Enhancing Collections Efficiency and Customer Satisfaction

by John Davis, Business Controller, Atlas Copco Compressors Australia

Atlas Copco uses shared service centres globally, including Australia which provides centralised cash receipt services whilst each business operation includes receivables collection services. We use three ERP systems across the group: BPCS, Scala and SAP. In Australia, we use BPCS which we previously used for receivables management. When I joined the company in early 2007, our collections management process involved a series of manual processes including printing or exporting data, manipulating information in spreadsheets, making calls and then recording notes in BPCS. As this was cumbersome and time-consuming, we had to prioritise which invoices to chase, so inevitably we focused on receivables with the highest value. This meant that many smaller amounts were not chased routinely, affecting our working capital and days sales outstanding (DSO) considerably.

Another challenge related to invoice disputes, which can arise as a result of issues with machinery, service or pricing issues. When a dispute was raised, we used to alert the sales team by email, but there was no traceability of follow-up actions. Consequently, collections were often not received for a long time after the invoice date, and we were concerned that we were very dependent on manual processes, subsystems and key individuals.