSO) in a positive, customer-friendly way is essential for business continuity, but at the same time requires utmost accuracy in customer communication. Automating many time consuming and manual credit management tasks is inevitable to make these ends meet. Flowize offers a powerful business process automation tool that breaks down information silos by interlinking with all necessary internal and external information systems.

 

Credit management is rapidly becoming a vital function for businesses with large customer bases due to ever-shorter sales cycles. Reducing days sales outstanding (DSO) in a positive, customer-friendly way is essential for business continuity, but at the same time requires utmost accuracy in customer communication. Automating many time consuming and manual credit management tasks is inevitable to make these ends meet. Flowize offers a powerful business process automation tool that breaks down information silos by interlinking with all necessary internal and external information systems. Using up-to-date data, it provides automated workflows for customer communication trough any desired channel. Reaching debtors with highly personalized messages via channels that work best for them, from WhatsApp or text messages to email or printed letters, has now become faster and more accurate, ensuring better payment and excellent customer experience.

 

1. Future proof credit management

The increasing importance of credit management

The fast-paced digital era offers speed and convenience to customers at an unprecedented scale. Quick and easy access to information leads to short sales cycles and accelerated buying behavior. In this changing environment, credit management rapidly becomes a vital function to secure financial performance by decreasing days sales outstanding (DSO) and keeping a keen eye on the cash flow.

Good customer experience

However, proper credit management also extends to creating an excellent customer experience. Happy customers pay faster, are more loyal, and provide repeat orders. According to Graydon, over half of all bankruptcies are attributed to poor credit management. This puts the credit manager at the intersection of the customer’s interests and the interests of the company when it comes to excellent business performance. In this unique position, credit management has become one of the pacesetters for continued growth.

Comprehensive process

Credit management (and DSO) involves more than just reminding customers to pay. It includes the complete process from order management, credit analyses of customers, fulfillment, and shipping, followed by invoicing, account receivables management, debt collection, and reporting. Each step in the process is a touchpoint between the customer and the different business functions of the organization. Striking a balance between financial targets and customer experience at these touchpoints is the defining factor for successful credit management.

Shift to prevention

The ever-shorter sales en purchase cycle now shifts the emphasis in credit management from monitoring and execution to the prevention of poor payment performance. This means determining the customer’s creditworthiness in advance, monitoring customers for credit risks, engaging in customer relations, and detecting late payments in advance. Preventing bad debt from rising also involves a close investigation of order management, flawless shipping, and accurate invoicing.

Unlocking information silos

To keep track of every piece of information that impacts payment of invoices, the access to data in separate information systems is indispensable. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems list information relating to contacts, agreements, previous interactions, while order management keeps track of received orders via email, sales reps, Internet, or EDI. Once the product has been shipped from the DC or warehouse, or the service has been delivered, the invoice is created and sent to the customer for payment. Because credit management has an overarching function, unlocking information silos in different business functions is the key to future proof credit management (and reducing DSO).

2. Debt collection trends and challenges

Common practice

In an ideal situation, operations run smoothly, and customers, as well as employees, are satisfied. The reality is that each customer and every business process entails several risks that need to be managed and mitigated daily. A large part of the credit management work still involves extensive manual investigation. Following the trail of interactions, before payment issues, requires information from all kinds of sources, from business data suppliers to correspondence and ERP-data on project delivery, invoicing, and logistics. This comprehensive process requires time-consuming due diligence to approach each customer correctly and improve the sales to bad debt ratio.

Omnichannel communication

Part of the digital age is the great variety of communication channels that consumers have adopted to suit their lifestyle. The average debtor carries multiple obligations and uses more channels than ever before to organize and pay debts. A customer-centric approach inevitably requires omnichannel communication, including text messages, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger as well as handwritten letters, email, and phone calls. Integrating these channels into business information systems is quite a challenge. But it will lead to more productive debt collection and decreased DSO. Innovative business process automation tools, such as Flowize, enables faster adoption of omnichannel communication through proven solutions.

Collaborative consumption

One of the significant trends in customer behavior, enabled by online technology, is the idea of putting usage over ownership. This is called collaborative consumption. Why buy a drill if what you want is a few holes? Or own a car for years on end, if you only occasionally need to go somewhere distant? Skipping inconveniences and enjoying the desired service on demand has shaped a growing breed of customers that demand simplicity, transparency, and accessibility outside office hours. And most of all, they are used to being in control through self-service platforms, such as payment portals in case of credit management, or personal portals from service providers such as Spotify or Netflix. They expect mobile interfaces to be a part of the collection process, and the use of AI to make everything run more smoothly.

Automation is key

The only way to handle complexity at speed and scale is automation. Although it might sound contra dictionary, the use of technology is conditional on achieving a personal, customer-friendly experience. Not only internally, using workflows and setting up links to databases in existing information systems, but also externally, connecting to communication platforms of businesses and consumers. A higher degree of automation will eliminate error-sensitive manual processes and increase speed. Most tellingly, it will enable proper cash flow management and a sound financial position.

 

 

3. Convergence of finance and customer experience

Impact on stakeholders

The need for due diligence stems from the impact of credit management on debtors as well as internal stakeholders. Sales representatives are immediately affected by interference with their customers from the financial side. Cutting off deals, due to negative credit information, won’t go without at least some strong arguments. The same goes for marketing efforts aimed at customer retention or customer service centers that need to account for arrangements and commitments. But all of these disciplines wouldn’t last without the required net-working capital to keep the business running. The retention of satisfied and accurately paying customers is a joined goal.

The complete customer journey

Although the customer journey is generally attributed to marketing, sales, and onboarding activities, the fact is that being a customer starts after placing an order and enjoying the products and services on an ongoing basis. The most frequent encounter with the company is not through sales or marketing but finance, delivery, and support. The ‘debtor journey’ is where customer experience collides with finance. Well-orchestrated customer communication, through appropriate channels and based on accurate information, will result in a smooth and pleasant experience for the end customer. Answering up to higher expectations will safeguard the companies’ capital in its customer base.

Barriers for improvement

For most of the businesses, credit management and debt collection, are still lagging in automating error-prone manual processes compared to other business functions. This offers a huge opportunity to leap forward, especially for enterprises with large customer bases. If the benefits are apparent, the logical question is: ‘What is keeping companies from implementing a connected platform and using automated workflows?’ This starts with a shift in culture, from a reactive to a proactive attitude regarding credit management. Apart from the drive to improve the process, the necessary IT support and project management often exceed the available capacity. Also, the lack of expertise in this rather specialized area calls for the right partners. In the end, the risks involved in failed projects are a substantial threshold to rather keep going the way things are.

 

4. Connecting the dots

Make or buy

To stay on top of business, a clear focus on core activities leads to the decision to make or buy. This especially goes for supporting functions such as Finance and IT, which in the past have tended to expand continuously. However, the speed of technological innovation makes it virtually impossible to keep up with new developments, while maintaining the existing IT as well, including legacy systems. This is why more organizations prefer to buy instead of making innovative solutions and stick to in-house handling of mission-critical processes. Partnering with specialists that offer proven new concepts such as Flowize, gives them a head start over of reinventing the wheel.

Business in control

The centralized function of most enterprise IT-organizations results in an overwhelming demand for innovations and support activities. From the business side, this frustrates flexibility as they have to get in line. Another issue regarding custom in-house development is the lack of scalability. For every change or expansion, new interfaces need to be built, and the implementation requires individual handling. Due to the complete support and scalable design of Flowize, the involvement of IT is kept at an absolute minimum. This makes it possible to become more self-supporting from the business side while still being able to access specialist support when needed.

Integration with best of breed

As a best of breed solution, Flowize connects to the internal IT-landscape, enriches the data using external sources and provides highly automated omnichannel communication to customers. The cross connectivity makes it an ideal solution to handle the multi-system IT-landscape. This not only unburdens the IT department but offers more control and more functionality to credit managers.

 

5. A complete Risk and Credit management solution

Introducing Flowize

Flowize is a complete suite that enables businesses from every seize to connect their systems, create the desired content, and automate business processes using customized workflows. Since the introduction in 2015, the solution continuously evolved based on the needs and demands of a growing number of organizations. It now supports 150.000 operations and 100.000 members. The ability to unlock information systems due to functional integration with APIs and databases makes it a robust solution for order-to-cash management.

Intelligent customized workflows

Order the cash involves all business processes related to receiving and processing customer sales orders, delivery of goods and services, customer communication, and payment. Similar to customer journeys, Flowize can support the ‘debtor journey’ with highly customizable workflows. For instance, whether to send an email or to send a printed letter, attaching external credit information, or offering access to an online payment portal. Based on a set of rules, the system will check en continue to the next step. Once the connection is established and the desired workflows are set up, the system saves enormous amounts of time and manual labor.

Connecting systems

The advanced integration allows Flowize to manage the data structure and deliver data from every information system, using only one connection. This comprises internal data sources as well as external sources such as Graydon or CreditSafe. The possibility to add fields, without having to adjust the source system, enables personalized communication without burdening the IT team. This allows for productive cooperation between business and IT.

Content builder

Issuing the right message for different customers on different occasions is mostly enhanced using the content builder application. Using the content builder, you can craft personalized messages in Flowize, so no need to exit the system. Customized PDF and HTML outputs that are desktop ready and optimized for mobile are generated and sent automatically within the existing workflows. Personalized messages, addressing debtors individually, are decisive to counteract aversion to payment issues.

Integrating apps

The integration with a variety of popular apps allows for communication with customers through their favorite channels. The drag and drop function to add new applications into existing workflows saves time and effort in getting the right IT support. Integration through simple drag and drop makes it easy to stay relevant for customers through platforms that connect to their daily life, from Facebook to Twitter, WhatsApp, or Text.

6. Looking forward

The ongoing integration of online platforms in the daily life of customers makes highly automated credit management inevitable. Accelerated buying behavior and short sales cycles force credit management to catch up without losing track of accurate, compliant – and most of all – customer friendly communication. Future proof credit management starts with assessing the current situation and setting up a business case for the implementation of a proven and scalable solution such as Flowize or any other system that offers the required functions.

Getting started

It all starts with gaining knowledge and developing a clear vision. For more information, references, and a comprehensive demo, feel free to contact Flowize. We’re there to support you.