Revolutionizing Your Order-To-Cash Management
AR KPIS
As C-suite executives in finance departments increasingly strive to optimize the order-to-cash experience, the need for advanced technology supporting such initiatives is becoming better understood. Achieving superior KPIs through leveraging order-to-cash software solutions has become priority for many organizations. By harnessing the full potential of cloud-based software systems, modern companies have seemingly mastered the challenge of creating seamless customer communication, expediting collections and achieving superior performance results.
However, utilizing such solutions does require level of know-how and practical experience. As C-suite executive in charge of your companies order-to-cash strategy, you need to ensure that the technology you employ is not just cost-effective but that it is effectively managed, integrated and utilized. To assist you with optimizing your order-to-cash KPIs, below is step-by-step guide on how to use an order-to-cash software solution.
1. Gather the Necessary Resources
The first step towards successfully managing the order-to-cash process is assembling the relevant team of experts well-versed in the technology, software and finance aspects of the process. The team should include chief financial officer, controller, finance or accounting manager and specialists in customer service, contracts and billing. Assembling this team will put you in better position to understand the order-to-cash cycle, identify opportunities for improvement and deploy the software solution most efficiently.
2. Review Your Current Order-to-Cash Cycle
The second step should be undertaking comprehensive review of your companies current order-to-cash cycle. At this stage, the assembled team of experts should detail the process. They should consider activities such as customer order processing, invoicing and collections, payment processing and reconciliation. Further, their review should begin to identify inefficiencies in the order-to-cash process and suggest ways to tackle them through the implementation of cloud-based software systems.
3. Identify the Most Appropriate Software System
Once you have understood the current order-to-cash process, the next step should be to identify the most appropriate software system to be integrated into the process. To do this, consider your companies existing data storage, accounting and finance systems as well as the processes you wish to automate. Moreover, select provider that offers software system with the specific features necessary for improving the order-to-cash cycle.
4. Establish Communication Pipelines
Before deploying the software system, establish clear communication pipelines between the teams that handle customer inquiries, accounts receivable and collections. Doing this will ensure that digital communications between customers and the company are timely and reliable, allowing for prompt complaint resolution and payments. Through digital communications, customer queries concerning orders, billing and payments can be tracked, traced and resolved quickly and efficiently.
5. Rollout the Cloud-Based Software System
Once the communication pipelines have been established, proceed to rollout the cloud-based software system across the organization. Ensure that stakeholders and users are properly trained such that they are familiar with the system and its features. With the knowledge and capability to leverage the cloud-based system for its core purpose, the team can now begin to realize the benefits of order-to-cash optimization.
6. Optimize Collection and Payment Cycles
By utilizing cloud-based order-to-cash software solution, modern organizations have the capability to shorten their collections cycle and facilitate the timely processing of payments for quicker access to cash. With such solutions, businesses can create automated payment plans, provide customers with different payment options and follow up on overdue payments. Such initiatives are instrumental in boosting sales and reducing overdue debtors.
7. Monitor, Measure and Improve
Finally, ensure that the cloud-based software system is effectively monitored, measured and improved throughout its usage. Keeping an eye on KPIs such as the days sales outstanding, bad debt provisions and billing-to-shipping accuracy is vital to understanding the performance of the order-to-cash cycle. Besides continuously leveraging analytical insights through the software system to improve the user experience, your team should be prepared to investigate and address systemic issues arising from using the system in an effective manner.
Conclusion
For C-suite executives in charge of the order-to-cash process, selecting and implementing an appropriate order-to-cash software system has become an increasingly pressing task. While such cloud-based services can reduce costs and deliver more efficient customer experience, executives often lack the know-how of properly leveraging them. Following the outlined step-by-step guide, however, can improve order-to-cash performance, optimize collections, expedite payments and yield improved KPIs.
