The major benefit is that as early as 8:30 a.m., three quarters of the transfers are up to date! Thanks to CashOnTime Allocation’s ergonomic design, we can view all transfers, from all companies, on a single screen. This is particularly useful for multi-business transfers, i.e. when a customer pays an invoice to another company.
Who is the Securitas Group?
Securitas France offers security solutions to companies of all sizes and in all business sectors, including manned surveillance, mobile security, remote surveillance, airport security, training, risk management, consulting and auditing, electronic security and corporate hospitality services. The group is organized into a dozen legal entities with branches throughout France. It offers companies integrated security solutions with technology, based on its “Protective Services” offering. Financial management is based in the Paris region.
The objectives
- Automate transfer processing
- Increase productivity with a global view of dunning requests
- Absorb the company’s growth by keeping the same teams
A broader scope
The collection division, based in Caluire since 2015, manages all transfers for the French entities. The Group had no in-house tools to manage transfers, which were carried out manually by a team of 6 people. The decision was taken to automate this repetitive, time-consuming and non-value-adding process. The scope of processing originally concerned 36,000 customer receipts and 3 banks to receive them. Over the years, it has expanded through external and internal growth. The decision to install a tool was designed to absorb this increase, while maintaining the same teams. In 2007, the Group began using GEC Lettrage (the former version of CashOnTime Allocation) within one of its entities. This solution was subsequently deployed throughout the Group from 2014 onwards. In 2020, the Group switched to CashOnTime and now manages the 150,000 movements of a dozen of its entities.
Gradual choice towards a proven solution
Laurence Contion, Accounting Manager, has attended several meetings to present the CashOnTime solution. She points out that, at first, she didn’t believe in the tool’s effectiveness for the most complex cases and for customer account identification. “30% of our transfers turn out to be particularly complicated to process, because we work with major accounts who may pay several invoices in one payment. Sometimes, there are several customer accounts in the same transfer, which complicates allocation“. It was a customer testimonial heard at a DIMO Forum that convinced her to opt for CashOnTime.
“We were apprehensive about Saas. At the start of our discussions, the offer was reviewed several times, but we didn’t realize that we had many tools that worked in this mode. Without Saas, there would have been no reporting or Artificial Intelligence, which would have deprived us of all the development possibilities offered by this technology. Last but not least, CashOnTime fit in perfectly with Securitas’ budget.” Laurence Contion, Accounting Manager.
Smooth project deployment
Around ten man-days over two months were mobilized between the first day of analysis and production. The CFO was in charge of the project, while Laurence Contion acted as functional key user administrator, enabling progress to be made on the functional rules.
One person from the IT Department was added to the project to work on interfaces, making a total of 4 people on the Securitas side.
A beneficial switch from GEC Lettrage to CashOnTime
“The IT department had a lot of problems with imports. Interfacing open invoices overnight between the ERP and GEC Lettrage took a long time, several hours at the time. With CashOnTime, this stage is completed in less than 3 minutes!” notes Laurence Contion, who adds: “The solution has been very well accepted internally; staff have found it easy to use, and have been very receptive to this new feature.”
Locating the invoice number is always a sensitive issue. CashOnTime’s parameterization criteria enable it to recognize invoice chronologies of various types.
Different matching criteria can be set for different companies. GEC Lettrage’s ergonomics and multiple filtering and sorting options are a real bonus, as it was not possible to filter by issuer name.
Concrete functional benefits
The automatic matching rate has now reached 76%. It is impossible to reach 100% because some information is missing from certain customer invoices.
These 76% are sent as early as 8:30 in the morning. This is the major benefit: customer accounts are up to date for three quarters of transfers! Thanks to CashOnTime’s ergonomic design, we can view all transfers, from all companies, on a single screen. This is particularly useful for multi-business transfers, i.e. when a customer pays an invoice to another company. We can also export data and use a wide range of sorting criteria and filters, which is a great help in our day-to-day work.
Export to collection
What remains to be processed after the 76% is exported to Excel quickly and easily, to inform the debt collectors of what is still awaiting matching. This residual amount is not only complicated to identify, but also provides information for the collection department. The latter has an overall view of the reminders it needs to send out.
Keys to success: rapid transformation and responsive support
For the IT Department, the switch from GEC Lettrage to CashOnTime did not give rise to any technical difficulties. “When GEC Lettrage was implemented, the ERP in place at the time was Navision. However, we underwent an ERP change in 2013, migrating to PeopleSoft. All we had to do was install connectors and change file formats to adapt the interfaces,” explains Laurence Contion.
The installation of CashOnTime went quickly and smoothly: “The collaboration with DIMO Software was very fruitful: the consultants listened to us and quickly understood our specific requirements. What’s more, interfacing with PeopleSoft was also very straightforward”. In addition, the use of the tool absorbs peaks when volumes increase.
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