The client, an Aggregates and Asphalt business was experiencing a growing number of Invoice Queries resulting in £1.7m worth of unpaid customer invoices some of which being unpaid for considerable amounts of time.
They decided that they would need to identify underlying causes of query demand, to define and implement countermeasures and to ensure downward pressure on value and demand to acceptable levels within a 4 month period.
The client started the solution to this problem by visualising it and making sure key contributors and stakeholders could monitor performance week on week with recommendations when they felt the rate and pace of change was slowing.
They assigned debt performance to individual account managers and drew up actions plans for improvement.
They introduced an Accelerated Delivery Team to support rapid reductions in value and volume by supporting account managers and dealing directly with customer queries.
They changed policy in certain areas to avoid deals being struck with customers outside of the standard quote process.
They trained sales team members on how to spot internal systems errors that might contribute to invoice queries.
They implemented digital process changes to make changes easier both internally and for the customer.
Over a 14 week period they were able to reduce unpaid invoice value from £1.7m to £193k.
Over the same period demand created by invoice queries fell from 1652 per week down to 202.