Our conversation with Elizabeth Cassady at Potter Electric continues as we switch focus to the accounts receivable process. If you missed Part 1, you can find it here. Note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Esker: So far we’ve been focusing on accounts payable. When did you turn to Esker for help with your collections management process?
Elizabeth: That was probably last summer. The collections process within Epicor was extremely manual. My collection person liked to say that she’d start at the beginning of the alphabet and by the time she got halfway through, it was time to start over at the beginning again — you never reached the end.
My accounts receivable manager attended your user conference and came back totally energized to move forward with Esker as a solution on our AR side as well. She had seen it in action there and talked to a couple of other customers who had used the tool very successfully, so we decided fairly quickly to move forward with Esker.
As I mentioned, we had chosen Esker so that we could use it to help us grow, so it was more of a matter of when, not if, we would move forward. Our experience at EAUC accelerated that for us.
Esker: Do you have any specific benefits that you have seen as a result?
Elizabeth: We have seen increased collection activity, and I think our day sales outstanding (DSO) has decreased about three days. It’s kind of seasonal in our business. Winter is a slower period for us and for our customers, plus our customers tend to pay slower. I think this summer we’ll see a dramatic decrease in our DSO compared to prior years.
It’s also pointing out those problem accounts — the ones that truly do need to be called on. Esker allows my team to focus their time on the customers that don’t respond to the automated payment reminders and really do need that verbal nudge to pay us, which I think is great.
Esker: You mentioned the automated payment reminders. What other features are you using that you’re seeing a benefit from?
Elizabeth: One benefit, I think, to our customers is that they can click on the link that goes along with an emailed invoice and go right to their portal to pay us. From my perspective, the fact that a customer can go online and pay their account via credit card is huge because prior to this, the customer had to call in and we had to take their credit card number, which put liability on us. With the customers handling that through the secure portal with Wind River, we’re not even involved anymore and it’s safer for everyone. I like the fact that we’re not dealing with credit card numbers anymore.
The other big benefit for us as a management team is the dashboards that lay out collection calls needed. The timing of those calls, how many calls are made on time, how many calls are made late — having that visibility and knowing what the staff is doing on a daily basis is so helpful. We’re in the process of developing goals surrounding the different KPIs that are tracked so that we can have concrete goals that we’re all working to achieve. It definitely helps with managing the team and workloads and providing visibility into cash flow, expected cash flow, etc. That has been very helpful.
Esker: Is there anything else you would like to add about your experience with Esker?
Elizabeth: I can’t say enough good things about our implementation team. They really did a good job of sitting with us and understanding why we wanted the system to do this, or why we wanted it to do that. They talked us through what was needed in the system versus what we were asking to do. If there was a native solution, they would point us towards that; if it was something that we could do differently to make the native solution work, they would point us towards that. If that wasn’t going to work, they were very eager and willing to help us write the code to make it work. It’s a solution that works very, very well for our company.
Thanks to Elizabeth for speaking with us! If you’re interested, you can find the completed case study here.