Monthly Archives: September 2022
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September 21, 2022

Pandemic Illuminates Current Challenges – Fuels Growth of O2C Technology Market

By Clint Kordsmeier, VP of Sales

According to a recent industry review by Gartner, the Order-to-Cash Technology market has been growing rapidly and is expected to reach $3 billion by 2024, at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.1% (2019-2024).

The CIOs and Finance Teams surveyed, agree that the pandemic has fueled the demand for O2C applications, as organizations are “urgently optimizing their internal processes to enable faster cash collections”. Many companies are experiencing inefficiencies managing customer interactions coupled with the growth in SaaS computing and advanced technologies such as AI.

Here are few interesting summations from their findings:

  • Existing ERP systems and homegrown applications are lacking in functionality needed for running optimized O2C operations. The pain is further compounded when managing customer interactions and information across complex ERP landscapes. The need to make changes quickly and frequently based on ever-changing economic and client requirements have proven to be too costly and simply take too long.
  • Enterprise IT buyers and finance teams are looking for platforms with embedded AI and automation capabilities instead of investing in additional ‘build’ platforms and tools. Capabilities such as predictive risk-scoring and expected invoice pay are available as out-of-box capabilities in some of the leading O2C applications like Webcollect
  • Applications that enable collaboration between Accounts Receivable teams, commercial teams and their customers are a key priority for organizations evaluating O2C applications. This has been further driven by a focus on improved customer experience and a shift towards remote work or distributed workforce models.

While the expected growth of the O2C technology market is good news for solution providers like O2C Pro and our partners, it is a better indicator of the need for O2C process automation and optimization and the value it can bring to your organization.  This is true from an efficiency and effectiveness perspective, but also customer and employee satisfaction which are key focus areas for finance leaders.

September 2, 2022

Simple Steps to Help Unlock Working Capital

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By Clint Kordsmeier, VP of Sales

For many A/R departments, Covid-19 has meant increased pressure to improve cash conversion and reduce DSO. As your organization looks to mitigate cashflow risk associated with disrupted supply chains, reduced sales, and other client challenges, you can help unlock working capital, quickly turning receivables into cash while improving the Customer Experience.

Here are the simple steps:

    1. Digitize, Automate, & Optimize Order-to-Cash Processes
    2. Leverage Intelligence for better/quicker decisioning
    3. Move upstream for problem avoidance
    4. Optimize the Customer Experience
    5. Choose the right technology partner

Digitize, Automate, & Optimize Order-to-Cash Processes – Improved metrics, reduced costs, data security and visibility can be obtained, but the focus must be on improving the overall customer experience and harnessing the collective power of human and technology synergies to optimize results. We are also dealing with unprecedented labor challenges related to working from home, the great resignation, and the rising costs of employment. These things have further amplified the need for automation, remote access to critical data, and a UX that keep employees happy.

Leverage Intelligence for better/quicker decisioning – GI Joe used to say: “Knowing is half the battle.” That was probably true when you were only able to report on past actions, react and respond accordingly to hopefully improve future results. However, with real-time analytics, AI, and Machine Learning, you can now harness the power of your data to manage O2C processes and outcomes proactively. These deep insights into problems and solutions allow you to properly quantify opportunities for improvement and enact policies that benefit your customers and your company.

Move upstream by implementing sound credit policies and billing improvements – Once you have your collections and dispute management processes in order, and are covering your entire portfolio, identifying, understanding, and quantifying issues and challenges. You can then turn your attention to solving challenges before they become problems, by implementing sound credit policies and improving billing accuracy.

Optimize the Customer Experience – In order to keep customers happy, you have to deliver a positive customer experience. A customer-centric O2C solution like Webcollect, can improve customer onboarding by streamlining the credit application, automating the review and decisioning process, and ensuring critical data is easily obtained, eliminating the frustration and back-and-forth time delay. You also want to look at the customer billing and payment experience where customers are now requiring more flexibility and additional options for receiving invoices and statements, collaborate on issues, and make payments based on their preferred methods, including click-to-pay and self-service.

Choose the right technology partner based on experience, flexibility, and support – Your customers are demanding options and flexibility, so should you. The O2C Technology you choose must be flexible and adaptable, easy to integrate into your ecosystem, and address your specific needs and challenges. The technology provider itself, must also be flexible, easy to work with, and a company with proven success that you can trust, during the sales cycle, the project implementation, and beyond. You must be diligent in your evaluation…ask them about their implementation and on-going support. What happens when you need additional training for new users, want to add new features, or maybe reduce your utilization.

While these steps are fairly simple, and certainly not earth-shattering, they are critical, today more than ever. With ongoing business risk due to the lingering pandemic, global supply chain uncertainty, new labor challenges, and rising interest rates, following these steps will allow you to thrive in the midst of this uncertainty. The O2C Pro team is ready to help…promoting that final step to the top of the list, should make the other steps not only simple, but easy.

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