Moderator 0:02
Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today’s panel discussion conducted by HighRadius in collaboration with Genpact. My name is Julie den, and I’ll be the moderator for today’s session. A few housekeeping notes. Before we get started, all participants will be on mute throughout the webinar. So if you have a question, please enter it in the q&a or the chatbox on the right-hand side of your screen. These questions will be answered at the end of the presentation. If we aren’t able to get to all of the questions, we promise to answer them individually in a follow-up email. all registrants will additionally receive a copy of this webinar recording within the next couple of days. To promote engagement. There will be some poll questions that will come up at different times as a part of the webinars and we strongly encourage you to answer those so that our panelists could better understand their audience. On the panel today, we have Sajeesh Kumar, he is the global enterprise service line head at Genpact, and Natalie Fedie. She’s the vice president of customer value at a HighRadius. Sajeesh has been the global enterprise service line head for Genpact for almost 11 years, whereas he is responsible for designing and driving transformation initiatives across OTC processes for global organizations. Prior to that, he was leading the quote to cash process at HP. Joining him today is Natalie Fedie. She’s the vice president of customer value at HighRadius. Natalie is a member of the HighRadius leadership team and has over a decade of experience leading both private enterprise and public sector organizations through their digital transformation. She oversees the Global Customer Value division, which is responsible for helping HighRadius clients improve access to working capital, and increase cash flow through the use of the integrated receivables and Treasury managers, management systems. Did you should matter, we will talk about why customer experience has to be one of the top priorities in the new year within your OCC team. They will discuss their experience on how to build a customer-focused AR team that will achieve their goals as well as help achieve better customer retention. They will also share their deep insights on how digital transformation can help HR teams achieve a customer-first approach. So with that being said, the first poll question will be here is improving customer experience in order to cash a part of your agenda for 2021. The poll is now being launched. And while we’re doing that, we’ll go ahead and start with the first question here. So Natalie is the Jewish? How have customer expectations changed in 2020? When it comes to your clients at HighRadius and Genpact? Could you both give us some unique insights on the challenges that you and your customers face and how you pivoted in order to provide better service to your clients?
Natalie 3:02
Sure. You want me to jump in here. So thanks, Julie. You know, it’s really great to be here with Sajeesh. This is something I’m truly passionate about putting customers first with the economic, you know, the uncertainty that 2020 has brought, one of the areas that we are doubling down on is client retention. One of our core cultural values is to ride or die with the customer. And it’s truly making sure that we are providing the best possible experience in order to kind of create that loyal customer for the long term. But more importantly, the number one way that we retain customers is to ensure that they’re achieving measurable value. And today, customers have more choices in selecting where they want to work with. And they’re expecting more from their software vendors. They want a true partnership with their solution providers, someone who’s going to work with them throughout the entire digital transformation lifecycle to ensure that they’re defining value upfront, you know, recognizing value as fast as possible, and then maximizing the value of their software investments over time. So just to kind of summarise my first point here, due to the economic uncertainty caused by this kind of worldwide pandemic that we’re in, all companies really need to ensure that they’re meeting their customer expectations and helping them solve some complex problems that they may not have even anticipated. Right? And you’re aligned with what they define as success so that they can be you can be a true partner in helping them meet those business goals and keeping their customers for the long term. But I’ll turn this over to you sedation because I’m sure you have a lot of comments on this as well.
Sajeesh 4:40
Thank you, Natalie, on the outset. Greetings to the audience pleasure to be talking about a topic that I’m extremely passionate about. Natalie, if I look at it right there are two parts to the question really, one about the changing trends of customer expectations in children. And two, given the kind of year that 2020 has been and is how is that influenced or enhanced the changes? So, let me address the first part. Like you rightly said, right, it is important to realize that in general customers across the globe today are more informed, have more options available, be it in a product service or experience these days. And they are quite literally dictating the experience ecosystem themselves. But if I had to call out five key trends, that is often the defining and definitely raising customer or consumer experience, there will be as follows first and foremost is that digitization or digital transformation is changing the definition of what is fast. Even in a business-to-business world, considered lagging compared to the business-to-consumer world on response times, for example, over 60% of customers expect a response and resolution to their query, irrespective of what it might be within hours. So the speed of response is as important as the accuracy of response shape, right? So digitalization is changing the definition of parts. The second trend that I’ve seen is the whole transition to online from offline, which is also changing the expectation of how efficiently a business should be. So for a new developing customer base, predominantly consisting of millennials deciding on purchasing patterns, if you’re not already online, you might rather be extinct. The third trend that I’ve seen across is the rise of self-service. And this has increased the percentage of customers that are happy to help themselves. And it does not just apply across to the b2c world and even in the business to the business enterprise world, you see a large volume of customer segments in multiple industries, interested in doing so and expecting it as well. The fourth trend I’ve seen is the channel or divide copying culture leading to expectations around an omnichannel service. The expectation means that as a customer, my medium of communication might change often, but the information I shared needs to be consistent at the business end, which basically does. And the final trend is the race to cloud and data accessibility and the intensity is driving a need for personalization. Customers expect us to know their personal and business behavior patterns well enough and deliver them without having to listen to excuses of rigid systems and processes. Because if you look at it, customers recognize brands, not departments right. Now coming to the second part of your question, How was 2020 influence the dynamics of customer experience? For one the playing fields have been disruptive of customers, their customers have made significant changes like going fully remote, focusing on employees, budget cards, trade-offs between productivity sales, revenue and employee safety, and factoring in the new environment, our customers and we ourselves find them is extremely so in the new norm, it is no longer about a business to the business world anymore. It is more about a business to people world.
On the customer to competence, Julie, I think, if you don’t mind, I would like to take this question out as well. Expanding on the conversation we had and Natalie I’ll invite you to join in with your comments after that. The whole competence around the order to cash function and customer experience is very closely interlinked. The audit attention via cash function has been a core customer-centric function and they’re very closely associated with the experience economy right. The challenge, however, has been that most enterprises and their OTC function give more importance to focus on a transactional lifecycle and the process surrounding for example, how exactly is my order get processed? How exactly is my invoice flow, rather than focusing on the customer lifecycle and the interactions points and how they behave? Let me elaborate on that, from the moment customers are onboarding to providing a service or a product, then invoicing them and then receiving payment. All these four interaction lines influence extensively the customer experience one way or the other. Now, given that the OTC function in itself is transversal in cutting across multiple functions within an organization, a seamless and frictionless customer lifecycle is a transformation journey in itself. But one that has very clear linkages to improving experience and ease of doing business and thereby positively influencing value outcomes such as revenue, profitability, and cash and not least spoke about outcomes and how important that is, in most of my conversations with clients and more so in 2020, improving ease of doing business and customer experience is no longer an add on qualitative benefit, or a decorative term used to cover the quantitative needs of cash and revenue. But it has actually become a very sincere and serious expectation in itself. And the reason is that you’re able to actually influence your own growth and profitability through managing Your customer’s growth and profitability. A recent manufacturing client of ours ran a program for the retailer customer base to enable and drive up their margins and optimize its supply chain costs through a joint on time and in the full initiative company. Similarly, so on claims and trade promotion processes. That’s the journey that you’re seeing many clients take through. The conversations also tend to move towards providing customers accessibility options, through Self Service portals, integrating multiple payment engines, or customized campaigns and offers, etc. But to add to the transactional complexity, also to see function, or customers feeding programs in our organizations should be focused on delivering business results by reshaping our internal processes to continuously improve and digitize. Natalie, what are your views on that?
Natalie 10:50
Well, I absolutely agree with you. Sajeesh, we are also hearing from our clients there, that there’s more pressure on their finance teams to provide that frictionless experience that you call for the customers and, and that goes with every touchpoint that their customers have with their organization. So it goes beyond just the sales relationship, right. And we’ve seen for sure an increase in the need for an improved experience, specifically in the areas around collections and credit. Some companies who, you know, feel like they have good relationships with their customers, and they think they know these payment patterns and whatnot are realizing that in a COVID environment, nothing is certain. And really, in fact, it’s kind of unpredictable in a way. So they’re looking for technology solutions like AI to provide that additional insight into the changes in customer behavior patterns. So they can be more proactive when it comes to that, being able to take advantage of collecting and recovering those outstanding debts. And then lastly, the pandemic has increased the need to focus on customer experience, back to my point earlier is to retain clients, because, you know, it does cost less to retain those clients than to onboard those new clients and providing that experience is going to give them you know, make sure that they’re keeping their clients and that revenue growth is going to further expand. So that’s kind of I totally agree with what you were saying there.
Move on to the next. Yeah, but Sajeesh wouldn’t take this one as well,
Sajeesh 12:28
So on building customer first. So to see team Seneca is closely linked to what you actually mentioned just about why companies have been stating that customer experience is a priority. And customers King, to be honest, their actions don’t normally match their words, right? I mean, at least not prior to 2020 to an extent. But the tide is slowly changing. And for the good, especially with the uncertainty around COVID-19. And its impact on global industries. The whole company is starting to see the value of investing in customer experience and the advantage it can give them over the competition, right? That’s a reality of the customer first or to see function will never have a street true playbook that can be applied across the board for all enterprises. That’s never the intent that would in fact defeat the whole purpose of personalization and experience economy now, wouldn’t it? But that could be a guidebook to follow and apply. And if somebody were to ask me saying, Hey, what are the top three things that you should definitely do? If I have to keep my O to C functions, focused on the customer side? I would say the following. But one segment your customers personalize the experience with you. In the business-to-business role, it is no longer and you touched upon this earlier, it’s no longer about big-budget mass campaigns, again to attract tonnes of new customers. Today, it’s about focusing on the people you already have your current customers and making sure you delight them with a positive customer experience every single time they interact with you. The second one that I would request to do is to digitize internal processes and break the functional silos. Because a few positive trends I’ve seen in client conversations this year is the urgency to digitize and evolve, while also being open to breaking the barriers of say, who knows is the supply chain function or knows is the finance function right? It’s all now about the customer experience and how to leverage the same for driving more enterprise-level value outcomes. That realization for any enterprise is not easy, but if done, it remains a treasure trove of benefits. So platform-based solutions are widely accepted as alternative agile solutions to drive both value and experience. And third, and most important is giving due respect and attention to data and what they’re actually telling you. Encouraging data-driven decisions over traditional Round Table gut and instinct kinds of decisions is immensely key and is going to remain that way for a very long time. Let me give you a quick example. In 2020 driven by the crisis for most enterprises, the tradition The audit trends and payment trends by their customers took a complete noodle. What that meant for accounts receivables or a collections analyst is that they could no longer only depend upon the instinct or experience of having managed that portfolio for so long, because they are now completely behaving differently. And companies that actually studied the six to eight-week data trends, and not the two-year data transmission, that analytics normally comes across with across customer segments, they were able to change course faster, and avail better results. This also helped them in being aligned to the customers changing environments. And that results in a positive customer experience. As we spoke about earlier, the whole b2b space has been long behind the curve when it comes to customer experience. But many companies are starting to wake up and realize the power that comes from investing in customers and their employees. Right. So how companies operate is constantly changing, as evidenced by the global economy has just made it faster. But in order to stay relevant, companies, and especially the audit test function must definitely offer innovative, strong, and consistent customer experiences. Natalie, your views?
Natalie 16:11
Well, just a couple of comments, actually. And then we’ll go to this poll, Julie. But you know, I just, it’s at the core of what I do, you know, at HighRadius right in our organization focusing on that on our customers’ experience to help them right. So you’re right, you’ll see more and more companies, I think, dedicating teams that are focused on experience, being able to measure that experience to see how they’re doing in comparison. And benchmarking is another thing that’s going to be coming up as far as getting access to data so they know where they stand in these areas. So I totally agree with you. And I really appreciate your input there. Do we let’s go to the poll?
Julie 17:01
Sounds good already. So poll question number two here. Are you currently exploring any digital transformation opportunities in AR? One? Yes, we are working on implementing a solution to we are thinking about it, and three now I’ll go ahead and launch that. And while that’s being launched, I’ll go ahead and hand it over to you to finish.
Sujeesh 17:20
Thank you, Julie. Let’s get a bit more detail right when we’re talking about digital transformation in order to cash and I wanted to get more specific, if I could talk about two couple of examples within the receivables world right now by the customer first is changing the way we actually run processes. Let me move forward into the pages and talk about, you know, let’s talk about credit. The whole leveraging of internal data sets to avoid complete dependency on external credit agency reports to drive faster onboarding, and maybe faster orders and improve the experience is a reality today, you could get that done across what most enterprises fail to recognize is that they are sitting on a treasure trove of data of their own customers in their own books who have been in their book for a long time, who can, in fact, be referenceable in order onboarding a new customer, you don’t have to wait for two days to try to get all the information across, you can have a short term credit limit put across based upon a similar customer that has been in your books for a long time, and then start evolving and assessing it across automatically through digital digitized models. In order to see how their payment and behavior trends and audit trails work to actually either increase it or reduce it. So there is a whole treasure trove of data that can be actually leveraged, the ideal combination would be a mix of both the credit agency reports and of course, your own internal data points. So that’s something that I’ve seen, companies actually take to very rigorously. And you can’t do that without having a deep AI-enabled system of engagement that actually enables you to do that. The second example that I wanted to talk about was around disputes. And Natalie, you spoke about AI, he spoke about how you could bring in analytics and how you could bring in machine learning and all the microservices coming in together to actually solve for a business problem in disputes that is talks of killing disputes, and rightly so, ability to assess proactively if an invoice is going to get disposed of disputed or not, is no longer fiction. That’s basic table stakes expectation, talking in Lean and Six Sigma parley. And bear with me because I work in an organization that has Lean and Six Sigma core everything that we do. Every collection effort needs to be looked at as a defect. And every dispute is a defect on a defect. So enterprises today are looking at their AR trends much more closely and it’s not just being looked at only by the OTC team. It’s been looked at across the organization and they’re looking at it much more closely to be more proactive and reactive at an invoice level and also at a market. So that’s the magic, a digital platform that is designed with the domain at its core can actually do for an autosave function. In my honest opinion, I think digital transformation every single time that we talk about it, especially in an OTC function is not a destination. But the journey actually. One that requires constant feedback loops and reading trends and being able to course-correct in a cost-effective and agile manner. That truly is what drives the run experience. Because not everything is about the sale now alone, it is a jetpack. Our delivery operations focused on this component a lot on a daily basis. And an open feedback channel across our client hierarchies that is in place today is a practice that they’re extremely proud of. But on that note, Natalie, how do you look at customer experience for your clients? Post the sale experience?
Natalie 20:56
Yeah, thanks for asking. You know, we find a lot of executives struggle when it comes to measuring customer satisfaction or the value that they or their end customers are getting from software investments. And even more important, they want to know what KPIs should they are tracking that are directly impacting, you know, those key business outcomes, like improving DSO or net recovery rates. And, and HighRadius, we are a performance-driven company with a high expectation of adopting what we call dot one, or one in 1000 of the best software companies in the world, right. So we literally track KPIs for everyone in the company at every level, and how their work contributes or rolls up to the overall revenue and retention goals that we have. But in order for us to achieve that one status, we need to help our clients’ HR departments, and the teams who use our software become dot one as well. And this is the philosophy that drives us to ensure that our products deliver that measurable valuable. I lead the customer value organization and that dedicated team of individuals who focus on proactively working with our customers to ensure that they’re achieving the value that they’re expecting. And that this is primarily done through tracking and measuring KPIs. So we’ve built this, what we call the dot one performance dashboard that really provides executives with the insight they need at the top level of how their HR organizations are performing, and how they’re how it contributes how that performance is contributing to their key business outcomes. While at the same time, they can have the ability to drill down into the customer-level metrics. And those analyst metrics, right, that are directly impacting those key outcomes to give them the intelligence, they need to help focus and ultimately increase access to working capital. Let me give you an example of how we’re using these tools to actually drill into customer data. So literally the dashboard, you would enter the customer that you want to see. And it gives you basically a snapshot of all of the different areas within the order to cash functional. So you can see how they’re trending in collections and deductions, how their net recovery rate is, in one snapshot. It’s almost like a customer 360 view if you will. And then if I drill down directly into the collections section, I can literally see a view of what that customer’s past due amount is, what their aging buckets look like when was the last activity that they were that our analysts reached out to them? And more specifically, what were those promises to pay that were committed for? So it again, it’s the ease of use, right? They get you to get analysis by paralysis by analysis when you have too many reports, and you’re trying to sort them out. But we’ve tried to make it easy to connect the dots between those business outcomes and the performance of the analysts and the customers themselves. And suggests I know that you at Genpact have a similar thought process around that in a framework. Can you share a little bit about what you guys do at Genpact?
Sajeesh 24:17
Happy to Natalie something that we have extremely proud of, we have a similar though more domain-centric framework approach Natalie. So let me give a bit of context. Before we jump into that throughout our history our clients have told us that our ability to combine bottoms of granular process-based approach which is steeped in quality in Lean is quite unique. So when we launched this particular framework that we are talking about, which is smart enterprise framework, process framework, the foundation is based upon our ability to design transform and run process operations and probably the first such approach the business process services space, right so it is a unique methodology that basically looks at employing granular data, sophisticated diagnostics, and functional benchmarks to maximize what sort of process effectiveness we could do while harnessing the power of digital technologies. So at Genpact, we look at process steps as interdependent and subjugated to a set of key metrics. Like rightly mentioned, there could be a past you could be, you know, battered right of components even. But it could also be revenue optimization components, but we put that across purely into a set of key metrics that in turn align to the truth not an achievement of your business outcomes, right, it has to matter to the enterprise that you’re talking about. But instead of the traditional focus on the mean, so for example, saying I would plug-in technology, or I will make this particular process change. What the smart enterprise prayer framework does, is focus on identifying the critical factors that influence business outcomes. And then it targets them to achieve maximum impact with minimal disruption. So if I’m going to give you an example, if I get if I play down the top-down approach of saying to influence a DSO, I need to touch upon collections, I need to touch upon credit, I need to touch upon, you know, disputes and deductions affect me. And in that what are the 10 steps that I do? And in that, which is a portfolio which customer? Would I positively impact if I focus on it? Would I collect more in that given particular period of time, so it pretty much looks at that level of detailing? And what the result is, is an ability to achieve business impact in a more agile and time-effective way, which is a better approach in times of all.
Julie 26:47
Right, so combining Genpact functional and operations experience deep industry knowledge in proprietary process framework with HighRadius, leading staff based integrated Receivables Management technology, we help companies create value from process automation and gain clear insights into their order to cash and Treasury operations using technology that uses AI and our expertise for managing Cuba. Jackson’s worth over 1 trillion each year. That being said to Natalie, did you want to add anything here? Before we head on
Sajeesh 27:26
I did want to come in that, you know, the whole future of the finance component is all about the ideal mix between domain expertise and the digital levers that we have at all. I believe the termination of Genpact and HighRadius coming together for our clients is actually a proven protest point of saying that you know, how you bring in the domain, how you leverage the digital province of radius to actually drive value and value outcomes, which is all that matters. Not only not sure if you had an addition to that,
Natalie 27:55
I agree and I am thrilled about our partnership with Genpact as I work with our current clients, you know, there are a lot of clients that we share together and to have that shared approach in making sure that both of our common clients achieve their goals is really important to me. It’s been great to work with you so far. So we’re really, really excited about the partnership.
Julies 28:24
Right. And just a reminder to the audience, feel free to submit your questions in the q&a chatbox. And we’ll go ahead and read that out. So Natalie introduced we do have a few questions here. The first question will be, should we set KPIs for customer experience in OTC? And how do we recognize good customer experience in service among OTC Oh, two Cs teams?
Natalie 28:53
I’ve jumped in there because I think this is a very interesting question about actually specific specifically measuring customer experience in the OTC process, right. And, you know, obviously, companies track customer experience in many ways. There are NPS scores, there’s feedback surveys, those types of things. But I think that customer or I’m sorry, companies who are actually measuring, using these tools, these traditional tools to measure the experience during the order to cash workflow is going to be amazingly ahead of the game, right? Because you create that feedback loop that allows you to get that input to make the decisions and listen to your customer base, to see what they want. We make a lot of assumptions sometimes in our roles, thinking about what we assume a customer might want, but getting their feedback on what their experience truly is so important. So that was one thing and I don’t know, produce if you know, have some comments about that or if you’re actually providing a service around that at all. Right now today.
Sajeesh 30:01
So it’s a very interesting question I have to say, because, you know, easier said than done about saying putting KPIs for customer experience, right, especially, you know, to see, but there are, there are firms that follow the traditional norms like you rightly mentioned that NPS scores, customer surveys competence of it. But I had a different opinion, to be honest, is to look at what the data is telling you, I spoke about data and, you know, interpreting data, a happy customer is going to do more business with you. And over a period of the term, seeing that consistent trend going up, keeping aside macroeconomic influences as such, you will be able to identify whether you’re actually making influence at all or not, while measuring NPS while measuring customer service across the lifecycle, that’s a good way to continue. But listen to the data, evaluate the data, interpret the data, and you will start seeing whether you’re actually having a positive customer experience or not. And do note that you’re not trying to boil the ocean here. You’re literally trying to look at a segmented approach of what experience will be trouble. And that has to have different measurement frameworks coming into play. So that’s normally how we look at it. Yeah, like a continuous, you know, improvement process,
Natalie 31:15
right, is what you’re seeing is it’s like it’s a journey. And you’re always striving to get better and adapting, and being relevant to again, the changing needs of your customer. That’s great. Okay,
Julie 31:34
All right. And we have another question here. So customer experience is a journey, how do we make sure that it continues, even after the digital transformation has been done?
Sajeesh 31:50
Do you want me to take that nearly? And then yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Absolutely. And I think the answers there right in the question as well, it’s a journey. So you’re not a destination, or a measurement, conferencing, that if I reach this number, I’m there for two reasons. One, like we mentioned across at the beginning of the webinar is customer experience and demands are constantly evolving. So if you believe you have already reached it, there’s probably the demand is changed, and something else needs to be done. So customer experience definitely is a journey. Digital transformation to remember is a lever, to achieve and enable that customer experience, you need to be consistent. It is not the only lever, you still need to be having an exceptional means of product service, you need to be having an engagement layer that is omnichannel enough, you need to be having personalized campaigns and competence coming into play. And that keeps changing on a consistent and evolving basis. So yeah, digital transformation is a lever. And you still track customer experience as a journey consistently. Actually not sure what you want to add.
Natalie 33:02
Yeah, I’ll add, I’ll add to that, from the perspective of a software vendor, right? There’s, in today’s world we are, we can’t just sell them software or a solution, get it set up, and then let them take it upon themselves and expect them to be, you know, to meet these goals and objectives that they wanted. It’s a continuous journey with them along that lifecycle and meeting the objectives that they wanted to can take time, but also providing them with these measurable milestones to you know, to make sure that they’re moving forward, right. A lot of times when we pick that first milestone, we the customers are looking to us to say what’s next, right? Because again, with technology today, we’re always evolving our technology. And we want that customer to join us along that journey. So that experience with your partner, and I’ll go back to what I said before, it’s a partnership, not just the vendor. So that’s the way we look at it, as well. So thank you.
Julie 34:09
Right, and I believe that is it here. So Natalie’s use, did you have any closing remarks before I close out?
Sajeesh 34:25
No, just said, I was just saying I think we have had a savior I’ve had a point of view. For me. As I said, it’s constantly, because it’s a customer experience that is a constantly evolving target. Right. And the intent is not to be absolutely spot on in terms of hitting the target, they’re right in the middle. But it is about being in the vicinity of said at least cater to the key requirements or demands that your customers are putting in front of you. That’s one. The second part of it is auditor cash function is extremely close to the customers and therefore, an exceptional function that you can actually target across in terms of improving your customer experience goals. And three digital transformation is, therefore, a lever. Identify the right intervention, make it contextualize to your business challenge, have a domain at the core of it all. And I think you will have success
Natalie 35:28
couldn’t have been better said better. Thank you, Sajeesh
Julie 35:38
And I’d like to also once again, thank you so much for joining us HighRadius on this panel today. You know, during these challenging times empathy is something that all teams need to focus on. And we hope that we will be able to meet everyone in person for our next session. And with that being said, thank you, everyone, so much for participating in this discussion today. Thank you, Mary. Thank you PDH. If there are any additional questions that you might have regarding today’s topic that we did not cover or get to, and you would like to connect to know more about, please feel free to reach out to me and I’ll make sure those questions get answered. Again, thank you all for joining us and you will have a great day.
Sajeesh 36:12
Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.
Natalie 36:17
Thank you
