To summarize, all of these strategies fall into the following three buckets:

1. Fixing the Root Causes of High DSO: High DSO could either be because the customer in question is not creditworthy or simply because the customer was not contacted on time. Addressing the customer onboarding and credit review processes will take care of the former, and addressing the collections bottlenecks will take care of the latter.
2. Eliminating Waste in A/R Operations: Sometimes, even after all of the optimizations within collections, organizations don?t have enough resources for collections. Addressing waste in resource-intensive processes including cash application and deductions will give organizations enough leeway to increase FTEs working on collections while flatlining the A/R team headcount as a whole.
3. Breaking Silos in Operations and Facilitating Collaboration: Collections as a process involves communicating with internal and external stakeholders. Addressing how information flows within the A/R team, for example, from the cash application team to the collections team, and collaboration between buyers and suppliers will further unlock opportunities to reduce DSO and improve accounts receivable turnover.

As the success stories show, organizations of all sizes from Fortune 1000 companies including Keurig Dr Pepper and Danone and SMBs including Ivanti and ShurTech brands have been able to deploy these eleven strategies and reduce DSO by 10-20%.