Focus Areas

Purchase To Pay

Additional Research

Webinar Archives

Case Studies

Quick Finder

Webinar Archive

SolutionSource

Contact PayStream

Vendor Services

Corporate Services

PayStream Voices

Home

PayStream Advisors delivers unbiased, third-party market trend information, assessments of financial automation technology, and innovative ideas to business leaders in healthcare, consumer billing, finance and treasury, accounts receivable and accounts payable.

Read More

Receivables and Collections Management 2.0: Emerging Solutions and Increasing Automation

Publication Length: 75 Pages
Publication Date: 1/1/2008
Publisher: PayStream Advisors

Register or login,
to access this report.

Forgot Password?

PayStream Advisors has developed the report "Receivables and Collections Management Release 2.0: Emerging Solutions and Increasing Automation" for credit, treasury, accounting, finance managers and information technology managers who have active interest in:

This report focuses on the automation of Receivables and Collections Management processes including enhanced transaction processing, collections/dispute management, and risk management in the order-to-cash cycle. PayStream's research has uncovered a strong business case for the automation of collection processes.

The main themes of this automation case are:

RCM tools encompass all of the tasks that ensure timely payments by customers: evaluating credit risk, assuring invoice accuracy, applying payments, managing collections, resolving disputes, and analyzing data. RCM’s primary components include:

Credit Facilitation, including credit scoring, credit application processing, reference checking, ordering credit reports from credit bureaus, financial statement analysis, new account approval, order approval, credit limit decisions, accounts receivable portfolio monitoring and credit risk management.

Pre-Bill Management and e-Invoicing, which involves identifying invoice errors, ensuring vendor compliance, generating an accurate invoice, invoice and statement generation and transmittal and distribution, trade promotion planning, contract management, Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP), and Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP).

Remittance Processing including financial EDI, EFT (electronic funds transfer including ACH), auto-cash algorithms and routines, payment-to-invoice matching, cash settlement, cash forecasting, credit card processing and matching already-on- account credits, debits, and unapplied payments or adjustments.

Collections Management, including workflow automation driven by a collection strategy engine, prioritized collection activities, integration with A/R data, a tickler system, activity logs, account and invoice level notes, integrated communication tools, faxing capabilities, e-mail, invoice reprinting, other forms of data export, payment plan calculators, imaging tools and auto-dialers.

Dispute Management, including dispute and deduction resolution, chargeback processing, exception reporting and automated escalation processes, a routing engine, collaboration tools, document sharing, and tools for root cause identification.

Reporting and Analysis, including cash forecasting, dashboards, email alerts, query capabilities, canned reports, report generators, workload balancing, exception reporting, cycle time analysis, portfolio risk management, customer intelligence and month end reporting tools.

Due to the complexity of managing billing, customer care and collections, the order-to-cash process has not received as much automation attention as other areas of the finance organization. Finance and accounting software modules have until recently only focused on order release, billing and remittance processing with minimal attention to credit and collection utilities.

In addition, many organizations have implemented ERP solutions that are woefully inadequate in terms of receivables and collections management (RCM) functionality. These enterprise systems often replaced legacy or home-grown systems better suited to credit and collections management. As a result, RCM solutions are increasingly critically important to maintain proficiency in the corporate financial supply chain of accounts receivable (A/R) management.

The inadequacy of most A/R processes is particularly apparent with corporate management’s call for greater system integrity and more accurate reporting. The application of SOX standards is continuing to generate business and system improvement pressure as well. As a consequence, a growing set of credit, collection, dispute and settlement management automation tools have emerged, dramatically reversing the fortunes of the corporate credit department in their never ending struggle to efficiently manage the corporate receivables portfolio.

The good news is that automation drives down long-term transaction costs while improving productivity. As a result of automating collections and nothing more, companies are realizing a 10 to 20 percent reduction in daily sales outstanding (DSO), a 25 percent reduction in past due receivables, and a 15 to 25 percent reduction in bad debt reserves. Additionally, companies who are using collections automation see increased productivity and are able to hold down staffing costs. Costs of installing the collection software are recouped in as little as two months and in usually no more than six to nine months.

Featuring

9ci, Inc.

SunGard AvantGard

Capgent

eCredit

ezBackOffice

Global Visions WorkflowAR

Oracle

SAP

Sentinel