SIG’s credit controllers are crucial in ensuring the company's financial health and longevity. However, a recent call analysis showed that the credit control team had less time than previously thought to engage in high-value, strategic work.

“What we learned from the call analysis was surprising,” says Simon Johnson, Director of UK Credit Management at SIG.

“About 15% of calls to our credit controllers were solely requests for invoice and proof of delivery (POD) copies. It was obviously a waste of the team’s skills and time. Making them responsible for such a low-value task affected their productivity and kept them from engaging fully in what is really important.”

Leadership wanted to free the credit control team to focus on more value-added work instead of answering calls.

“In the near past, we had set up a central scanning team to scan all the invoices for 250 branches, so we knew the technology was available. We just weren’t adopting it at speed, despite being a long-standing customer,” says Johnson.

“When we learned about BlackLine eInvoicing & Payments, we realized it was a perfect fit. With it, we could create a self-service portal for customers. Not only would it reduce the volume of inbound calls, but it would enable us to deliver invoices several days faster.”

Johnson says implementation was a “smooth process,” with customers and staff embracing the change. 

“Customers appreciate the ability to view and download copies of their invoices 24/7. And the credit team loves that they don’t have to deal with calls requesting invoice copies. Instead, they can spend their time minimizing risk and resolving disputes. Once we have included the option for our customers to pay via the portal, we will further improve our customer experience and achieve additional time savings.” This is a similar practice to other customers who opt to add the pay function later, which then sends the remit information directly to the AR tool and expands the benefits of the technology.