The Subtle Art of Inter-Teams Collaboration in A/R

[0:00] Analisa:

Okay, so we’re gonna go ahead and get started. And thank you guys so much for joining today’s session on the subtle art of inter-team collaboration in AR. And today we did have a panel discussion, and our moderator couldn’t think of the word there. All her moderator of this panel discussion will be Kush Kumar is the AVP of solution engineering here at HighRadius. And we also have three lovely speakers. We have George Uko, who is the manager of credit and collections at Staples. We have Barbara Carpenter, who is the senior manager of customer financial services at Danone, as well as last but not least, Laura Garcia, who is the manager of customer financial services also at Danone. So with that being said, Kush, the stage is yours.

[0:44] Kush Kumar:

Thank you. Thank you, Analisa. Thank you, everyone, for joining this session. I think this is a topic that we have spoken about a lot in the last half a decade, at least when we talk about collaboration. For me, the best example of collaboration is this conference, Radians. Right? In this company HighRadius, the sales team, the product management, the finance team, of course, the marketing team have all come together to make this event memorable for you all attendees. But then my question to all of you first is Business Review stats tell that 75% of cross-functional teams aren’t successful. When we know collaboration is oxygen, why don’t you think it’s still been taken up seriously by all the organizations across the world? George, maybe.

[1:33] George Uko:

Barbara, you want to start?

[1:36] Barbara Carpenter:

Yeah, I just think that getting buy-in from people in other organizations. So particularly when you’re working with credit collections, we deal a lot with sales. So that’s kind of what we were discussing, discussing is you just really need to partner with them and get their buy-in. So if you’re doing like an ERP implementation, something like that buy-in from senior leadership and that collaboration to work together for the end goal. I think we’ve talked a lot about credit and sales. Also just educating your sales team, maybe letting them know why you want to know or communicate the risk to them. So I think that you know, just working together and partnering with them will make a project successful or department collaboration there as well.

[2:21] George Uko:

I think, as far as working together, you’re saying the 72%, 75%. It’s important for all groups to work together, we can’t work together, we’re not helping as far as the customer into the day we need to work together so we could get everything resolved. So we can move forward to helping the customer because at the end of the day, it’s our customer that’s driving the business. So we want to focus on our customers and do what we can for the customer.

[2:48] Kush Kumar:

Laura, any thoughts on this?

[2:51] Laura Garcia:

And I think it’s very important to make sure that there’s that collaboration. As you said, George, if there’s not you can have impacts down the road that negatively impacts your customer negatively impacts the business. And, you know, making sure everybody’s ideas are being heard helps with that collaboration.

[3:09] Kush Kumar:

One thing in my experience I’ve seen is that all it all trickles down to all the departments. Like if marketing comes up with a promotion. If they don’t tell sales, the duration of the promotion, sales will get frustrated, they will go and promise something to the customer. And sales will not tell that to the AR department. AR department will not know what to collect, the AR department will kind of poke the customer a lot to collect the money and that will result in bad customer service. So it is a trickle-down. And I think we have seen this a lot with this kind of relationship between credit departments and sales. They are always like loggerheads. Like George do you think we can do something or do you think what should be the best practices because you have been in this role for a long time? So that can we make them like, for lack of a better term like Siamese twins.

[3:57] George Uko:

I don’t know if we can make them Siamese twins, but I think The biggest thing we could do is educate our sales group, they need to understand what it is we’re trying to do. I try to let my group know we’re there to control risk to the organization. We can’t approve everything for the sales group, we need to bring in as much money and really control the risk, the better we can control the risk, the better our results are going to be, the more cash we’re going to get in the better income is going to be.

[4:29] Barbara Carpenter:

Yeah, kind of showed Kush a picture before we met, and it was a tug of war. So that’s kind of how it is with AR and your partners. They always look at AR or credit collections, kind of our team is the bad guy. And so I think the biggest thing is educating especially sales or other teams, other departments, letting them know exactly what you’re trying to achieve. At the end of the day and you’re all on the same team. You’re all working for the same company. But I think just educating them is just huge because it’s always that push-pull and at previous companies that I worked at, I was really working closely with the sales teams. And it was funny, by the time I had left that they were coming to me as their credit collections manager giving me information telling me not to, you know, give orders to customers, because they’re not paying, they saw the risk there. Or when I first started working at that company, they didn’t want to give me any information. You know, don’t call the customers, you know, let me handle it. They’re my customers. And then, you know, towards the end working those relationships, he was a total change. By the time I had left that company.

[5:32] Kush Kumar:

I think the next one is a lot of it, maybe you can kind of throw some light on this. You have been part of both departments like you have been part of the credit department. And now you’re part of the deductions department. In both departments, you had to interact with sales, right? But the interaction is very different. Right?

[5:48] Laura:

Yeah. It’s kind of like Barbara saying, with credit. I often had sales wanting to come to me and, you know, making sure that if we had to set up new customers. All that stuff was done timely. We were, you know, we worked well together, there’s a lot of collaboration, get quick responses, right? Because if they don’t have their customers set up, they can’t go out and sell, they can’t make money. So that was, you know, the relationship I had with credit. With deductions, it’s a little bit of a different story, right. Deductions come way down the line and way after the sales happen, and sometimes sales don’t want to, you know, don’t want to bother with it. And, you know, it’s kind of that having seen it from both sides, wanting to understand or have the, you know, the sales team, be educated like we were saying, you know, this is the risk that it poses, even though it’s deduction, it’s after the fact this is still there’s still a risk. They’re having them understand what we need to achieve like Barbara was saying and having them you know, be familiar with the system knowing that, yes, it might take a little additional work, but down the line, you’ll see those results, and they will have a positive impact on your trade dollars and things like that.

[6:59] Kush Kumar:

What do you think? is the biggest challenge, is it a cultural thing? Or do you think is it more like we should have a common goal, or like a KPI where both teams are working for like one goal? Like, I’ll tell you something at HighRadius, sales want to sell everything like this. This is cliche, 101 and product management, the CEO of the products, they have their own roadmap. They have something coming out in q1, q2, q3, and they have their own priorities because they have their own KPIs and sales have their own KPIs. So what happened was recently and I think you will have seen in the dot 1 presentation, we realigned the KPIs of each department. And now the product has an overlapping KPI with sales, like a product has to help sales and sales have to help prioritize in that selling that it falls with the roadmap. Now both these departments now work with each other together with one common goal. Do you think something like that may help the AR departments as well in the future?

[7:54] George Uko:

I think it will. I know one of the places I worked where we had our DSO was A common goal for our bonuses. The big thing with as far as the DSO is that impacts everybody. So like our sales, if they can’t help us collect, the DSO could go up. So as soon as they realized, hey, if we help them get this collection, it’ll bring down the DSO. And as we educated them on what the importance of the DSO was, they started working with us, and it was a common goal. But I do agree with your statement, you have to have a common goal. So everybody has some skin in the game, per se.

[8:33] Barbara Carpenter:

Yes, I may be at the end, or after if you guys do have suggestions because I was kind of asking George I’m trying to implement new KPIs for the team at unknown and try to see how we can implement something where it’s cross-functional with sales. So this is something new and I know like Laura is in a different department, but we kind of both, you know, get frustrated with sales. But I said how can we build a KPI and involve them so they have like you said skin in the game. So I was asking George, I said, What are your KPIs that you guys are kind of using at Staples? maybe I can try to implement it in Danone because it’s something new that I’m trying to do this year. So I’m trying to like gather ideas where if they have, you know, skin in the game, you hold them accountable, they’re more likely to work with you. And I’ve been on both sides. I also asked George, does your sales team get a commission at the time of sale? or at the time of collection because there are two different pieces to that? So if it’s at the time of sale, they don’t care if you collect, but if it’s the time of collections, you’re darn right, they’re going to help you try to collect because they want that commission. So I said, I’ve seen both sides of it. So I was curious to see what kind of, you know, what company KPIs come trying to change that culture at Danone.

[9:46] Kush Kumar:

And I think one of the cultures that we also have changed at HighRadius is because and that’s why we have seen that in other companies departments work in silos is we have our own celebrations, right? Like we’ll, sales will sign up a new client, a new customer. I don’t know if the other departments would know or not like a couple of years back, it was like that. Now we have a, we have a megaphone where we announce we have a gong, and likewise, the product department and the consulting department. Whenever there is a project go live, they roam around the whole, you know, corridor and they kind of have the gong and the megaphone. So we are celebrating each other’s success. So that’s a cultural change because we have a common KPI as well. Right. So I think one of the things that Laura mentioned when we were talking earlier, it’s very important is hiring those kinds of individuals who can adapt to change, because if they are resisting change, then everything falls apart. Right. Laura, you were talking about that? Right?

[10:37] Laura Garcia:

Yeah, I think that’s very important. I know, as we recently went through integration, we’ve had a lot of stuff that has changed. So when we go into bringing people onto the team, that’s one of the main questions that we ask them is, you know, how do you adapt to change because, as you know, you know, the world has ever-changing, businesses are changing. Your customers are changing the way they’re gonna do stuff is probably gonna have to change as well. So making sure that we don’t get stuck in that what we’ve always done it this way. So we should continue to do it this way doesn’t really prove effective nowadays because of all the changes and all the evolving that companies are doing.

[11:17] Barbara Carpenter:

Kind of just to build on what Laura was saying. Another one of the kinds of KPIs I’m instilling for my team is the continuous improvement. So Laura, and I just got certified in the Lean Six Sigma project or program. And so I’m making them do one continuous improvement or one efficiency each quarter. So I said it could be, you know, instead of using this spreadsheet, use this pivot table or use a HighRadius for this or you know, SAP or whatever, your software, your ERP. But anything that even takes five minutes away from your job. So that’s another thing is that I always like driving the business forward. And like Laura said, when we interview people, there are eight managers on our team. We all interview them, and we do it in kind of a panel and that’s one of the biggest questions we asked them. about change management, because you know, I don’t care what your qualifications are on paper, I want to know how you’re going to adapt to the changes. Because there are always efficiencies, there are always ways to move the business forward. And I think that that’s the biggest piece is that team, like you said, you really have to have that team that collaborates, celebrating each other’s successes. So that you know, in the end, you’re all there for the same purpose.

[12:24] Kush Kumar:

So when we talk about inter-team collaboration, and George, if you can, can throw some more light on that? How are you making each department’s goals and successes visible to the other department and asks as well, right, how will credit and collections integrate with each other because today collection strategies have to have credit parameters as well right? The credit risk and credit utilization, it is imperative today. So how are you making these two departments visible or any other department for the fact of the matter?

[12:51] George Uko:

Well, I think the big thing is trying to hold set up as far as processes I know I was talking to Barbara earlier, we were talking about setting up new accounts, if we could get everything streamlined in the set process, kind of an SOP, standard operating procedure, we know what their procedures are, in turn, based on their procedures that drive our procedures. But the big thing, we have to get everybody to follow the proper procedure, so everything flows through the system correctly. Because if not, every time we have a break in the system, that’s where we’re getting friction. So we want to work with them, they should work with us. But we should set up the different processes and be in six sigma, you know, you want to get to that less than 2% fail rate. So we want to get to that point where we could get everybody working together. And in the end, the end result should be the best project or the best end result for the customer.

[12:55] Kush Kumar:

Makes sense? And by the way, you were talking about education, right? I mean, like educating the sales department to educate the other panel. Are you doing something at Danone where all you’ve done in the past when we could be helpful for all of us?

[14:03] Barbara Carpenter:

Like I was telling you earlier, we don’t have a lot of credit heavy customers at Danone. And then that makes sense like collections issues. I’m talking but at my previous company was a medical device company, and we had a lot of collections, we would send a lot of accounts to collection agencies, a lot of small businesses closing their doors. And when I was at that company like I said, sales did not want us involved with any of their customers, you go through me for everything. So I had to really change their mindsets. So we went on like a four to the six-week roadshow and I went and presented at each one of their regional meetings, and said, this is why I’m asking for financials. This is why I’m asking this. This is why I’m only giving you this credit with these terms. And after they were educated. It was interesting to see Oh, now I know and then they were asking me when I’m going to meet with this customer. Can you come and you know, present this to the customer so they know why you’re asking. And then they weren’t the ones they didn’t want to ask anymore. They’re like, Oh, just can’t Barbara, can you call this customer so it was just a change. But as soon as they know the why and the ask I think that they’re more able to collaborate with you and be a partner and work together rather than that tug of war that it always that it’s just that mindset of earlier you’ recredit collections, even when you introduce yourself to someone like Oh, you’re in credit collections, you know, you kind of changing their mindset.

[15:20] Kush Kumar:

Do you also think that the usage of tools beat any tool in the AR department and is also bringing the visibility between, you know, among the different HR functions as well as outside, say, outside HR functions like sales and finance, do you think that’s helping and getting everybody on the same platform?

[15:39] George Uko:

I think that really helps if we talked earlier, but I think a lot of it has to do with the reporting. The more information we can share to the sales department, the better they can make decisions, the better decisions they make, they could go after the customers that weren’t as far as the additional product. We’re actually helping them by giving them the report so that they know what they can or where some of the opposite obstacles might be. And like Barbara said, we don’t want people contacting us. We want to give the information so they could make the right decision. And that will help the whole process.

[16:13] Kush Kumar:

Now looking at three years from now, three to five years, you know, you will hire new people in the team, obviously, are you kind of making an SOP for education as well? You know, you have processes to onboard new customers, you have processes to collect, right? But do you have an SOP for how to kind of integrate or interact or collaborate and communicate with the other departments as well? Because that’s one piece where we kind of miss outright, and we just take it for granted that this is obvious, right? Do you think that is something that is required?

[16:47] Laura Garcia:

I‘ll jump in. Yeah.

[16:49] Barbara Carpenter:

We love SOP, I love SOP like we love documentation.

[16:52] Laura Garcia:

Love, love documenting, creating that kind of stuff, right? I love my team to be able to do whatever they need to do. If I’m out for however long, keep the business moving forward, right? I want the customer service that we provide to our internal folks in the organization and external to remain the same if key people are out of the office or on vacation, things like that. So I think it’s very important to have that stuff documented to make sure that right the business can continue to move forward, because you might have people that decide to leave the company that was a key part, right? So you want to make sure that that that same business sense can remain that knowledge can remain. And even if it’s, you know, a simple process that is three or four steps, right, I still document it, write it down, make sure that more than one person knows how to do it, because that way you’re able to continue to move the business forward.

[17:48] Kush Kumar:

That’s interesting grids at HighRadius, we are told that fire yourself from the job. I think the one thing that every rule has been told is you should be out for two weeks and nobody should call You, right? So that’s the kind of protocol that we have been given. And we also document everything here. So I totally understand where you’re coming from. But you made a good point, which I feel is very important. When there is no interaction and no communication, obviously, there is a lack of trust between teams, right? teams don’t trust each other. When teams don’t trust each other, that is kind of finger-pointing, right? Maybe you’re fault, credit or sales and all that right. It eventually leads to inefficiency. And what I’ve seen is inefficiency leads to attrition. And when a person leaves the company, they’re you’re not only losing an asset, but you’re also losing customer knowledge and process knowledge. Right. So do you think that also is one of the main challenges and one of the main reasons why people should communicate with the AR department?

[18:49] George Uko:

I think that is very, that’s a valid statement. We want as far as people to stay, we don’t want to have to go through as far as the turnover, the more turnover we go. Though, we’re losing production. And hiring people bringing people in, it could be a three-month process. And even just hiring them, it takes time to bring them up to speed. So that could take up six months. So as much as possible, we want to get the right people in, we want to keep the people and keep them happy.

[19:20] Barbara Carpenter:

Yeah, when we interview people, we do say we’d like two years out of you because of the training that kind of goes into it. But we do have high turnover on our team specifically because they do go into other roles within Danone, so a lot of them start out maybe as a deductions analyst and want to move into sales analysts. So it’s interesting to see when they go to the other side, you know, when they’re, they’re calling the sales analyst for promotions or whatever they’re working on. But then we’ve had people that have gone over to that side, but it’s good because they understood this side of the AR side of it, but we like to promote that, you know, promotion within and I always say my favorite one of my favorite lines is working yourself out of a job and if you’re a Good, I’ll find you another role within the company because they’re not going to want to lose you your knowledge. So we do a lot of knowledge sharing, I’ve always told my employees if you want to go and work in another department, sit with them for, you know, an afternoon and see what they do. You know, let me know, you know, really says, oh, we’re too busy. So that’s why I’m trying to build KPIs are kind of metrics around that. So it forces them to do that when you have that annual performance review, where then solely just, you know, my collections, you know, greater than 30 days or, you know, KPIs for deductions that force them to go learn what other teams are doing forces that collaboration within different teams.

[20:37] Laura Garcia:

I think on the part where there’s, you know, you have to have that trust. I think it has to be from all sides, right? There’s, there’s often a time that you know, it’s just easier to blame these people over here and, you know, everybody, everybody blames that same group and it’s fine. Well, when you start building those relationships and building that trust among different teams, You start seeing the shift in certain things where now, you know, teams that may have said, Oh, I’m gonna blame, blame the AR group. Now I have a team on my side that’s saying no, no No and pushing back. So then you start gaining, you know, other teams within the organization to kind of stand up and you kind of make that shift. And that’s been something that we’ve been working on a great deal over the last, you know, a couple of years to make sure that you know, we build that trust, we show them know, you can trust us and, you know, make for greater collaboration.

[21:32] Barbara Carpenter:

We can’t we still laugh about this edge note all the time, but there was one specific instance, where they were, you know, always trusting the sales team. And now that one advocate is now I’m gonna go and ask AR and then I will ask my sales team. So at first, he was like, you know, AR is wrong, Now, it’s, I’m going to Laura’s team, and I’m gonna ask Laura, and then you can tell me your side of the story. I’m going to go get the real, the real part of the story and then I’m interesting. But that’s the kind of shit. That’s what we’re talking about if you want to see that, right, you want to build that trust and have that confidence from the other areas of the organization to kind of combat some of the stuff that you’re saying, you know, showing the team that we have them on our side. And, you know, that makes for a better environment, the better culture around the office to just make people you know, I guess, happier to be at their job.

[22:23] George Uko:

You know. And just to add to your point, too, as you’re working with other departments, they’re also your customer. So you have internal customers and you have external customers. So the closer you work together, you’re helping both sides. So you’re helping your external and your internal customers.

[22:40] Kush Kumar:

Make sense. I know the beers are waiting. So we love to collaborate with the audience. So any questions for our AR leaders here? I’ll open it up. For any suggestions because we talked about the KPIs and the goals being common for different departments. Has anyone done anything in their company where it could be insightful for us?

[23:14] Audience 1:

Okay. We’ll get there. We’ll get there.

[23:19] Audience 1:

I was wondering about I think I almost forgot my question. When you set out to initiate this closer collaboration, say between sales and AR, did you find that there were certain stakeholders within those groups that were critical for you to initiate that process?

[23:39] George Uko:

You really need upper management’s buy-in because you’re going to get pushback from different groups. And what I try to tell at least my group is to take the personality out of the issue. Focus on the issue and if you focus on the issue that’ll resolve whatever the issue is, it is really at the end of the day, it’s about the customer. But you do a lot of sometimes have to get up or buy-in or upper pushback because if you don’t, they’re not gonna buy into what you’re trying to do.

[24:08] Audience 1:

Thanks.

[24:18] Audience 2:

So our company, actually last year embarked on this team, Lean Six Sigma as well, they did it from clerical all the way up to the managers, and our senior team as well. So continuous improvement is huge for us and changes management is really, really big as well. You said you try to hire for that, or that’s what you look for. How do you hire for that? Like, what is it that strikes out for you when you’re doing your interview that kind of says, Yeah, this person would be okay for this versus someone else that might be just answering the question beautifully in your liking them that way.

[24:50] Laura Garcia:

One thing that I look for when I’m interviewing especially for that question is an example right if people can provide real-life examples back to That up and explanations of why either prior jobs where they experienced that and just provide that in-depth example. That’s what I really look for in those answers. Sometimes people will say, Oh, yeah, I can adapt to change. And then that’s it. It’s usually the ones that will go on and elaborate without me even having to ask that, you know, kind of stand out from the rest.

[25:24] Barbara Carpenter:

Yeah, like those real-life examples, so that, you know, you know, they’ve been through it, they’ve worked through it, you know, we were very Excel heavy. So we always say, you know, what is your level of Excel? I’m advanced, what can you walk me through what advanced is because it might be a different opinion. I can do a pivot table that is not advanced. So we ask questions where it forces them to have to engage in you know, respond, rather than, you know, yes or no, or I’ve done that. It’s like real-life examples are what is important. So you know, that they’ve actually been through that, especially now it’s an ever-changing, you know, environment and having examples of Yeah, I’ve been through change management. And this is how I have reacted to it because you can maybe do it on paper. But if you don’t have those other skills that are going to be able to adapt, I think that’s what we kind of look for in those employees.

[26:12] Laura Garcia:

I add another thing on to that, too, is to kind of verify those answers, right, ask them to completely separate question that can lead them down the road of either, you know, maintaining that same answer to that previous question. Oftentimes, you find that people will say, Oh, yeah, I can adapt to change, they give you an example. But then a different question will kind of reveal that, Oh, well, you know, the, my prior company changed this, and he really didn’t like it, I couldn’t have you know, will reveal something else that kind of gives you a better idea of what, okay, you know, what are they saying? What, sorry? Were they you know, the stuff that they were saying was it correct? or were they just saying it to answer the question, and then now this is really rebuilding that.

[26:56] Barbara Carpenter:

And that’s kind of why we do the two panels, you know, with management. A couple of people interview, and then a couple of other people go in an interview and then we collaborate and say, you know, hey, this is kind of the vibe that I got. And no, that’s not because a lot of times they’re very nervous, you know when they first go in there, but then in the second session, you see totally different personalities, I think, as their nerves. So, you know, just getting that and then collaborating with management and trying to see if they, you know, their answers are truthful, I guess.

[27:23] George Uko:

Well, to kind of add to what you’re saying to if you can get them to do the star situation, what is the situation? What is the task you did? What is the action you did? And what are the results you could derive as far as those answers? And as they give the answers in that star format, that shows that they know what they’re doing? or talking about it? Yeah.

[27:45] Analisa:

Okay, I think that’s gonna be your last question.

[27:48] Audience 3:

Thank you. Actually, I do have two questions.

[27:52] Audience 3:

Hi, I’m from Johnson and Johnson. So one question is, can you give me an example of a situation where a finger pointing up scenario was turned into a collaborative scenario. And then another question is, you mentioned that you had the DSO as a common KPI for the sales and the AR. How did you manage to do that?

[28:14] George Uko:

Well, the DSO as far as the goal that came from the top level down, so what ended up happening is we had a huge initiative to increase as far as revenue. So due to increasing revenue, it was pushed down that we need to one of the biggest ways we can pack revenue is to get the collections down, per se. So we had to focus on that we all had to work together and it was a big initiative, but at the end of the day, once again, it was a win all the way around, but that was driven directly from basically our senior manager down. Great goal though.

[28:54] Analisa:

Okay, perfect. Those were some really great quotes. Was there another answer? Did I cut somebody off while-

[28:59] Laura Garcia:

She didn’t too. Questions. So the first question, I can provide an answer.

[29:05] Analisa:

This is why I’m not a really good MC.

[29:08] Audience 3:

Sorry. So the first question was, give me an example of a situation where they’re, you know, they had a was finger-pointing and you turned it into a collaborative scenario.

[29:20] Laura Garcia:

Yeah. So the reason why I remember that is because we do have, like, what we were speaking about before is we’ve had that situation happen. And one of the biggest advocates that we have for our team now was actually in that position that he liked to point the finger at our team and say, well, they did it. Well, where we really turned a corner as he would do that, and then we would provide the data behind the information. And it would, it would show him Oh, while my team told me wrong and he was telling me what’s really the correct answer. You do that once or twice, and that’s where it turned that corner to have him say, Okay, I’m going to go to the AR team. I’m going to find out what the real answer is because right The sales team could be saying, Oh, it’s this, it’s this, you know, I provided data and hardcore data says this and it kind of just took the noise out of that. So that was a situation where just it helped turn that corners having that data to provide.

[30:18] Analisa:

Okay, perfect. So, unfortunately, that’s all the time we have for this session. If you do have additional questions, you can find them on the app, you can go tackle them, you can chase them down at happy hour, whatever you need to do to get that answer. And that being said, happy hour is taking place on the field at 4:30 if you’re interested, and there’s one last stadium tour happening up 4:45 by the registration booths. With that being said, Thank you guys so much. And thank you guys so much. Thank you. Thank you.