If you want to optimize your company’s cash flow, you need to pay particular attention to customer receivables management. Customer receivables are the amounts owed by customers for goods or services sold by the company.
It is therefore essential to ensure that invoices are paid on time, and to take appropriate collection action where necessary. This is the only way to guarantee revenue. The digitization of accounts receivable makes this task much easier. Here’s everything you need to know about digitizing your accounts receivable and how it can benefit your business.
Understanding the digitization of accounts receivable
The digitization of accounts receivable involves using digital tools and implementing dematerialized management processes to optimize the management of accounts receivable. Digitizing accounts receivable means standardizing and centralizing all invoices. This not only increases efficiency, but also reliability.
What’s more, this practice reduces the costs associated with managing invoicing and debt collection. Simple, repetitive tasks can be handled by the collection software according to defined parameters, while staff can focus their efforts on the most complex or highest value cases.
Digitizing accounts receivable is therefore an excellent way of optimizing risk management, by prioritizing files and taking preventive action, such as sending reminders a few days before invoices are due. In short, the advantages of digitizing your accounts receivable are :
- saving time ;
- precise analysis;
- informed strategic decision-making ;
- reliability ;
- cost reduction.
Consequently, the digitization of accounts receivable is one of the best practices to adopt. However, the deployment and success of such a project requires the involvement of sales, finance and accounting departments. What’s more, it’s essential to choose the right tool for current and future needs.
What are the stages involved in digitizing your customer service department?
There are 4 main stages in a customer relationship digitization project:
| Step | Description |
| Analysis of existing processes | Identification of current practices and possible improvements |
| Choice of technological solutions | Selecting the right tools for the job |
| Setting up tools | Software installation, configuration and integration |
| Training and change management | Raising awareness and training teams in the use of new tools |
Analysis of existing processes
The first step in implementing a digital customer service project is to take stock of existing processes: What are current practices? What is the billing and collection policy? What’s working and what could be improved? This will not only make it easier to draw up specifications, but also to define the automation scenarios to be programmed.
Choosing the right technological solutions
Depending on the size of your company, the number of customers, the amount of outstanding receivables, your internal organization and your budget, you will not turn to the same technical solutions to digitize your receivables. Some collection software solutions, such as CashOnTime, adapt to your needs, offering a wide range of easy-to-use features. Here are just a few examples:
- dunning and debt collection;
- disputes and deductions ;
- credit and customer risk ;
- accounting lettering ;
- customer portal ;
- online payment ;
- accounts receivable management ;
- collaborative management ;
- etc.
Setting up tools to manage accounts receivable
Secondly, digitizing collections involves implementing the selected tools within the company. This mainly involves installing and configuring the software according to the company’s practices.
Team training and change management
Finally, to make the most of the digitalization of the customer relationship, it is essential to provide training for your teams. Directors, managers and employees must be included in this process. Everyone needs to learn how to use the tool according to their own business and needs. It is also advisable to follow up on the use of the collection platform, to ensure that everyone is able to use the tool on a daily basis.
What are the main technological solutions?
The main technological solutions for digitizing customer accounts are :
- customer relationship management software (CRM solution), which enables the sales team to monitor the progress of files, such as outstandings ;
- electronic invoicing platforms that enable invoices to be drawn up in just a few clicks, sent by e-mail and tracked for payment ;
- lettering of customer receipts, making it much easier to reconcile accounting entries and identify unpaid bills ;
- automated customer reminders, to reduce unpaid invoices.
What are the best practices for successful digitalization?
To optimize the digitization of accounts receivable, it is advisable to adopt certain best practices, including the involvement of stakeholders from the outset of the project. As we have seen, it’s best to include the employees who will be using the tool at every stage of the project. This will enable them to choose the best collection software for their needs, as well as facilitating change management and adoption of the tool on a day-to-day basis.
On the other hand, it’s important to tailor solutions to your company’s specific needs. It is this adaptability of the tool to your needs that will enable you to really optimize your collection processes to make them as efficient as possible.
In addition, the issue of customer data security should not be overlooked. Make sure you choose a tool that complies with personal data management standards and is compatible with your other software.
Last but not least, successful digitalization of the accounts receivable process hinges on performance analysis. It’s essential to be able to track key indicators via dashboards that are updated in real time. This enables you to adjust strategies and processes.
Conclusion
The digitization of accounts receivable can be seen as a real competitive lever, since its deployment offers so many advantages. In today’s increasingly competitive and fast-moving markets, it is essential to be able to rely on reliable, high-performance solutions.
