1. Make it easier for your customer to do business with you
   Offering multiple payment methods — such as credit cards and automatic payments, or an online option for customers to view invoices and statements — provides greater flexibility for the customer and improved cash flow for you. Are you making it easy for your customers to pay and communicate with you?
   
   
2. Tighten up your credit approval
   Are you performing credit evaluations on all new customers? Is your credit policy appropriate and followed by your sales department? Does your customer service department flag new orders that do not have a completed credit application? Do you update credit information on a regular basis?
   
   
3. Sharpen your invoicing process
   Are your invoices accurate and sent on time? Are payment terms and due dates clearly written on invoices and any other communication sent out to the customer? Have billing addresses and accounts payable email addresses been verified before bills are sent out? Do you provide incentives for early payment? Are you sending out automated payment reminders.
   
   
4. Utilise reporting and get to the bottom of root causes
   Are you measuring performance against goals? Do you regularly review aging reports? Are you reporting on collections forecasting? Do you have an understanding as to why customers are paying late (e.g., invoice discrepancies, product issues, etc.)?
   
   
5. Effective and efficient collections
   Do you have a collections process in place? Do employees have the tools they need to prioritise, call and email collection efforts? Do they have enough time to follow up on all past-due accounts? Are they able to efficiently keep sales and customer service in the loop on disputed invoices? Do you consistently follow up on customer disputes and late payments?
   
   
6. Incentivise your customers
   Do you offer incentives, such as early payment discounts? For example, you could offer a discount for paying within 10 days when your payment terms are net 30 days. This discount can be offset by speeding up cash flow, savings on loan fees and discounts from creditors.
   
   
7. Know when to walk away
   No one wants to walk away from a customer, but do you know which customers are routinely inconsistent, unresponsive or continually paying invoices late, despite offering outstanding services? Has your company considered dropping bad customers from your business list? DSO increases are often driven by a few large customers. Has your collection team worked closely with those customers to understand what is driving delays?

DSO is the most commonly used metric utilised by credit and AR professionals to analyse the success of their collection efforts. The more quickly you collect, the better your cash flow situation will be … and even a small improvement to reduce DSO can go a long way!

For even more ways to improve your cashflow situation download our free eBook:
8 Accounts Receivable Management Strategies to make your process Best-In-Class

Or visit our website for more information about our Order-to-Cash solutions.
Or feel free to contact us; our O2C experts would love to help you to transform your O2C processes.

Claire Barker

As Marketing Specialist for Esker UK, Claire is responsible for generating leads for Esker's business process solutions specifically within the area of Accounts Receivable through a variety of marketing channels. She has been part of the Esker family since 2019.

Read more insights from Claire Barker

1. What’s influencing and possibly changing BPA in the marketplace at present?
   Obviously the ‘big’ buzzword for influencing BPA at present is digital transformation and how evolving technologies impact the way in which organisations can compete through automating internal processes and streamlining business practices across multiple areas of the business. When I’m asked to highlight what are the specific main influences, I would have to say that it’s a combination of 3 main factors; people, process and technology.
   
2. How are these influencing factors impacting the way organisations are using and adopting BPA?
   The speed at which people can manage and absorb even wider ‘big data’ requirements is becoming more and more difficult, so implementing automated solutions that allow this to happen more easily are now business critical. Employees can then be empowered to concentrate on better supplier and customer relationships. Having the right automation technology in place helps eliminate the almost impossible task of manually handling masses of information involved in daily processes from all aspects of the Order-to-Cash and Procure-to-Pay cycles.
   
3. What are the main benefits with having BPA implemented and what are the impacts if you don’t?
   BPA is at the heart of allowing an organisation to maximise their competitiveness in the marketplace. Rigidity is detrimental to a dynamic business that wishes to take advantage of being able to make quick changes when required due to continuously demanding customer requirements. Therefore, BPA should enable this through being easily customisable and collaborative between different systems within the organisation such as custom business rules, web portals and chat tools, to name a few. Having simple integration with existing software is also beneficial when implementing BPA meaning reduced upfront costs, downtime or interference with day-to-day operations. BPA will also enable data to be much more visible through intuitive user dashboards giving more control for smarter and more strategic decisions.
   
4. What are some of the challenges when implementing BPA?
   Obviously when talking about any process automation within a business you have to buy in from your employees. Any new process change can be difficult to on-board, let alone one that may be perceived as a threat to a person’s job function such as automation. What needs to be conveyed is an understanding of this perceived threat and reassurance that automation is simply a means to enable that person to spend less time on non-value add tasks and more time on those that will help improve relationships internally as well as externally to help grow the business.
   
5. Where is BPA heading over the next year in terms of changes in technology, implementation and capability?
   BPA will become increasingly important and effective with the continued advancements in robotic process automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Collaborative networks will continue to grow and information will strengthen between suppliers, organisations and customers.
   
6. What advice would you give to an organisation when considering BPA?
   Make sure before any implementation goes ahead that your employees and all stakeholders involved in the process, are informed and engaged with the positive changes that the technology will have to their roles, both as individuals and as part of a wider team throughout the organisation. Look at current processes and pinpoint where quick gains can be made through process automation and don’t try to bite off more than you can chew! Finally, embrace new technologies such as those using the latest AI-driven advancements to help your organisation’s processes to become faster, more visible, scalable and compliant in order to reach your goals.

If you would like more information about Esker and how we can help your organisation to automate your business processes, please contact us today.

Alistair Nicholas

Alistair is the Managing Director of Esker Northern Europe

Read more insights from Alistair Nicholas