Formulating and structuring strategies only gets as far as segmenting and prioritizing accounts. Execution of these strategies and identifying tools to execute these strategies are the key factors required to unlock strategic benefits, fulfilling timelines and resource optimization. Executives across business spectrums would agree that with the abundance of tools available today, identifying the right tool needs extensive research and analysis. The following enlists the key aspects to consider while evaluating tools for deploying customer segmentation and collections strategies.

Prioritized Worklists

The ability to generate a prioritized worklist automatically is one of the primary concerns for a collections automation tool. Businesses today are looking forward to a scalable solution, which easily integrates with the ERP system, ensures compliance with the business rules of the company and is capable of embedding dynamic collections rules and strategies. Leveraging real-time data is vital criteria, for addressing the changes in customer behavior and securing its reflection in the collection efforts by the company.

Automated Correspondence

With the progressive drive towards e-adoption, email correspondence is enveloping a major lump of customer collaboration reducing the burden on collectors to call every customer. Automated dunning via email, fax, and print and mail with easy-to-create correspondence templates as well as packages to include invoices and account statements is the inevitable recipe to cope with the increasing volume of collections. Mass correspondence, templatized dunning letters and custom data capture are the golden rules to bridge the gap between the current process and a self-sustainable collections management solution.

Self Service Portal

Implementing an autonomous solution with a self-service portal where the customer can view and download invoices and account statements, create disputes, make payments, submit payment commitments and share claims and POD documents is the must-have in this millennial A/R generation. It not only reduces the collectors? workload and speeds up the collections process but also ensures quality customer experience by empowering them with key functionalities.

Tracking Performance

Businesses today, need to monitor performance and draw insights to take corrective actions, modify A/R strategies, and make proactive decisions in their collections operations. They can no longer solely depend on traditional excel or spreadsheet reports and metrics like DSO to evaluate their process. Real-time reporting and analytics not only save time but also provides organizations with the tools to implement a fully optimized collections management process to assess customer segmentation, account prioritization, and worklist generation.