7 Benefits of Real-Time Data Management in Mid-Market

Poor quality or delayed data is among the main reasons many mid-sized businesses face turmoil. Lack of real-time data makes accounts receivables (AR) tricky and complicated. Since data is required for sales orders, AR, credit, collections, investments, etc.,  accurate and up-to-date information is crucial to prevent any adverse impact on the business.

Critical decision-making requires data such as transaction details, a company’s financial statements, past financial records, past return on investment(ROI), and more. Data helps in business expansion, product launches, research and development, mergers, and acquisitions-based decisions.

However, when done manually, it becomes impossible for businesses to track and maintain data. Due to the absence of standardization, data revision also takes longer than usual, which results in a heavy impact on AR.

Let’s find ways to make the data more efficient and business-friendly in the receivables function.

How Does Data Optimization Help AR?

1. Seamless ERP Integration

While ERP offers a holistic platform to manage the overall operations of your business, it has a few limitations. To overcome these, you will need to integrate extended tools to support increased data and actions as your business operations expand.

For instance, accounts receivable is one such aspect that you can integrate your ERP leveraging industry-efficient tools. Such tools help in driving your business forward even if your resources are limited. The software products will help pull data from the ERP, perform the requested actions, and sync again with the ERP system, ensuring updated data.

2. Easy Access to Customer Data

Having a centralized, one-stop location for the entire data eases analysts’ requirement for information. Analysts can easily access the data repository, including transaction details, invoice data, payment commitments, credit limits, and correspondence history.

A centralized repository ensures that the information is arranged systematically and is easy to find. It will also reduce the time taken to resolve the disputes by making past dues data, outstanding invoice details, past payment history, bill of lading, proof of delivery, and so on, readily available to the analysts.

3. Efficient Internal Collaboration

Data mismanagement often leads to inter-departmental conflicts. Since processes such as collections and credit require numerous documents, it requires internal collaboration. However, excessive to and fro of communication can lead to misunderstanding, data loss, internal conflicts and eventually cause cash flow to fall out.

To resolve this, businesses use business automation tools that allow them to establish a hierarchy system. The hierarchy system ensures that the queries are taken care of in a standardized manner, and processes such as dispute management become easy to resolve. The companies can utilize the central repository for all the required data and reach out to the relevant person systematically.

4. Hassle-Free Bank Integrations

For easy and hassle-free payments, companies look for lockboxes. Banks provide lockboxes for businesses that receive a large volume of payments in checks accompanied by remittance information. Businesses establish a post office box to collect payments, and at the end of the day, the entire deposit is sent to the processing center. The remittance information is scanned, the payment data is captured, and the updates are transmitted to its AR.

However, in many cases, the banks cannot fully capture and extract the remittance data, which leads to failed payment reconciliation. Re-keying remittance data is manual, time-consuming, error-prone, and expensive. With the help of Mobile Remote Deposit Capture (mRDC), banks utilize electronic images instead of physical paper checks and remittances. mRDC is a bank service that allows customers to scan the checks remotely and transmit the images to the banks.

5. Proactive Risk Management

Credit and collection analysts rely on the updated databases to perform their tasks with utmost accuracy. Any discrepancies can lead to overdue payments, bad debts, increased days sales outstanding(DSO), and hampered ROI.

The company database includes all the required information for the AR process, such as customer payment history, transaction history, data extracted from credit agencies, customer credit details, collection call logs, remittance information, invoices, and so on. With the help of automation, collecting and prioritizing the data helps businesses perform their collections and credit risk management more efficiently.

6. Reports and Analytics

The next step to running a business is analyzing the reports and working on the research and development. Performance indexes such as DSO, days deduction outstanding(DDO), AR turnover ratio helps in identifying the important aspects of critical decision making.

With the help of readily available finance tools, businesses can visualize their performance and other order to cash KPIs and also forecast their future performance based on previous data. If you are looking for free ready-to-use finance tools such as the DSO calculator, DDO calculator, Cash Flow Forecasting template, ROI calculator, and Credit Scoring Model template, check out the Financial Toolkit.

7. Data Storage Measures

When you make expansion plans for your business, you should also keep in mind the need for increased data collection and storage. New companies with small data rely on traditional business management measures. However, companies handling big data (a large, hard-to-manage volume of data in both structured and unstructured form) rely on operations such as data warehousing to manage it.

Data warehouses are big-scale storage locations to accumulate data from a wide range of sources. This method of data storage is quite popular within businesses. Most businesses have utilized it ever since the US federal government sanctioned the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, mandating certain financial record keeping and reporting practices for corporations.

To Sum It Up

The entire order-to-cash process runs on the company’s database. However, having inefficient, unstandardized, error-prone, redundant, and lost data can cause problems and lead to bankruptcy in the long run. With the help of automation, you can bring a structure to your business model that can help scale your business. Automation allows you and your employees to utilize the resources to their full potential.

At HighRadius, we have helped companies automate their AR database and enjoy the features and functionality of AR automation to their fullest. We help mid-sized business owners to realize their company’s potential and give them the most efficient solution to power their business model. Talk to our experts today to learn more about RadiusOne AR Automation Solutions.

Want to learn more about how to digitize your AR to make it more optimal? Check out our blog on 6 Benefits of Leveraging Technology to Optimize Accounts Receivables.