Credit departments are awash in paper. Consequently, credit analysts and collectors spend an inordinate amount of time filing documents, searching paper files for documents, distributing documents, copying data from documents, waiting for others to send them documents, reprinting invoices and other documents, and on and on and on.
Paper is too often used to bridge the gaps in the order-to-cash process: customer to vendor, vendor to customer, bank to vendor…and even between internal systems: service tickets to billing, returned merchandise to accounting, disputed Invoices/payments to the problem owner, Sales Force Automation to AR Automation, between multiple business units with their own unique systems, and so on.Paper creates inefficiencies because it is timely to process, is subject to getting lost, is expensive to store, and can require transcription of its contents which is redundant and subject to errors. In addition, paper is not as secure as electronic archives and paper trails are not as comprehensive as well designed electronic footprints.The good news for credit executives is that technology has finally reached the point where paper can largely be eliminated from the order-to-cash process. Receivables Document Management (RDM) marks the convergence of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Receivables and Collection Management (RCM). RDM unites the strategic workflow and automated processing of RCM with the capture, storage, retrieval, and distribution capabilities of ECM. RDM thus helps to provide complete transactional transparency across the entire order-to-cash process.By using RDM technologies, credit departments are not only realizing substantial productivity gains and cost savings, but are also able to focus more of their attention on critical credit and collection issues. Quite simply, the efficiency and visibility that derive from RDM enable credit executives to better mitigate risk, which is job number one in these challenging economic times.
