Pressure-Test the Promise

When an organization is ready to move towards a modern AR environment, the market can begin to sound remarkably similar.

Automation. AI. Intelligence. Integration. Faster cash. Greater productivity. Better customer experiences.

Just because a vendor touts them as benefits of their platform, doesn’t make their capability to deliver them equal.

A stronger AR environment should help finance see what is happening across the receivables journey, understand what deserves attention, decide what should happen next, act earlier, adapt as business needs change and demonstrate measurable value.

You need to look at the evidence behind the platform to see if their claims hold up.

Customer voices speak loud

Customers buy Quadient looking for specific business outcomes. They had a problem and trusted Quadient to help them solve it.

Here’s what success looked like for them:

Jumio, a global identity verification company, needed to improve collections without adding more work to a lean finance team. One employee had been spending an entire day each week manually contacting customers and tracking communications in Google Docs.

Quadient AR automated much of that outreach, introduced dynamic statement links and made customer communication history accessible across the business. The result was a 24-day reduction in DSO, representing a 29% improvement, while reducing the time and resources required to manage collections.

As the team described it, “We've saved time, saved resources, and improved collections at the same time.”

The Star Pipe Products team have different story, but the outcome was the same.

The team was working across fragmented processes and wanted a single account view for short payments, overpayments, statements, reminders, and disputes.

After integrating Quadient AR with its existing ERP, customer statements that previously took 15 minutes were produced in one minute, customer aging work fell from a day or more to a few hours or less and reports that had taken seven days were produced in two.

Operational improvements are useful, but eventually they have to show up in business performance.

• Cheetah Digital reported a 25-day reduction in DSO and a 40% reduction in overdue AR after implementing Quadient AR.

• WS Audiology reported a 27% reduction in DSO and eliminated the need for a collection agency.

• Mammoth Carbon Products reduced DSO by 10 days and lowered working-capital requirements by at least $1 million.

Different businesses. Different AR challenges. The common thread is measurable improvement in the outcomes finance was trying to change.

Make sure it fits

Strong results do not automatically mean a platform is the right fit for your organization.

The final test is how well it works within the financial environment you already have. Your ERP, payment systems, banking relationships and surrounding technology are not going away simply because you modernize AR.

Test what implementation requires, how the platform exchanges information with existing systems, how much routine change finance can manage without IT, and whether the operating model can accommodate greater volume and complexity.

IDC specifically highlighted Quadient AR’s no-code customizable workflows and the ability for users to configure and adjust collections strategies without requiring IT for routine changes. Customer examples, such as Star Pipe and Jumio, also show Quadient working alongside existing ERP environments rather than replacing them.

The rest comes down to your own requirements.

The right platform should fit the way your business needs to operate, not force your business to fit the platform.

Decision time

Every vendor can tell you what its platform is designed to do. The decision becomes clearer when you look at proof outside the vendor’s control.

Analysts have evaluated the technology. Users have shared what it is like to work with the platform every day. Customers have documented improvements in efficiency, DSO, overdue receivables and working capital.

Now compare that evidence with the problems you need to solve and the environment the platform will need to support.

Because when the promises begin to sound the same, proof is what separates them.