CASE STUDY Duracell
Following an unsuccessful A/R outsourcing project, Duracell decided to bring operations back in house. At the same time, the company shifted to a new ERP system that entailed manual processing on SAP. This resulted in a severe lack of visibility among the teams, with collectors not knowing if a payment had been applied or not.
The company was especially keen to make progress in the following areas:
Cash Application: Manual processing and aggregation of remittances and payments led to an unnecessarily time-consuming process. The deduction coding process was also heavily reliant on a manual workforce.
Collections: There was low visibility into the payment status of customers, which led to confusion among the teams. They also lacked the ability to add extra customer information into invoices, and pulling data from web portals was completely manual.
Deductions: Duracell lacked visibility into the resolution time for deductions, and manual collaboration and aggregation of backup for trade deductions also caused an overall slow process.
In short, Duracell was aiming for four key outcomes: speed up processes free up analysts for higher value work improve visibility across the cash landscape improve responsiveness to customer needs.
Duracell decided to adopt a HighRadius Cloud Solution. By doing so, the company was able to auto- extract remittances from various sources without any manual intervention, while also auto-linking payments with the open invoices and ensuring automated deduction coding in an accurate manner. Easy deployability also ensured seamless integration with their existing ERP system.
The results were telling, with a range of indicators all pointing towards greater efficiency, visibility and flexibility – things that have proved central to improving Duracell’s operational performance. As Ganadeep Rey Patlolla, Duracell’s business systems consultant and program manager puts it: “Now, once HighRadius did all the heavy lifting, the grunt work, to put them all in one place, it meant that the analyst had to just work on the research.”
Results
Ultimately, Duracell was able to achieve: 60% savings in employee resource costs same day auto-cash posting and higher speed of reviewing invoices
percentage improvement in cash application hit rate modifying capture rules and creating one standardised rulebook.
Rash Hullait, VP strategic accounts, EMEA, HighRadius.
Hana Bísková, digital transformation principal, HighRadius.
Adriana Modan-Pavel, director of finance
transformation, HighRadius.
Bísková’s third key factor centres around new technology and how it enables innovation. “Companies need to keep up the pace with their competitors – understandably, they feel that if they’re not doing it when others are, they will be behind the curve.” This, she explains, tends to be felt more at the top management level, where strategic focus on process improvement is imperative.
A tangled web
A closer look at client journeys shows that, for many businesses, especially those that may have grown through some form of acquisition, moving towards a more integrated digital solution for their AR system is driven by the complexity and inefficiency spawned by the ever-growing number of bolted-on systems and processes.
As new units are added, Hullait explains, legacy systems become more entwined and entangled, leading to all kinds of confusion and obfuscation. And even the best can fall victim to the ‘spaghetti’ syndrome: “Amazon is a good example, where they’ve tried to use the standard template but the minute you start to get into acquisitions, you’re bringing in different legacy systems, different architecture, as well as the physical elements there are the softer elements, such as corporate cultural nuances – not to mention the historic aspects.”
Hullait says the job for HighRadius is to “unravel that spaghetti” that companies have subconsciously created. “Obviously one of the key things when you make an acquisition is the speed of integration and the speed to value, and that’s once again an area where we can help, because we’re flexible in the solutions we provide,” he says. Whether that’s auto-aggregating remittance from various sources, automation of cash reconciliation and deduction coding or a reduction in lockbox keying-in fees, HighRadius products sit alongside existing systems. “Crucially, we’re not expecting companies to rip out existing infrastructure or ERPs, which would be an expensive business,” says Hulliat. “Instead, we focus on ultimately providing a solution that allows us to integrate with the existing technology
Finance Director Europe /
www.ns-businesshub.com 27
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