Discover the Future of Order-to-Cash

Today’s CFOs are operating in a world where finance trends and processes are constantly changing. In response to increased demand, organizations are rapidly undertaking automation of business processes. This blog discusses the latest trends and developments in finance that are expected to have the greatest impact on the order-to-cash (O2C) process.

What does the future of order-to-cash look like?

In a post-COVID world, these critical yet complicated processes that oversee making a sale and realizing revenue from it are under the microscope more than ever before. Executives who paid little attention are crisis-shocked into taking stock of what improvements could be made to inefficient processes to help accelerate the AR to improve DSO, increase collections effectiveness and give a boost to customer satisfaction and employee productivity levels.

The robust solution providers powered by today's most advanced digital technology are in high demand because of these ongoing efforts.

Big Data, AI & BI 

Big data combined with the predictive capabilities of AI gives organizations a powerful platform for insight driven decisions. Self-learning algorithms continually advance their own data analysis. These algorithms enrich existing business logic and predict payment dates and identify the risk of non-payment. This helps companies to better manage their exposure to financial risk.

Business intelligence (BI) leverages software and services to transform data into actionable insights that impact an organization’s strategic and tactical business decisions. BI tools access and analyze data sets and present analytical findings in reports, summaries, dashboards, graphs, charts and maps to provide users with detailed visual intelligence about the state of the business.

Organizations that are serious about optimizing order-to-cash should invest in business intelligence technology that makes performance analytics available through easy-to-use dashboards, showing managers the information clearly that is relevant to run the business. With a fully integrated, digital backbone, your enterprise can benefit from data-driven decisions and predictive analytics.

Robotics

Innovation in robotics will have an undeniable influence on the future of finance. In a landscape of fierce competition, robotic automation can dramatically improve productivity. With the introduction of bots for handling routine and repetitive tasks including invoice entry, payment reminders, inventory database and balancing cash flow sheets, these manual tasks can be automated without unnecessary delays in processing or errors. Thus, shifting the organization’s focus to more strategic priorities.

Data Integration for a Personalized Customer Experience

Seamless data integration enables an organization to provide any necessary information to a customer, for instance real time updates on shipments and payments. The ability to transfer the data automatically in any format to any device or system, to share details on an order, shipping notice, tracking details, payment information or remittance advice, can be very powerful. This directly impacts the customer experience and empowers them with data and insights to optimize order and payment processes. It is the key to generating more revenue and providing a more personalized customer experience.

Digitalization capabilities can also provide smooth data integration across a distributed network of stakeholder systems. Data is verified, validated and enriched as required in the cloud before reaching the stakeholders. Data from different sources and formats is transformed and transmitted as per requirements of the receiver. This results in a connected supply chain ecosystem where the relevant users can share data as and when needed.

Integrate your eCommerce with ERP

Integrating your eCommerce sales channels with your ERP system allows you to operate more efficiently as a business. The key types of data such as order, inventory, customer type, and shipping tracking are all communicated through an integrated and unified system. eCommerce ERP integration allows you to easily account for new orders and fulfill them, regardless of where the sale is made. Products and pricing can be managed from one place, allowing you to have accurate and consistent product information. Some of the benefits of digitization include reducing manual entry, streamlining inventory, automating tax compliance and handling increased demand for online orders without extra resources and pressure on your billing system.

Transform your Monetization Process

Businesses are leveraging technology in novel ways to raise the bar in their customer engagement. It’s the era of digital transformation! And it’s re-writing the rules for companies seeking competitive advantage and growth. To be successful, CFOs need to adapt and learn how to monetize recurring revenue models to drive business strategy and profitability. As companies adopt or expand their reliance on recurring revenue, they need a modern monetization platform that supports the entire order to cash process. When finance deploys a flexible monetization platform, they can help to promote experimentation with business models and pricing and allow the organization to operationalize successful practices and change their approach as they learn what works. Organizations are drawn to this new recurring revenue business model because they offer steady and predictable revenue streams with reduced risk and a high potential for growth. 

According to RecVue’s research, digital transformation can mean new pricing models for subscription or consumption-based frameworks. Or it can mean creating new and innovative services and delivery options to meet continually rising customer expectations and demands for flexibility. When the new revenue models associated with digital transformation take shape, they bring an exponentially greater level of complexity. RecVue’s unique, unified platform integrates with any CRM, ERP and front-end order processing systems, enabling customers to improve efficiencies across order-to-cash, revenue and general accounting while gaining real-time access to data at multiple levels. The finance functions are able to increase accuracy and timeliness of billing and invoicing and aggregate the billing information in a single system to improve analysis and forecasting. This is smart monetization, empowering your organization to drive digital transformation initiatives to support future growth.