Overview

To establish a more efficient, future-ready accounts receivable and billing process for a property management software company, Biovell ’s Data Transformation & Analytics experts conducted a full-scale assessment and redesign of the company’s Order-to-Cash capabilities. By automating manual reporting activities, building a centralized hub of account information, and removing technology silos, the team generated substantial labor and time savings in perpetuity.

Expertise delivered

  • Accounting workflow automation
  • Dashboarding and visualizations
  • Centralization and single source of truth
  • Employee training and knowledge-sharing
  • Implementation and recommendation roadmap
  • Transformation governance and leadership

Challenge 

When a private-equity-backed provider of property management software sought to move beyond its highly manual accounting workflows, decentralized org structure, and siloed information systems, it wondered where to start.  

As much as 60% of their time was spent researching billings and collections information to respond to customers, and customer experience was suffering as a result. The company needed to address back-end and front-end concerns quickly and ensure savings could reach the bottom line. 

The first step of the transformation journey was a current-state assessment of the Order-to-Cash (O2C) process and the people and technology that powered it. 

How We Helped 

The Data Transformation & Analytics experts at Biovell immediately got to work with a rapid 4-week assessment that addressed all areas of the O2C process, which led to the identification of 26 major initiatives that would significantly enhance process efficiency and core business results. Some of these focus areas included the creation of a consolidated accounts receivable (AR) dashboard, forming a specialized collections team, and implementing automation for repetitive manual reporting. 

As part of these initiatives, the team performed a number of critical functions, including: 

  • Automating processes within the O2C organization using Alteryx. 
  • Leading and championing all workstreams and change management efforts with continuous communication, progress updates, and visualizations for key stakeholders. 
  • Developing a future-ready implementation and recommendation roadmap to guide conversations, project priorities, and further improvements. 
  • Building a centralized hub of account information in PowerBI where accounting and finance staff can reference and access necessary accounts receivable and billing data with the right permissions, user types, and filtering capabilities. This included five unique dashboards that surfaced critical insights for all O2C staff and executive leaders. 
  • Standing up a new, more efficient way of working, leveraging technologies such as Alteryx, PowerBI, and PowerApps on a Microsoft SQL Server. 
  • Establishing a new refund and escheatment process.  

Results 

Accounting teams and senior leaders gained newfound visibility through a purpose-built single-source-of-truth platform for accounts receivable and billing showing all: 

  • Closed/process billing inquiries. 
  • Credits. 
  • Invoices. 
  • Payments. 
  • Cancellations. 

No longer were various working groups required to sift through disparate systems or manually aggregate information to perform routine O2C tasks. And through automation and employee training on the new processes and tools, the team delivered more than 1,535 hours of monthly time savings, which was returned to collection activities with fewer errors. 

With these quick wins, roughly $4.7 million of bottom-line savings opportunities and $11.7 million of working capital, respectively, were identified. 

The initial results of the O2C transformation were so successful, company leadership asked CrossCountry to help implement additional medium-term initiatives and similar projects within the Treasury function.