Customer Story
Toshiba Business Solutions
Creating a Simple, Efficient & Self-Service Invoice Delivery Operation
- 1-dayreduction in DSO
- ROI of $342,000thanks to an increase in customer adoption rate
- Time savingsof 50% with a decrease in average transaction time
- More focuson high-value activities
- Greateraccessibility and traceability through the web portal
Toshiba Business Solutions (TBS) is a leading managed document services (MDS) provider. Its experts help organisations take control of document security, workflow and print environments.
Challenges
Today, businesses are forced to place an increased focus on internal cost-control and efficiency measures. One area of business at TBS that seemed ideal for potential improvement was accounts receivable (AR) — specifically, its invoice delivery process. Before Esker, TBS hadn’t reviewed its invoice format and process since implementing the Oracle ERP nearly ten years prior.
Invoicing issues and customer complaints included:
- Confusing/cluttered format, making it difficult to read invoices
- Increased volume of calls to AR, causing a drag on resources
- Delays in customer payments negatively impacting Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)
- No electronic invoice delivery capabilities
- No customer portal options for making online payments
In addition, TBS had a manual invoice review process in place that caused a number of issues. “Invoices required review before mailing, and this process had become tedious and time consuming,” said Kirkham. “Invoices would have to be printed, pulled and reviewed before being sent. The process in place no longer had the capability to handle what we were doing.”
We really wanted to understand the pain points with our invoicing process — Esker helped us identify and solve them.”
Solution
Moving forward, Kirkham and other TBS leaders concluded that, in order to bring more simplicity and efficiency to their invoicing process, an electronic invoice delivery solution would be needed. Two main objectives were defined:
1. Implement an integrated customer web portal
2. Increase customer e-invoicing adoption
Esker Invoice Delivery
After TBS defined its goals, it became clear that a partnership was in order. “We quickly realised we would need to partner with someone who specialised in variable data,” said Kirkham. “Esker, because of its mid-market size, flexibility and expertise to our unique challenge, was a great fit.”
Besides needing a variable data component to populate its new invoice templates, TBS also needed Esker to create web portals for customers adopting e-invoicing. “TBS has 13 subsidiaries nationwide with over 100 locations, so we needed to create 13 independent web portals where location-specific invoices could be viewed independently by each subsidiary,” said Kirkham.
Since implementing Esker, we’ve seen a 1-day reduction in DSO and $342,000 ROI. Those are big benefits and something we would not be able to achieve without Esker.”
Results
Creation of the web portal led to several new functionalities that benefited the internal invoicing process at TBS. What’s more, if TBS customers sign up for e-invoicing in the web portal, Esker gives TBS the advantage of invoice traceability (when the invoice was accessed, processed, completed, etc.). Leveraging Esker, TBS was able to generate a list of every customer invoiced through the portal, and from that list, send out more targeted and intriguing promotions such as customer and employee engagement offers that have proven to boost adoption rates.
Some of the largest savings and value TBS expects to receive from its e-invoicing initiative are rooted in its customer adoption rate increase. After settling on an adoption rate goal of 20% over first three years, TBS exceeded expectations with a 28% adoption rate.
“Since implementing Esker, we’ve seen a 1-day reduction in DSO and $342,000 ROI,” said Kirkham. “Those are big benefits, and something we would not be able to achieve without our key partnership with Esker.”
Now that a substantial number of TBS customers are receiving e-invoices, and have the option to manage their invoices and pay open invoices using a credit card or e-check, TBS has seen its average processing times cut in half — going from 10 minutes per transaction to only five minutes per transaction.
HIGHLIGHTS
- 1-day reduction in DSO
- ROI of $342,000 thanks to an increase in customer adoption rate
- Time savings of 50% with a decrease in average transaction time from ten minutes to five minutes
- More focus on high-value activities by automating manual tasks
- Greater accessibility and traceability through the web portal
Due to our intricate setup with many moving parts, we don’t have the easiest process to deal with, but Esker went the extra mile to make sure we got the solution we wanted."
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