A clever CFO finds the weak points in the finance function and executes digital transformation in a way that opens up possibilities for important changes in operations and sales. A good few of our clients have implemented the Corrivo eInvoicing platform as much for the productivity benefits as for the commercial advantages it helped them to realise. In annual reports, when you see operating costs a few percentage points lower and considerably higher working capital figures, you might ask yourself whether Corrivo was the key that unlocked value across the business. Here are four reasons that board members love Corrivo.
International Expansion
Selling overseas and buying a company based in the EU to gain a foothold in a new market is a big step. Commercial advantages aside, it has major implications for finance and IT. A conservative CFO would consider it a risk due to the complexity of adding another language and another set of processes to the Accounts Receivables picture. Accounts Payable is not so hard to change. If the group or PLC has a good, procure to pay system in place, the economies of scale can be transposed easily to the payables side of the newly acquired business. Accounts Receivable does not scale as well unless you have an eInvoicing platform capable of handling many languages and currencies.
The majority of companies using Corrivo for their electronic invoicing sell across Europe, and for them, the single, unifying platform was an enabler of change. Without a single, scalable system and one set of invoice templates for all areas of the business, the time it would take to get their brand fully implemented in the overseas market would be far greater. They would have the business, but customers of their EU sister company would not know the group’s name. By contrast, when you have Corrivo for eInvoicing, variations and changes per country can be quickly accommodated.
eCommerce Integration
eCommerce is a critical part of virtually every CCO’s strategy today. The pandemic gave a rocket boost to eCommerce growth in business to business and business to consumer sales. eCommerce, however, is not just selling online. For the efficiencies to stop there and not follow through to a swift instantaneous online invoicing service would be like having a car without an engine. It may look great, but it won’t take you anywhere. Electronic invoicing, especially machine to machine eInvoicing using EDI, oils the wheels of commerce. It does for cashflow what a shiny website and online advertising does for sales. Look at the annual reports of some a few international businesses, and eCommerce will always get a mention. The strategic importance of eCommerce cannot be overstated.
Restructuring
Some of our clients have made strategic decisions to focus their salaried workforce on their core business, making virtually everyone in the business report indirectly to the COO. To do this, any back-office functions that could reasonably be outsourced were. In one client’s case, this took the form of keeping invoicing in-house (AR) but outsourcing collections to a third party overseas. This enabled them to refocus their property portfolio purely on operations – less space dedicated to office use, more for stock and the delivery fleet. Corrivo helped the company to get better value and performance from their offshore collections team. Firstly, the new efficiencies in electronic invoicing meant they had fewer and fewer collections issues. The number of invoices beyond terms dropped considerably. Secondly, they were able to give the offshore team access to Corrivo so that they could view a complete history of the invoice and account they were working on instead of just the limited information that their own IT system fed them – which amounted to nothing more than a copy of the unpaid invoice.
They reduced the number of FTEs, and also reduced the risk associated with meeting their generous pension contributions. This is often part of a company’s back to basics strategy of refocusing on core business activities. The result is lower operating costs and higher profitability, even if sales figures are depressed by market conditions. Rationalisation of the property portfolio also has a beneficial effect on operating costs.
Paying less to get paid
CCOs and COOs also benefit from higher profit margins for the company as a whole once Corrivo is implemented. By lowering OPEX through eInvoicing, and speeding up the time from order to cash, but keeping pricing the same, the company’s bottom line profitability went up. Not all eInvoicing platforms will give you a clear return on investment. However, as the cost to implement and run eInvoicing software from a number of our competitors is so high that it erodes the cost-saving benefit of automation. eInvoicing should not cost you more than paper or PDF invoicing. It should never be seen as a cost when it can be an asset that generates and locks in value for money at every stage of the order to cash process.
