Helping B2B businesses
getting paid on-time

With purchases on account (Rechnungskauf), uncertainty is the norm. Not knowing when a payment will be made can paralyze businesses - and common mitigation strategies struggle to address the problem at its core. But what if there was a more direct way to tackle this uncertainty? A way that brought buyer and seller closer together? A way to reduce DSO, get paid earlier, and make customers happy? Let us take you on a journey …

Bringing buyers and sellers closer together

For B2B transactions, purchases on account (Rechnungskauf) are by far the predominant payment method. This business practice has benefited buyers and sellers for centuries: Sellers increase their revenues; buyers get more leeway to meet their obligations. But purchases on account come at a cost. Payments are delayed by miscommunication and disputes. For the seller, the uncertainty of when the payment will be made drives DSO, working capital, and processing costs. If communication gets out of hands, the customer experience suffers.

Companies have found mechanisms to cope with this uncertainty: Factoring is just one way to offload uncertainty from balance sheets. Cash flow forecasts leveraging machine-learning capabilities is another. But we think that there is a more direct way to tackle this uncertainty: Using a platform approach to bring buyer and seller closer together and leverage new ways of customer interaction to exchange information about the order, invoice, and payment status.

“If there's one thing that's certain in business, it's uncertainty”.

Consider a customer portal that allows customers to manage invoices, payments, and communication in one place - guaranteeing smooth payment experiences and allowing companies to incentivize on-time payment. This enables the company to precisely plan cash flows and get paid earlier.

Empowering Accounts Receivable teams

Much like in football, a good starting eleven in the business world includes people with different skills and expertise who join forces to meet customers’ needs. Successful companies provide team members with resources and establish networks so that everyone can contribute to delivering a great customer experience.

In certain parts of the customer journey, however, teams face an uneven playing field. Cross-departmental collaboration is often hindered by experiential barriers and silos: The need for specialist tools and routines makes the team play difficult. Consider the following example: a customer disputes a payment on delivery delays or wrong quantities delivered. Clarifying and resolving these issues requires the collaboration of agents and experts from finance, sales, or logistics. Working on different systems or conversations lost in the mix, delay resolution times for customers and drives DSO, working capital, and processing costs.

“A company is a team, funded by customers”.

All too often, teams cannot realize their problem-solving capabilities because of cross-departmental divides. That is why Veita offers a platform to deal with disputes – allowing companies to exchange relevant information and coordinate actions so that they can respond to customers in a timely and effective manner.

Data-driven collection strategies

All too often, people are forced to make business decisions based on gut feelings in the absence of data. When handling cases, finance teams must speculate about the past sales process, the customer relationship, the effectiveness, and the appropriateness of responses.

We believe that delivering the right data, to the right person, at the right time, in an actionable manner, is the best recipe to achieve high operational performance. This holds true even more so in receivables management where cases need to be followed up in a timely manner and appropriate actions need to be taken with confidence.

“Without data, it is just an opinion”
W. Edwards Deming

However, data-driven decision-making becomes difficult when customer-related information is spread across multiple systems. Finding the right piece of information takes a significant amount of time – and the result may not even be up to date if systems are disconnected. Consider this example: a customer disputes a payment on wrong quantities delivered. To resolve this issue, you may well have to gather data from the accounting software, a logistics application, and a CRM tool before being able to find an appropriate solution.

While specialist applications are necessary, working with different systems increases resolution times for customers and drives DSO, working capital, and processing costs. Even worse: in the absence of data, people are forced to make decisions based on gut feelings or speculation.

Making it easy for companies to turn
from insights to actions.

Veita seeks to provide the necessary context to a case. Featuring intuitive dashboards and a recommendation engine that suggests the next steps, it supports decision-making processes with relevant insights. Built with the need of modern finance teams in mind, it offers tools for collaboration and flexibly adjusts to existing workstreams.

Conclusion

After all, we think that the future of Accounts Receivable will be dynamic, collaborative, and frictionless. That’s why we created Veita – an Accounts Receivable cloud solution that helps B2B businesses manage invoices, receivables, and payments with ease. If you are interested in learning more and seeing how we can support your business, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Pierre, Matthias & Richard – cofounders at Veita