A GPO’s Guide To Customer-Centric Order-To-Cash

(Facilitator) Daisy Ramirez [1:21]

All right, we can go ahead and get started here. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Shared Services Tech 2021. And thank you for joining this session. My name is Daisy Ramirez, and I’ll be your facilitator today; all participants will be on mute. So if you have any questions or anything, please enter your Q&A or any concerns that you may have drop at the chat, which is on the bottom right, and the recording today will be available at the end of the day. But if you would like a PDF of the presentation right away, please visit our shared services LinkedIn page and which will be located in the attachments section. Also, we would appreciate it if you had the time to write a review and share your feedback with us on this session. To do that, please click on the rate the session or the heart above your video player. So with that being said, we now welcome everyone to this discussion with a GPS guide to customer-centric order to cash in today’s session. So we do have Moustapha Mogdad, market focal Point Manager, in Canada in order to cash at Bristol Myers Squibb. So without further ado, let’s welcome Moustapha. He has been in the industry for more than 18 years today. So without further ado, let’s give a round of applause to Moustapha.

Moustapha Ould Ibn Mogdad [2:50]

Thank you very much, Daisy. First of all, let me thank all the attendees for taking the time to participate in the session. And our agenda today we’ll start with presenting why customer-centricity should be on the front and the forefront today and driving customer centricity through digital transformation. Finally, we’ll end our session with an open Q&A. I will hand it over to Daisy to talk about the poll.

(Facilitator) Daisy Ramirez [3:34]

So we do have a poll today. So the question is, what is the plan for your AR shared services in 2021. So we do have one, leverage our current model to drive further cost optimization. Two focus on recovery from COVID-19. Three, leverage our current model to provide higher value and a competitive edge. And four, we are yet to create a fixed plan for 2021. So I’ll be putting up the poll question here, and I’ll give us enough time. I’ll give everyone about 30 seconds to go ahead and answer. Right Yeah, we have just a few more. So we’ll give it a couple more seconds, and then I’ll go ahead and show the results for it.

(Facilitator) Daisy Ramirez [5:50]

All right, we’ll go ahead and wrap up here in a couple of seconds. So any last-minute answers, go ahead and then submit them now.

(Facilitator) Daisy Ramirez [6:10]

All right, I’ll go ahead and show the results and in the first now, and I will turn it over to you, Moustapha, to analyze a little bit about our results here.

Moustapha Ould Ibn Mogdad [6:22]

As you can see from the results of the poll, 33% of the respondent was aiming for leveraging their current model to provide the higher value on competitive edges, versus 25% to leverage their current model to drive further cost optimization and a lower level which goes between the 17% to focus on recovery from COVID-19 and 80% to we are yet to create a fixed plan for 2021. Thank you very much for participating in the poll. It gave us a good indication of why customer-centricity should be at the forefront today. Let’s start with a definition of what customer-centric means. It is an approach to doing business that focuses on providing a positive customer experience both at the point of cells and after the cells in order to drive profit and gain competitive advantage. That the way organizations deal with their customers in a crisis is likely to leave lasting memories in a customer’s mind. According to customer experience statistics from 2019 as this solution survey, 641 billion is expected to be spent on CX technologies in 2022, over 130 billion more than in 2019, 71% of people recommend a product or service because they receive great experience companies that adapt to the changing needs of the customer will recover more rapidly. And that is the better position than competitor as according to various surveys elevating customer experience excellence in the next normal. What constitutes customer experience? The essential component of a good customer experience is product and product quality and delivery, plus customer service and support. So, these are the two essential components to constitute a customer experience. The real trouble arises from the past or degeneration. The customer experience should be on the priority list of AR teams. Because on the product side, the sales and marketing teams are usually highly aligned in how they approach their customer. The inventory and the shipping teams are usually independent in their operations. Finally, due to a siloed operation of AR teams, the division of customer satisfaction becomes difficult to achieve. Now Driving customers, so let’s get a bit more specific into the digital transformation of OTC for Shared service centers. How digital transformation helps in positioning your shared service in the best in class status. Number one is by standardizing the process through the centralized platform and shift from on-premise to a cloud solution.

Moustapha Ould Ibn Mogdad [10:26]

When we are talking about GPOs guide, few things in a GPO source of action that constitute a positive customer experience and drive profit. To win the next normal, companies need to identify the current behavior that will define customer experience in the near term. They must then assure that these opportunities are aligned with their business strategy and capability, a shift from what on-premise to a cloud solution. So, the SSO global 2020 report survey found that 65% respondents said that cloud-based technologies either forms or are actively in the process of forming most of their tech stack. In another survey, Deloitte found that the COVID crisis has significantly accelerated the shift from legacy systems to cloud solutions. So let’s talk about the standardize process through centralized platform and shift from on-premise to cloud solution. So, why the recommendation of a shift of switching from on-premise to cloud. First, the risk of data loss is high for an on-premise, as backup has to be scheduled and choreographed while the cloud is programmed to back up regularly. On-premise, the platform requires hardware investment software license and implementation costs plus downtime, staging environment, extra testing, and training, which add up to a big investment of time, resources, and dollars. Any updates or changes are required. Additional IT support while its support and resources are the responsibility of the cloud provider. On-premise solutions are built to specification and limit the ability to scale cloud programs are built on a flexible technology that scales as you grow. On-Premise has high capital expenses, while clouds usually require only a system implementation fee, with no license fees or hardware costs required. Payment is made for subscription charges and configuration changes according to customer requirements. On-premise cost could also arise due to technical system administration, patch maintenance, performance, turning, and downtime for testing and backup. The result is a cloud-based technology that costs almost 80% less than on-premise. So, in summary, on-premise platforms require hardware investment software licenses and implementation costs, plus downtime, staging environment, extra testing, and training, which add up to a bigger investment of time, resources, and dollars. Clouds usually require only a system implementation fee with no license fees or hardware costs required. Payment is made for a subscription charge and the configuration charge according to customer requirements. On-Premise costs could also arise due to technical system administration, patch maintenance, performance tuning, and downtime for testing and backup. This results in a cloud-based technology costing almost 80% less than on-premise.

Moustapha Ould Ibn Mogdad [14:23]

GPO courses of action for a positive customer experience. In today’s world, new oil is data. We live in a world where half we have trillions of data available to us. But if we are not able to leverage that data to our benefit, it serves no purpose. Analytics leads up to an efficient data management system where we can track and deliver on our customer expectations. So let’s now talk about how to optimize customer experience with analytics. First, cloud-based end-to-end platform, which means a single source of truth. All the customer data is present at one place, allowing a better end-user experience—real-Time visibility. Integration with one another helps AR teams serve the customer better, streamlined workflows, reduction in the time taken to address customer requests. Second, self-service customer portal, which means customers are and can view invoices, make payment views, outstanding disputes, etc. On-Demand. Customers don’t need to go through multiple touchpoints for getting an issue resolved and online communication, no need to call or receive calls unless absolutely necessary. And the third and last one is the out-of-the-box reporting dashboard, which means an account-based report to keep a tab on customer details and behavior and an employee performance report to track how they are achieving and delivering on the customer satisfaction objective. So, the last but the most integral part of the guide is adopting digital technologies like AI by leveraging AI tools to improve performance. So, what’s meant to leverage AI tools to improve performance, while RPA, which stands for robotic process automation, is used to work in conjunction with people by automating repetitive processes to attend to automation. AI is viewed as a form of technology to replace human labor and automate end to end for unautomated automation. RPA uses structures inputs and logic while AI uses instructor inputs and develops its own logic. AI has the ability to go beyond machine learning by interpreting and understanding the subtext of human emotion to create an engaging experience in this. In this AI can completely change the customer experience because most customers make decisions based on its emotional impact. Most people think that the adoption of digital technology has surged past COVID-19. But even before COVID-19, leaders were planning to adopt technologies. We plan before COVID to implement a chat bot to help our IT reduce the ticket numbers and repetitive unnecessary technical support. By the resentment then of the machine replacing human interaction was present. Across certain people’s delay due to close mindset was palpable to nevertheless during the first week of the pandemic, the very first people who feel the machine’s interaction were the first volunteer to test and provide support for implementation will finally launch it our first chatbot in 2020 during the peak of the pandemic.

Moustapha Ould Ibn Mogdad [18:57]

As you can see, the McKinsey stat shows how COVID-19 pushes companies to their technology tipping point and transformed business forever, specially in North America. You can see here that there is an increase of 60% for the adoption and the acceleration of the implementation of digital technologies in North America versus the previous year when you can see that it’s slowly and shiny starting from 33% to 41%. Three ways to leverage AI tools to improve performance. First, its single source of truth. Second is the streamlined workflow,. Lately and third AI-based chatbots will reduce multiple touchpoints for getting an issue resolved.

Moustapha Ould Ibn Mogdad [19:57]

So the next slide basically will disclose the results of the poll questions, and we will analyze it. Will you go, please, Daisy?

(Facilitator) Daisy Ramirez [ 20:05]

Yes. So we do have one more question for you guys. So anyone that’s interested in AI-powered automation? So the question is for you. Would you like to know more about AI-powered automation solutions from Highradius? 1. Yes, connect me to an expert. 2. Yes, send me some material for research. Or 3. Yes, but not at the moment. So, I’m going to go ahead and start our poll question here. Give you guys a couple of seconds to get a quick answer on that.

(Facilitator) Daisy Ramirez [20:56]

All right, so for those of you who are familiar with Highradius, yes, we do offer several different solutions, AI-powered automation that will help your current processes if you’d like to know any of that information, any cases that we’ve gone over any examples, more information or anything like that, we’d be more than happy to provide that. So I’ll give you guys just a couple more seconds to get those last-minute questions and answers submitted here. Okay, all right. And for those of you who did decide and would like to either connect with the speaker or would like to go back and have a demo with us or anything like that, we will get back to you on that. So stay tuned for that. You will be receiving a form of communication here pretty soon. So with that being said, that does lead us into our Q&A for today. So if you guys have any questions or anything that you’d like Moustapha to address at this moment, feel free to just type them in at the chat on the right-hand side. And we do have our first question that came in with Moustapha. And it says, What specific AI technology tools are you using?

Moustapha Ould Ibn Mogdad [22:24]

That’s a good question. And thank you very much. First of all, let me just remind you, that’s one of the most and highly used technologies right now in AI for OTC; it’s Highradius technology, specially Freeda, which helps with the collections and with the cash application and all process. I can also mention here that there is different technology used, specially for the OCR for the optical recognition on the order processing, and there is a lot of software available on the market. That being said, it’s always better to have a discussion with an open mind to see what’s the difference on-premise and on cloud-based. I can advise you on a personal use of that cloud-based solution. It’s the more easy and sophisticated way for the show business people, specially when you are in a different location, specially a different country with different time zones versus on-premises. So I highly recommend people to go through the cloud-based solution to mitigate all the risk involved in the widespread adversity of the shared business service.

(Facilitator) Daisy Ramirez [23:47]

Yes, we do have another one that came in. And it is, is there a method you use to determine the customer reaction towards a new implementation? How can companies measure customer satisfaction in this case.

Moustapha Ould Ibn Mogdad [24:01]

Yes, first, it is very important to do a survey with your customer. Because you need to touch their pulse and to see how they react to the changes but don’t do it during the changes. You have to do it before the changes because you have to have them as a partner. And the partnership with your customer will always lead to a very easy way to complete the process. I give you a perfect example. We have lately, the government in Canada will be asking us to create a kind of EDI process for the hospitals. So we went first ahead by sending a questionnaire as a survey for the hospitals to make sure what they’re looking for specifically because we went to satisfy their need. And after that, we turn over to our IT department, and we’ll average all the questions to a tool that can be used by everybody. Even though we know that EDI is a very Complex platform when it’s done, there is no possibility of changing a lot of things in EDI. But at least that customer experience gives us a really good sound of where and how we can solve and fix the issue that is not related to EDI or not related to IT by asking the customer the question and get their response. And with it was a great experience that we had with this customer, and can add value for both.

(Facilitator) Daisy Ramirez [25:36]

Perfect. Yes. So we do happen. And one more question. And it is, so you talk about the customer to cash rather than order to cash and how to add automation is necessary. When we talk about automation, how is having all parts of AR automated better than just one? Or does it not make a difference?

Moustapha Ould Ibn Mogdad [25:59]

There is a lot of discussion about automation all AR or part of the AR. I will start with the automation part of the AR in order to complete the whole scope of the project. Because if you grow by destroying every single thing that you have in hand, that will not succeed. There is always a phase in your process that you have to go through. Definitely, you need to start with the cash application because it’s the most crucial thing that you have in your company, as a cash application is related to the cash flow. And it’s related to the customer payment. And on top of it, it will help you to reduce the amount of collection that you have. Then you will end up by working on the collection side, which actually Highradius offers Freeda, which is a very good tool for organizing your collection. So on top, of course, of automation of the Cash Application. So, that means you have to go through the different phases of the process to align before you complete your automation.

(Facilitator) Daisy Ramirez [27:12]

All right, of course, it says, How did you convince the executive C suite to invest in technology?

Moustapha Ould Ibn Mogdad [27:21]

I wouldn’t go with a very simple rhetoric question. There is no need to convince any executive suite to invest in technology. This is the reality they live in 2021. The pandemic itself has imposed an executive suite to invest in technology. Now it’s a question; can you invest quickly, or you will be delayed. That’s where you need to convince your executive that there is a need and a rush to invest quickly in order to be aligned with your customer. Because it became a requirement from your customer itself. The customer is telling you this is what we need. In a competitive market, you have to be on the edge with your customer. And you have to look around and compare your business with your other business. And you will feel how the pressure is coming under you that you need to go ahead with the 2021. And with the 21st century, that technology is a tool that we have to use and to get the advantage of it before it’s too late. So I will urge you all to talk to your executive by showing them the numbers.

(Facilitator) Daisy Ramirez [28:41]

Oh, yes, I think we have time for just one more question here. And it is in shared services in 2025. In your opinion, will shared services stay until then, or how do you think it’ll be different?

Moustapha Ould Ibn Mogdad [29:00]

Shared services will sustain until 2025 and beyond. However, the model of shared services will change in 2025. And beyond because of AI and because of quantum computing. There is definitely a tremendous shift from the model that the shared service has been used now. The pandemic has shown us the fragility of our shared service model. Now we have to be agile, and look beyond the pandemic and find out what is the best way to take advantage of technology and to implement chatbots, AI. All different technologies that developers have on the market to be able to sustain in the future. The future belongs to AI. That’s a known fact. So now, how we can use AI to leverage and to make our shared business work better. That’s up to us. The machine will not tell us what to do. We have to tell the machine what to do, and we have.