In Focus Risk
Opportunities in an order-to-cash world
Credit and collection managers have seen continued development of their roles in recent years, and that trend is unlikely to slow
Stephen Skipwith Freelance O2C/P2P process consultant and change manager
stephen.skipwith @
order2cash.co.uk
There can be few of us working in finance roles who have not noted the pace of change in our workplaces increasing as transactional automation and robotics combine with end-to-end process efficiencies. As a freelancer with over 25 years’ experience my own CV history demonstrates this change to me. If I look at my CV of 10 years ago all the
roles are in credit and collection management challenges, whilst my latest one is replete with order to cash (O2C) and process roles, I still remember asking to be put through to the Purchase Ledger team in my early career. One of the key accelerants for this rapid
change is organisations seeking efficiencies on transactional processing areas with business processes aligning to O2C, purchase to pay (P2P) and record to report (R2R) methodologies.
Four pillars Corporate finance functions are increasingly adopting four-pillar models along end-to- end separations of O2C, P2P, and R2R functions and processes with the fourth and independent pillar of Corporate Governance, Compliance, Treasury, and Audit a very visible presence. Whilst functional end-to-end alignment
may achieve transactional processing efficiencies that benefit the organisation in terms of bottom line profitability and
40 There are certainly strong arguments
The gulfs between transactional tasks and those demanding creative and communication skills represent an area where the credit and collection professionals are most likely to thrive and add value in an O2C aligned function. I would argue there are four key areas of opportunity
freeing available resource for value adding tasks, it is never a panacea for all ills. For those of us who have worked in credit
and collection roles over the years, we do not need Big Four consultants to tell us what is not working in our organisations, as we can deduce that from the late-paid invoices we need to manage. Transactional processing errors and
efficiencies may play a key role in the delay from turning fulfilled and invoiced orders into cash at the bank, but they are probably only one of several reasons present.
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for transactional processing efficiencies and accuracy but challenges created by organisational culture, direction, and the complex interactions between its internal and external stakeholders will always remain. It can certainly be argued that the skill
sets developed by credit and collection professionals place them ideally within their organisations to address these challenges. The gulfs between transactional tasks
and those demanding creative and communication skills represent an area where the credit and collection professionals are most likely to thrive and add value in an O2C aligned function. I would argue there are four key areas of opportunity, as below.
Four keys l Functional alignment and career progression – behavioural key performance indicators (KPI) such as credit notes or queried invoices raised as a percentage of invoices issued, and an analysis of the same by business area and product line, can be very telling. If these KPIs point to weaknesses in
order processing and billing, an O2C- aligned finance function offers a multitude of opportunities to the credit and collections professional to extend their influence to these downstream business activities.
May 2019
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