Achieve More Cash Flow And O2C Efficiency With AI

Companies strive for economic efficiency, but find that many of their processes are not designed to keep pace with the shortening change cycles brought about by digitalisation. This has a negative impact on the overall efficiency of the company.

The reasons for this include silo thinking, legacy systems and untapped potential in automation. In addition, many departments work with different software systems and do not sufficiently harmonise their KPIs and routines. These process interruptions cause additional work, which takes up both time and money.

Example Of Accounts Receivable Management

This is illustrated by a tangible example: Customer receivables and payments are managed in accounts receivable management. Credit checks are crucial in order to minimise the risk of non-payment. The basis for this is precise customer data. A lack of access to this data or incomplete data increases the days sales outstanding ( DSO ), which is a crucial KPI in the order-to-cash process. In addition, liquidity remains tied up in the receivables process for longer.

Neglecting the potential of digitalisation has far-reaching consequences. O2C inefficiency significantly impairs customer satisfaction. Particularly in cases of dunning or debt collection proceedings, this leads to termination of the contractual relationship by the customer in over 11% of cases.

The effects of inefficient order processing also extend to companies’ cash flow. In a value creation study with order-to-cash processes, McKinsey found that an industrial company wasted 3 to 5% of its operating profit due to errors within the sub-steps.

The most effective remedy for inefficiency is specialized order-to-cash software. This supports companies in automating and optimising their order-to-cash process.

GAMECHANGER

To optimise the order-to-cash process in times of delivery bottlenecks, increasing cost pressure and price-sensitive customers offers your company several advantages:

• More transparency throughout the entire O2C process – from the first point of contact with the customer to the completed payment. A better overview enables companies to draw valuable conclusions and continue to reduce inefficiency.

• Higher productivity at all points in the order-to-cash workflow. Automations relieve the employees involved of monotonous, recurring tasks and give them time to further improve the entire process.

• Fewer errors in the complex sub-steps thanks to structured work.

• Smooth processes and shorter order processing times, which lead to a high level of satisfaction on the customer side and among the employees involved in the O2C process.

A BCG analysis underlines the positive effects of a digital order-to-cash transformation on the profitability of companies. In particular, the use of an O2C platform makes it possible to increase sales by up to 3% through dynamic pricing, among other things. The reduced effort throughout the entire process saves 15 to 30% of the costs. And the collection periods could be shortened by 30%.

Are you looking for a suitable platform for your O2C transformation? Get to know the order-to-cash platform from collect.AI.

Optimised O2C processes increase cash flow, avoid order backlogs and strengthen customer relationships. An order-to-cash automation software is crucial to achieve this. It helps streamlining all sub-steps and brings clarity to the O2C process.

Typical functions of order-to-cash software include

• Reporting for O2C sub-steps
• Risk assessment of debtors
• Automatic invoice dispatch
• Real-time analyses for better decision-making
• Receivables monitoring

The following comparison shows which specific improvements are possible with O2C software.

Without O2C software

• Manual entry of customer data
• Time-consuming data check and manual addition of missing information
• Data is distributed in different systems or is only available in analog form
• High time and cost expenditure due to lack of coordination of work steps
• Increasing complexity in the O2C process due to new payment methods and new sales channels
• Risk of data protection and compliance violations

With O2C software

• Digital recording and validation of customer data
• Automated data validation
• O2C data is available digitally throughout the entire process
• Fast and cost-efficient processing of orders
• Simple, intuitive O2C workflows
• Data processing in accordance with the GDPR and other legal requirements

collect.AI offers the right order-to-cash tool if you not only want to digitalise your order-to-cash management, but also set it up in a state-of-the-art manner. It allows you to handle the entire life cycle of each individual receivable end-to-end and achieve the best possible O2C results for your company.

What is special about collect.AI’s approach is that it uses the advantages of AI to continuously optimise your order-to-cash process. Behind the platform is an AI technology that consists of four AI assistants:

• Billing & Invoicing reduced dunning rates
• Dunning & collecting prevents payment defaults
• Checkout & Payment always finds the right payment option for customers
• Data enrichment AI ensures up-to-date and meaningful data

The assistants integrate seamlessly into your O2C process in order to achieve results from risk management to debt collection and to improve your O2C performance granularly and down to the individual workflow levels.

The biggest advantage of AI-based O2C software is its ability to learn. The knowledge base at collect.AI is formed by a growing network that includes companies from sectors such as banking, insurance and energy supply with different business models and processes.

The knowledge of collect.AI’s AI is based on more than 100 million transactions and 10 million consumer data and is constantly improving. With each additional order-to-cash transaction within this network, the O2C efficiency of all participants increases. The protection of data is guaranteed at all times and its GDPR-compliant processing is certified by TÜV Saarland.

In addition, the integration capability is one of the biggest advantages of order-to-cash software. Thanks to the openly documented RESTful API, iPaaS integrations for data exchange and connectors to standard ERP systems, the order-to-cash tool from collect.AI fits seamlessly into your IT system landscape.