About the Client

The client is a leading North American utility service provider. With over 12,000 personnel and 8,000 vehicles, the client operates one of the largest fleets in the industry. It has a strong presence in the residential and commercial sectors in the US and is committed to improving operational performance and sustainability.

Business Challenge

A regular operational review shed light on several challenges the client faced in its Accounts Receivable (AR) and Invoice processing workflows. These included:

• Issues with cash flow and revenue realization

The client’s Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) was as high as 30 to 40 days. In other words, it took the client 30 to 40 days to receive payments from its customers. This affected its cash flows and led to challenges in generating revenue.

• Delays in invoice submissions and reversals

The client was still using manual processes to submit or reverse invoices. Considering the scale of the business, the manual process was time-consuming and error-prone. This led to delays in submitting invoices and receiving payments on time.

• No track of invoice rejections

The client lost considerable revenue because it was not tracking invoice rejection notifications, and the resolution time was too long.

• Delays in reconciling bulk invoices

Since the client was dealing with numerous invoices, downloading and reconciling them took around one to two weeks. This led to delays in reconciliation and impacted reporting during the reporting cycles.

These challenges were observed within the key billing portals used by the client.

Due to the delays in collecting revenue and reconciling invoices, the client’s cash position and operational liquidity were affected. The manual overhead increased, and resources started to get drained. The client started losing its customers’ trust due to unresolved and delayed invoice submissions and rejections. It was staring at potential audit risks and compliance issues due to a lack of proper financial documentation.

Automation was the only solution. However, the existing solution was not scalable and did not align with the client’s industry best practices. Considering the scale of its business, it decided to use our AI-led Automation solution.

Our Solution

We helped the client improve the process by:

• Deploying new bots

After understanding the client’s need for better invoice processing, rejection handling, and data processing, we deployed ten new BOTs tailored to automate these processes.

• Managing existing bots

We also managed the existing bots deployed by the client’s vendor, in addition to the ones we developed to enhance the invoice management process.

• Managing end-to-end services

Besides deploying and supporting new and existing BOTs, we also provided end-to-end managed services. This included optimizing existing processes and monitoring their performance to improve them further.

Business Impact

Here are a few changes the client observed after deploying and managing the BOTs:

• Decrease in DSO

The solution was deployed within two supplier billing portals. The DSO was reduced from 30 to 40 days to two days on both portals with a zero-touch processing rate, as it did not require any human intervention.

• Better invoice reversal process

Instead of seven days, it took just one day to complete the invoice reversal process with a 95% success rate. The invoice reversal process became so fast and efficient that it helped the client regain its customers’ trust.

• Efficiency in bulk invoicing downloads

Bulk invoicing download no longer took a week or two. Our solution helped the client do it in just 3-4 hours. This helped the client reconcile the invoices on time and generate the reports on time.

• Improvement in rejection handling

We implemented ServiceNow to help the client track the invoice rejections. Hence, instead of scanning through or missing them in the barrage of emails, the client could easily track them through ServiceNow. This enabled the client to address the rejections on time and prevent revenue loss.