With Aston iT Customer collection software, LORIAL has a global view of outstanding receivables and customer dunning. The automation of tasks has enabled it to improve its outstanding receivables.
Lorial is an animal nutrition company based in Eastern France. Created in 2011, it is in partnership with Cal/Lorca and INVIVO. This company has sales of over 75 million euros.
Nicolas Weyland is administrative and financial manager at Lorial. He agreed to answer our questions about his use of Aston iT Clients software over the past 3 years.
Why choose the Aston iTF collection platform? The platform had been introduced to me through one of my shareholders. Our problem was managing customer reminders, as they had absolutely nothing. When I took up my post, the daily outstanding amount was really substantial. We had to get back on track quickly. As one of our shareholders was changing his system and had heard about Aston, we started to think about this solution and implemented it in one of the parent company’s entities and in the other structures.
What were your main objectives? Was it necessary to introduce this collection tool to improve Lorial’s performance? It was really a customer stock with no follow-up. We had very little history. We had to track this outstanding amount as quickly as possible and, above all, automate reminders. Individual reminders were sent out using Excel or Word files.
I tend to use extraction, particularly for balances, to follow up with the team in charge of collections, to follow up and check with them which balances have increased and which are abnormal. Weekly tracking curves are also available.
You hold meetings whereù you present this type of support to your teams? How to How doesit work? One person is in charge of collections. I send him the e-mail with a statement of the amounts due, highlighting the biggest arrears. From there, we exchange ideas and at the end of the week we have a meeting with our customers to discuss any difficulties.
Overall, are you satisfied with the collection and credit management solution? Yes, there are two parts: The first is the customer reminder section, which allows you to have models immediately available for reminders. This will really help to unblock the situation. Then there’s a more collaborative part with the sales people we’ve set up.
What would you say are the strengths of the collection software? The strong point for us is that we have automated everything related to relaunching. The reporting section is very practical. I quickly find the information. There’s also the more retrospective, collaborative side that I hope to push in the coming months.
What gains have you made in your day-to-day work since using the Aston platform?I have an outstanding balance of over €30,000 that I’m going to look into. We started with 1.2 million euros right at the beginning, when we began to take charge of collections. So there was really nothing automated about it. Today we’re at around 400,000 euros. Being able to issue a dunning letter has changed things. We pushed some people to pay us. And then there’s the follow-up: the more automated, the faster.
Automating tasks saves time and allows us to concentrate on our precious work-in-progress. One of the problems we had was that valuable work-in-progress was lying around. The fact that we can follow up quickly means that we can quickly spot those who are dragging their feet on payments, and we can immediately freeze the account to avoid having outstandings that grow too large. So we really put the brakes on. That’s why outstandings have fallen. We had an outstanding balance of over 150 days, which is very substantial. For example, out of 1.2 million euros, 800,000 euros were over 150 days old. We are now to less than 200,000. This represents a 70% reduction in outstanding maturities.
With almost comparable sales, we’re down from 1.2 million euros to 400,000 euros .
At first, there was very little recovery. We started putting up barriers. We have asked our sales staff to monitor outstanding amounts over 30 days. Now we’re starting right away to monitor outstanding amounts and send out reminders if necessary. I think that tomorrow we’ll try, for example, to send email reminders to customers even before the due date. It’s a strong point that allows me to evolve as I go along. We are steadily increasing the pressure on accounts receivable. For example, interest on arrears. In the beginning, we didn’t have to do any calculations, as they were done automatically. Now he’s into relaunching.
Has it enabled you todetect certain problems that you hadn’t seen before using Aston IT Clients? Indirectly yes, because when the person in charge of collections receives feedback that enables them to see anomalies on invoices. As soon as there is an anomaly, the invoice is not paid. If only for the terms and conditions of sale that appear on invoices that have not been paid.
How did the software installation go? Installation is fairly quick. The collections department saw an immediate benefit. From now on, my colleague in collections goes straight to Aston IT Clients because
reminders are automated.
Would you recommend the Aston platform? Yes, I’ve attended training courses in Paris with other CFOs. I don’t hesitate to talk about the Aston solution, yes. It’s a fast, convenient way to manage outstanding receivables.