Create a Cash Culture in your Organization
Part 3 – Streamline Disputes
When cash flow is under the microscope, it’s typically the accounts receivable and sales functions under scrutiny. Lines of inquiry often focus on how to increase sales, and how to ensure customers pay invoices promptly. But for organizations desperately seeking cash, one area that often attracts attention is the dispute management process. Creating a cash culture across all departments can be the important piece of the puzzle.
Dispute management can be a lengthy and disorganized experience both for the customer and internal teams dealing with disputes. With cash owed to your business tied up in disputed invoices, as well as the risk of customer churn posed by a poor experience, it’s one area you really can’t afford to ignore if your aim is to create a cash culture.
In order to bring your dispute management process up to speed, disputes should be quickly categorized as they arise, with clear lines of responsibility, processes and priorities for each category. Next, all relevant information should be easily available to the owner and stakeholders responsible for resolving the dispute. Finally, the strength of this process lies in ongoing monitoring, reporting of KPIs and continual improvement – with a formalized and streamlined process, you’ll accelerate time-to-resolution, leading to happier customers and more cash collected.
Best-in-class dispute management goes hand–in–hand with a best-in-class technology. As part of Sidetrade’s Augmented Cash platform our case management software, Digital Case, helps you put customer experience at the heart of your sales-to-cash cycle.
Digital Case optimizes the entire process by automatically categorizing and prioritizing disputes and consolidating all relevant case information under one Case ID – avoiding delays in starting the claim handling process and balancing the workload across the teams. Built-in KPIs and reporting tools help you track and improve your understanding of case drivers and customer retention impacts. Plus, when you implement our solution, we offer unlimited user licenses – meaning case handlers can share dispute information quickly with all relevant stakeholders, and everyone involved can recognize the direct impact on cash flow your new, improved dispute management process is having.
What were your thoughts on part 1 and part 2?
Keep your eyes peeled for part 4.