Outsourcing non-core activities can be thrifty, but not always nifty.
With cost reduction on every CFO’s mind this year in particular, offshoring or outsourcing part of your credit function can seem a smart way to reduce costs, downsize offices and gain access to experienced collections or AR managers. The pandemic changed this. During lockdown periods, many offshore teams have been less productive. also, What if you could enable your own staff to work productively, collaboratively and flexibly?
Outsourcing can be overlooking not overseeing
Outsourcing contracts are rarely structured to incentivise case closure – it is hard to make offshore teams accountable for getting invoices paid by a certain date. The processes of sending reminders letters and making calls can be followed robotically but when it comes to the drive to succeed, it is often not in the interest of outsourced teams to do the extra mile. In addition, once you have handed over the case data for collections or invoicing teams to work on, you may not have much chance to oversee day to day performance, set and rebaseline targets or adjust the collections processes and artefacts in an agile way. In many cases, outsourcing companies can’t take all the detail about cases you’d like due to the limitations of their system. So can you enable outsourced AR or collections teams better, or should you insource the function again for tighter fiscal and performance management?
Taking it in house
Corrivo is the cloud-based AR platform for eInvoicing and collections at scale. The automation allows your business to generate any number of invoices from order data received from your stock management system or ERP. Corrivo can be used to reduce the amount of staff dedicated to invoice creation and issuance – giving you the cost reductions you seek but with more control. The modern, browser based system is fresh and easy to use, which makes it attractive to younger employees who are used to dashboards, metrics and online systems. It makes light work of AR so your AR team is less pressured. Corrivo issues invoices, dispatches them and confirms delivery. Customers receive emails that take them to branded customer portals to view, download, query or pay invoices. Everything else is managed smoothly by your teams from there.
Control over collections
The automation and workflow tools within the collections module make your teams extra efficient. Some of our clients used Corrivo to take collections back in house, having offshored it with little benefit to their DSO and cost benefits that did not stand up to the test of time. The strategic decision to take collections back in house is one many big businesses are facing this year as credit risks for business customers are growing in many areas.
Control from afar
Corrivo has also been used to enable an offshore team, managed by a third party, to run collections but with the visiblity and insight into invoice and account status that they need to do a better job. Before their collections agents had Corrivo logins, they were unable to answer questions effectively with up to the minute information. The company was proud of its promise of good customer service and there was a mismatch between what happened at the front end of the sales process and how they handled collections. By giving the collections teams the window they needed on invoice progress and account status across multiple companies in a group, the collections team productivity and effectiveness rose considerably and the company now has the best of both worlds – lower cost, skilled labour without the real estate footprint, and better customer service and collections performance.
Percentage gains
With management oversight and handy dashboards keeping your teams focused on KPIs, your business can be at least 40% more productive with Corrivo compared to in house systems based on a mixture of accounting packages and order management software.
Your Collections and Customer Service teams, onshore or offshore, in-office or at home, can easily view all associated PODs, ePODs or Contracts or notes, can approve and send preformatted reminder emails and use the handy call scheduler to keep on top of reminders calls and keep bringing DSO down. All you need is the right tools for the job and
Doesn’t that sound better than having your collections team miles from you and your customers? Put AR and collections back where the heart is. At home.
