Your customers have a wide range of specific financial and accounting processes, depending on their activity, operating methods, country or size. Faced with this multiplicity of information, organization and adaptability are essential. And because of their disparities, the means of contacting and reminding your customers differ. The result is an unbalanced, inefficient workflow. Workflow consists of a circuit of processes and tasks, distributing deadlines, controls and validation methods between the various players in a process, and providing each player with the information needed to carry out his or her task. Without workflow, your company’s processes are disorganized and disparate.
So how do you build a balanced workflow to adapt your reminders to each customer?
Choosing the right media, at the right time and with the right message
Selecting the medium (e-mail, SMS, post, etc.) that best addresses your customers is the key to ensuring that your message reaches its destination. For example, a craft business that sends a reminder by SMS will use a different medium from an industrial company that sends a reminder by e-mail to its CFO. Then there’s the question of timing. Many customers wait for reminders before paying their invoices. And the right timing differs between a company that generally pays before the due date and another that pays late. Then there’s the right message. Sending a reminder in the language of the person you’re talking to will help to turn your message into cash. Not to mention the way in which you address customers who are strategic to your business will bring you settled invoices and a lasting good relationship.
Workflow, lettering and automation
Adapting your reminders requires organization, in order to identify strategic or most important customers, and then classify them. For example, sending an account statement to a strategic customer or a major account would be more appropriate than a reminder. The next step is to automate your dunning processes with the appropriate workflows, backed up by a receivables management solution. Among other things, these workflows give structure to your dunning requests. Combined with a lettering tool, your invoice dunning process becomes intelligent, with the detection of paid and unpaid invoices to avoid unnecessary reminders. In this way, you can prioritize dunning actions in advance of the due date, so that the corporate customer can be sure that nothing stands in the way of payment.
Digital transformation, your company’s image and resources
Companies that do dunning are usually paid before those that don’t. By adding digital transformation to your financial processes, you turn them into assets for prevention, organization and optimization. This means you no longer have to rely on costly external service providers, such as collection agencies and lawyers, to settle disputes. By making your dunning process digital, you adapt to your customers, demonstrate good business practices and enhance your credibility through an agile and appropriate organization. In addition to enhancing your professional image, your in-house resources can free themselves from time-consuming administrative processes and concentrate on higher value-added tasks.
Like a musical score with millimetric precision, an efficient workflow harmonizes your portfolios, your internal resources and your customer relations.
The right CashOnTime, for time-saving and peace of mind
A good co-pilot for your workflows is CashOnTime. Easy to use, it automates dunning processes. “CashOnTime software makes it easy to automate dunning processes, with precise monitoring of both internal and external customer disputes. This enables us to anticipate risks,” explains Nathalie GELSOMINO, Administrative and Financial Manager at SERFIM Group.
Using this kind of software not only saves you time, but also gives you peace of mind. You can be sure that you’ll be able to invest or pay your suppliers on time. By using financial management software, your company is able to provide its financial partners with an improved view of accounts receivable, facilitating access to bank credit and therefore its ability to invest, innovate and grow. A conclusion confirmed by Nathalie GELSOMINO: “Good cash management is essential in today’s business world.”
