{"id":73135,"date":"2024-11-21T14:57:20","date_gmt":"2024-11-21T13:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cashontime.com\/en\/?p=73135"},"modified":"2026-01-06T09:06:54","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T08:06:54","slug":"automation-accounts-receivables-dso-wcr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cashontime.com\/en\/news\/automation-accounts-receivables-dso-wcr\/","title":{"rendered":"Voice of the customer: the impact of accounts receivable automation on DSO and WCR"},"content":{"rendered":"
St\u00e9phane LACHENAL<\/strong> (SAMSE Group Treasurer) is in charge of growth operations, productivity issues and the quality of information provided to internal customers. At COLAS, Fran\u00e7ois Levasseur<\/strong> is Director of Transformation. At FORUMDIMO 2024, they talk about their use of CashOnTime to automate accounts receivable, DSO<\/a> <\/strong>and WCR. A workshop led by Fanny RONDET<\/strong>, CashOnTime Sales Manager at DIMO Software.<\/div>\n

How does accounting deal with cash?<\/h2>\n
At SAMSE<\/strong>, the customer service department acts mainly as a first-level collection service<\/strong>, making out-of-court reminders. With regard to collections, the majority of tasks have been dematerialized and automated, in particular lettering<\/a> <\/strong>thanks to the CashOnTime Allocation solution. The absorption of customer flows has been structured at treasury level. At SAMSE, some fifteen people<\/strong> are dedicated to this task, as there are two business sectors<\/strong>: B2B and B2C. They manage payments, whether made online, by SMS, by e-mail, etc. In the B2C sector, although the baskets are smaller, the volume of transactions is much greater.<\/div>\n
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COLAS<\/strong> has a highly decentralized<\/strong> organization. In France, the Group manages a large number of large companies via 200 profit centers \u2013 each with a bank collection account \u2013 scattered throughout the country, with 1 to 3 members of the administrative team close to local operations to handle invoicing, reminders, debt collection<\/a><\/strong> and customer collection. Fran\u00e7ois LEVASSEUR explains: \u201cOur customers often consider that a single IBAN corresponds to a single legal entity, and that they don\u2019t need to manage 200 COLAS France IBANs in their ERP to send each payment to the right branch. We were looking for a tool that would enable us to link incoming payments with the corresponding invoice as standard<\/strong>\u201c.<\/div>\n

What prompted you to think about cash optimization?<\/h2>\n
For SAMSE, the motivation was productivity<\/strong>, as St\u00e9phane DELACHENAL explains: \u201cIn the construction sector, the preferred method of payment is automatic LCR (Lettre de Change Relev\u00e9). Some companies want to take back control of payment and change their terms and conditions, switching to bank transfers. This has led to a decrease in LCR-type payments<\/strong>, which was a simple method for us, and an increase in transfer-type payments. The situation became more complex<\/strong>, creating a lettering problem.<\/div>\n
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COLAS, for its part, has changed its calibration: \u201cUntil 2020, we were based in France on 6 regional companies, which were able to link their collections with their 40 or 50 profit centers. At the beginning of 2021, for reasons of governance and simplification, we merged these 6 entities into a single one<\/strong>. We ended up with customers with a territorial and national reach who paid us on a single account for potentially 200 business units\u201d.<\/div>\n

DIMO Software: the choice of consulting and support<\/h2>\n
Initially, SAMSE encountered a problem with a local authority made up of five town halls but a single treasury<\/strong>. This meant that one settlement could be used to letter the accounts of several town councils.<\/div>\n
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\"automatisation\u201cThese were often small, overdue invoices, which meant a lot of time-consuming lettering<\/strong>. The solution worked very well right away,\u201d recalls St\u00e9phane DELACHENAL. Fran\u00e7ois LEVASSEUR admits to having consulted several software vendors, most of which were focused on DSO optimization, which did not correspond to the company\u2019s needs: \u201cWe are strongly oriented towards local authorities, but we have rather limited room for maneuver when it comes to improving the speed of debt collection. DIMO Software really focused on our problem<\/strong>: automatic lettering of incoming payments (automatic identification of the principal with the corresponding invoice(s)). They proposed a POC over a few days, with a set of tests on our invoices and customer collections. We achieved a 65% recognition rate without any configuration effort<\/strong>, which validated our choice of DIMO Software\u201d.<\/div>\n
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DISCOVER OUR SUPPORT<\/a><\/p>\n

Change management: a real issue when it comes to optimizing and automating workflows<\/h2>\n
According to Fanny RONDET, it\u2019s important to give business users control over the tool<\/strong>, so that they buy into the new project and can manage discrepancies or make trade-offs. \u201cAt COLAS, within three days everyone was ready to use the solution. It took no time at all to get to grips with it<\/strong>, and adoption of the tool was almost instantaneous\u201d.<\/div>\n
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The approach was different at SAMSE, where the solution initially ran on empty: \u201cWe then indicated to the operational staff the tasks to be carried out and displayed the scores. Offering a tool that works well reassures and relieves colleagues\u201d. St\u00e9phane DELACHENAL adds: \u201cAs our ERP was rather complex in terms of cash-in-hand, it proved much easier to use the CashOnTime solution, which was much more fluid and fun to use<\/strong>. The product\u2019s ergonomics and ease of use were much simpler. It\u2019s nice to have a modern, user-friendly tool<\/strong> that doesn\u2019t require 15 clicks to complete a transaction. What\u2019s more, the same screen is displayed for a population of treasurers who are used to doing reconciliations. It\u2019s a tool that integrates perfectly into a central or decentralized business process.<\/div>\n

CashOnTime takes advantage of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence<\/h2>\n

Customize settings<\/h3>\n
Fanny RONDET explains that CashOnTime differentiates two things: \u201cThere\u2019s machine learning<\/strong>, but there\u2019s also a parameterization layer<\/strong>. We customize the parameters according to our customers\u2019 activities and businesses, to build strategies that deliver results right from the first file injection. The AI learns from users\u2019 actions<\/strong>, and from encounters between banking information and invoices, to enable the tool to go beyond the simple context of the information contained in banking files at a given moment. This is what will enable us to achieve significant lettering percentages.<\/div>\n
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CashOnTime also relies on the identification of the paying customer<\/strong>. There are four criteria:<\/div>\n
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