Tanya (Facilitator) [0:03]
Hello everyone, my name is Tanya from HighRadius and it’s great to be at this virtual conference and our pledges to be sponsors of the shared service forum UK annual events at Alta cash network. I would like to introduce our presenter today Cyra, Solutions Manager engineer at HighRadius. Cyra has worked across the manufacturing hospitality recruitment and software industry for the last eight years. Cyra spent three and a half years at HighRadius working across the product and consulting teams and has been involved in various HR transformation projects. During this time. Kara is also based out of our London office. So without further ado, I’ll pass you off to Cyra.
Cyra Garg [0:48]
Hi, everybody. Thanks, Tanya, for the introduction. For today, we are going to cover the following Agenda. First of all, I’m going to talk about HighRadius. Then we are going to talk about top trends in the AR space today. Finally, some bit on the evolution of technology in AR over the years. And finally, what is next in line. So we are going to discuss these four key topics today. And let me move to the first one, which is the introduction to HighRadius. So HighRadius is a FinTech company, which leverages AI and automation functionality to help companies automate the account receivable processes. Currently, we are working with more than 200 Plus fortune 500 companies and processing more than a trillion-dollar transaction annually. Now talking about the journey of HighRadius so far, in order to cache space, we started as a Prime solution way back in 2006, when we started this company, then moved to cloud-based solution in 2010. And introduced artificial intelligence in 2014. So we almost have more than six years of experience with AI and machine learning now. In 2017, we partnered with a lot of different banks and strategic investments, like Susquehanna, or iconic PNC, and city brands. And then in 2019, we moved to autonomous systems, which is a virtual assistant, which can help you in your day-to-day activities, and remove absolutely all the mundane activities from your gold shop, so that you can focus on the strategic events only. Then, in 2020, we have also introduced dot one performance, which basically talks about how your team is performing across the globe, what are your targets? What are your KPIs? And are you aligned with those KPIs? And this sort of visibility is really critical in today’s world when most of us are doing, virtually working, or working from homes and it is a clear need of the art to have such kind of technology in place. So that is a brief journey about HighRadius and fees. We typically focus on integrated receivables solutions from audit to cash space. And also we have introduced the treasury management solution as well into the portfolio. Now talking about some of the impacts that have been created by HighRadius on our current customers. So just to give you an idea, we have worked with a company, really big companies, which are in the Fortune 500 As an example, Sanofi is one of the leading pharmaceutical companies and based out of France, and this French company had a real challenge with standardizing the process of cash application. They have operations in 82 different countries and all the different countries used to have the operations in their own ways. Now, we have had a partnership with this company. And we are now in the process of automating the audit to cash in cash applications for all 82 countries. For the first year, we did the rollout with automation of 28 countries, which resulted in 50%. headcount being relocated in more strategic activities, and more than 85 plus percent of hit rate in the company in countries like Poland, France, and Russia.
The second case study talks about Anheuser Busch, which is a $52 billion company, the biggest brewery brewing manufacturing company in the world. And we are very closely working with this company in automating its entire audit to catch space. Now, in terms of the scope, we have worked in 15 different countries so far with Anheuser Busch, and the journey is still going on with 12 different languages. So this is just to give you an idea of the kind of impact HighRadius is making across the globe, with the leading manufacturers of beer or pharmaceuticals and so on and so forth. Now, I’m also going to talk a little bit about the top trends in the AR space today. Now, if you can see that one of the biggest challenges that the COVID has created or COVID has threatened the world with is you have to work from home and you have limited interaction with fellow colleagues and team members in the team. Also, it has impacted the businesses a lot more like the hospitality or travel industry or the air industry, all of them have suffered very badly with this. Now, this has resulted in cash flow being a real big hit, because of this, because now the companies are not in the position to make the payment back on time. So, they are trying to not make the payment at the desirable time. And also it has impacted your own business and that’s why you are not able to have a lot of customers to sustain your industry. So, the cash flow is a big big problem now. And the second biggest problem is the visibility with the team that you are not meeting your fellow members and that has resulted in lack of clarity, lack of the work they are doing let lack of visibility on the work which they are doing and which definitely has resulted in a difficulty in surviving in this new normal. Now, that has also resulted in an increased increase in terms of software spending in 2021. And you can see that Gartner claims that enterprise software spending is speculated to see a staggering rise in 2021 by 7.2%. Because now the businesses are focusing more on the fact that they would like to not just survive this new normal, they have to live with this new normal and they have to thrive in this new normal. And the only way forward for making this happen is to have more cash in the system and more visibility with the teams and that is possible if you have the right software’s in place, right digital transformation journey, if you’re having that, is resulting in making your business thrive in this new normal. Now also talking from the perspective of RPA leaders and what they are focusing on at this point in time. If you see companies like Automation Anywhere and UiPath, they used to focus a lot on RPA, which used to be their bread and butter. But now they are also planning to move to artificial Intelligence enabled RPA because the two things need to work hand in hand to make sure that you have Intelligent Automation, you’re not just automating or aggregating data, but you are also analyzing the data in the most effective way. Which further results in having your audit to cash team spend time in more strategic activities in the relationship, building tasks with your customers, rather than just very manual efforts. In terms of the evolution of technology in the air over the use, so it all started with on prime, where you used to have a very closely linked system with the ERPs. And then it has moved to processes specific software’s. Now if you see Salesforce, companies like Salesforce, which entered the market in 1999, almost 20 years back, started this, the focus on process-specific cloud software’s and how you can automate the processes and how you can drive the customer relationship management in a more strategic way. After that, there were a lot of companies like UiPath, and automation anywhere that came into the picture. And rule-based automation was a key thing at that time to focus on how you can automate a couple of things, but it is not yet enabled by the artificial intelligence show. So it was basically working on rule-based ways of working. After that, there came the time when we have advanced automation, which is advanced RPA. So you are sort of starting to analyze the data which we are having in place and linking all the missing pieces together. So that was the introduction to advanced automation. But now, you need to think beyond that, you need to think beyond just aggregating the data in the right way, you need to think about what you should infer from tons and tons of data that is there in the system’s setting. And you can absolutely utilize that information in the most productive way to have that customer relationship in the best way. And that also helps you prioritize the way a customer is making the payments, what are the customers to reach out to? And what are the customers which predicted customers, which will make the payment on time? So this journey is still going on, and it is getting better every single day. And now going forward, you’re going to see virtual assistants, helping people to take care of most of their tasks so that they can focus on the right things. Now, what next? That’s a big question. And one of the questions that that is very much asked or thought about is, are we having humans versus machines? Or are we having humans and machines? And we always see this kind of big challenge in any organization because whenever people talk about automation, they always feel the risk that their job might go away. They have a risk that everything will be automated, and they will have to struggle in this new era. But I don’t think that’s going to be the case. Because there is no point in discussing humans versus machines anymore. What we are actually focused on is how we can enable a human to work in a better way, in a more strategic way with the help of machines. And there is a concept of singularity which basically means that by 2023, you will see a real increase in AI and it will surpass human intelligence way faster. Now, does that mean you are still struggling to compete with AI? Or are you enabling yourself to work with AI to make yourself a really powerful human being in 2050? So the aim is reaching here and not reaching here? So we basically want to make sure that we are really powerpack human beings in 2015, with all the artificial intelligence, enabling us to achieve much more than what we can actually achieve now. And yes, this is for the movies, it doesn’t exist for real because human versus machines is the topic of the past. The topic of the future is humans and machines. And you can see it is so much amalgamated in our day-to-day activities that they will never realize the fact that how closely we work with the machines and how much we cherish them in our lives. Right. So if you can see, like having a morning tea, the way it used to be versus the now as a coffee machine, definitely has played an important role in making our life much easier. Similarly, you can see, walking on two feet versus having a self-drive car can make a really good impact. And that makes the system very much more inclusive. Now you will have a lot of disabled people who can also utilize these resources in the best way. So technology is enabling everyone in the society, not just a few specific sets of people in making their life much better and healthier and more progressive in nature. On that note, I would like you to see what the future holds for you, and how well a machine can work with a human. So on that note, I’m going to call Freeda and ask her, Freeda. Take us on a new journey of the future 2030 And tell us how it is going to look like for everyone out there.
Freeda [17:19]
Thank you for the introduction Cyra. It’s great to be at the shared service event today. Let me now show you the future of collections. I thought I would jazz up the presentation with some background music.
Freeda [17:40]
Good morning, Samantha. Welcome to work. Let’s see what impact you could make with collections today. Welcome to your work board. You could call accounts I have identified as critical, send a few automated email correspondence, review new credit applications, or the latest credit risk updates.
Samantha [17:58]
Let’s get started with the calls first.
Freeda [18:01]
Sure, bring up your call workboard in a second. Welcome to your call workboard. You have 27 customers to call today. I have already prioritized these accounts based on my AI-enabled prediction of their aging 30 days from now. For instance, permalink has one broken payment commitment for $68,000 and has more than 50% of their AR balance past due by more than 30 days. Would you like to start with them? Absolutely. Here are the key reasons for this call with a permalink. As you can see, this is their current aging, and here is my prediction of their aging 30 days from now, you can see a search in their 61 to 90-day aging bucket growing to 43% of their total open invoice value. They also have no upcoming payment commitments which you might want to touch upon on the call. They have already reached 85% of their credit limit and you could use this to negotiate payment. JEREMY JONES manager of accounts payables is your key contact at this account. Let me know when you’re ready to get started.
Samantha [19:02]
All right, let’s call Jeremy. Sure.
Freeda [19:05]
I will stand by to take notes.
Jeremy [19:09]
Hi, this is Jeremy at the permalink
Samantha [19:12]
Hi Jeremy. This is Samantha from Penta core. I was expecting to receive payment for $68,000 Yesterday, just calling to check whether you’ve already made the payment.
Jeremy [19:22]
Hi, Samantha, really sorry about that. My manager has been out sick the last few weeks and he missed approving your payment. You will have to wait till the first week of March for him to get back.
Samantha [19:31]
Well, on, I just wanted to let you know that you have over $60,000 and invoices that are over 30 days past due and I might have to escalate. Your credit utilization is already at 85% and new incoming orders are likely to get blocked.
Jeremy [19:47]
Yeah, no, I understand. See I am only authorized to process payments up to $30,000 I would have got your payment approved but my manager just fell sick and has been out of the office.
Samantha [19:58]
Well, Jeremy let’s see what we can do here. I’m seeing two invoices that total up to around $28,000. Could you help me with payments for these since these are well within your authorization limit?
Jeremy [20:10]
Sure I can do this by next Tuesday. Could you please send me the invoices?
Samantha [20:15]
Sure, sending them to you right now. You should be receiving an email. Say thanks. Thanks, Jeremy. I will be looking forward to the payment on Tuesday for two invoices for 28k.
Jeremy [20:26]
Thanks, have a nice day.
Freeda [20:29]
That was a great first call to start the day with. I have already captured the key action items from a call, I will create a payment commitment then set a reminder for you to follow up with Jeremy, are you good with these things please save these. Alright, I have drafted a summary email for you to send to Jeremy by using an available template from the library. I have also attached the invoices they need to refer to let me know if you are good with this email and I will send this out. This looks good. Please send this. Let’s keep the day rolling. Here’s your next customer. That’s all from me. Now back to here for the rest of the presentation.
Cyra Garg [21:12]
So you have seen how Freeda is helping you in creating these work boots. Having the customer research done and giving you summarizing that, why you’re making the calls to the customers and highlighting that and also telling you whether it’s a good or a bad paying customer. And then also taking the notes for you. And setting up all the actions that have been suggested by the customer, Valentine. And that saves you a lot of time to do this admin work. And the focus of yours is just relationship building. Because talking on the phone with the right customer gets you money doing the admin work doesn’t and that is the focus everyone in order to cash should focus on the right ways of working, which is beneficial for you and for the organization. Now, this is if you want to see how our current companies are also enabling their team by using such a technology. To give an example giants like Uber and Baker Hughes, of working. And leverage these autonomous collections where Freeda is helping their collectors to do the right things at the right time and focus on the right customers to get their money back on time. So far, they have made 200,000 calls in just 2020 alone. You can see the power of this because now they have all the time to focus on the customers. And that has resulted in a real increase in the focus on the calls they’re making versus in the past. And that’s going to be the future of 2030. You will see every organization going to have such kind of automation in a place where collectors are making sure they’re doing the right thing for the companies by having the right tools in place. And now, I’m going to talk about what is your role in making that happen. You are working as a management and you have to make sure your executive leadership and your analyst are equally taken care of in the right way. The first thing is executive leadership. You want to be the person who can proactively lead digital transformation for your functions, which in turn will be very much aligned with the goals and the vision of the company. And also encourage the transformation in cross functions. This is very important to make sure that you’re aligned in terms of your company’s missions and visions. And also in terms of encouraging the fellow members to do the same. The second most important thing for you is how you are taking care of your team. It is virtually working and has made it even more critical for you to take care of your team in the right way. Be Through mentors and for your team and enable them with the right technology. Because going forward, you’re going to see that even for them whenever you have worked from home, you don’t even have the right set of training to be able to provide it to your fellow team members whenever they join the company. And that’s very important for you to enable them with the right technology so that they can have the grasp of things early on when they start working, and then it also helps you in giving more visibility across the board. So your role in the upcoming era is a digital transformation change agent, because that is enabling your upper management of executive leaders, and your HR analyst, and your team to work most efficiently. On this note, I would like to thank everybody for being a part of this presentation. I wish you all the best for the new digital transformation journey that you are going to have in the future.
