One of the essential tenets that organizations consider when evaluating software to solve a business problem is: how does this serve our core business?
Your organization’s core competencies are at the heart of what you do best, and the foundation of your competitive advantage. Think Google’s search algorithms or Henry Ford’s famous maxim that customers could choose a Model T in any color they wanted “so long as it’s black.”
To stay focused on what you do best, it is worth asking this question more often, of every process, across your entire organization. Keep reading to learn how one online learning provider leveraged AR automation software to provide a better customer experience, drive significant cost savings, and ultimately, deliver on their commitment to their students.
Getting Paid is Core to Your Business
Customers are the backbone of your business – and your ability to take their payments quickly and efficiently impacts everything.
Since 2018, Digilearning has offered educational opportunities to an underserved population, with digital courses designed to provide meaningful career credentials outside of traditional education pathways.
So while managing outstanding payments is a matter of collecting revenue, it is also essential to fulfilling their mission. Digilearning offers students a wide range of flexible payment options, including lump sum payments, weekly and monthly payments, and Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL). However, in addition to their coursework, students must complete any payment plans, before receiving their final certificate of attainment.
Digilearning had relied on third-party collections agencies to handle complex collections and bad debt, but were challenged by high costs and low success rates. Most importantly, outsourcing their accounts receivable processes proved to be a barrier to their core competency – helping students jumpstart their careers.
Automating AR Processes for Adaptability
Digileaning recognized that these collections challenges could be addressed with automation. Consolidating their payments system and collections process in Salesforce with Chargent Automated Collections helped them turn collections into a competitive advantage.
Chargent’s advanced AR automation solution allowed Digilearning to bring their collections efforts in-house, also known as first-party collections, including an initial migration of past-due accounts into their automated collections process.
Digilearning now has true flexibility in offering payment options to accommodate their students’ diverse needs, without worrying about percentages or minimum fees. They can be very nimble both with their customers and with customized collections flows and communications, in a way that would be difficult for an outsourced third party to manage.
Better Serving Customers and the Bottom Line
By eliminating time-consuming manual debt collection processes, Digilearning is saving time and money, and realizing an immediate impact on their revenue stream. They have achieved an 80% reduction in spending on third-party collections – recouping their initial automated collections investment several times over and critically, enabling them to stay focused on what they do best – providing accessible educational opportunities to those who need them most.
Next Steps
To learn more about how automating their accounts receivable process helped Digilearning collect more revenue and reduce spend on third-party collections, read their customer success story.
Want to run the numbers for your organization? Our ROI Calculator can help you figure out exactly how much time and money you can reallocate to your strategic goals.
Still have questions? Get in touch with us today – our team is always here to talk.
