CRM for the Back Office. Financial Relationship Management Clients Collections Cash

Transcription

1 CRM for the Back Office Financial Relationship Management Clients Collections Cash

2 Table of Contents Credit Management in the Cloud 2 Fee Presentment 3 Credit Management 4 epayment 5 Credit Management and Payment Console 6 Integration 7 FRM System 8 Credit Management in the Cloud Wouldn't it be great if all your clients could access their accounts online any time via your web-site? What if they could be re-directed automatically to a secure portal from any electronic fee or reminder they receive? And what if you didn't have to build an expensive bespoke portal to do this for you? The SymphonyFRM solution will give you all of this plus epayment options, Client Query, and Data Export along with a host of other functions. Your portal will look exactly like an extension of your existing website and deliver a great client experience at a fraction of the cost it would take to build your own. The electronic fees generated by SymphonyFRM are interactive and render an image of the fee generated with the practice management system as well as the associated data file. This means that your clients, particularly those receiving multiple invoices from you, can easily download the data file to a CSV file for processing, and uploading into their finance ledger removing the need to enter the firms fees manually. Your new Client Portal will also include fully featured secure login, client selectable "remember me" direct access, and client profile update functionality. You can even deliver and receive documents and other files securely through the client portal. On average, SymphonyFRM users are seeing 72% of their clients "self-helping", accessing and managing their accounts on-line. This is lowering the "cost to serve" considerably and at the same time enhancing client satisfaction. 2

3 Fee Presentment When most people talk about electronic billing or electronic invoicing, they are referring to a static PDF based electronic bill either attached to an or placed on a website for retrieval. This is not particularly useful for the recipient as they can only ever view it, save it or print it. The result is that customer take up of static PDF ebills is very low, and most companies are still sending out the majority of invoices and statements by mail. In order to make the billing experience for customers much more useful and valuable, OfficeTorque developed an interactive invoice, the ibill. These invoices are custom templated to match the firms branding and are immediately accessible from your clients' inbox. No opening attachments, or having to log into a website to retrieve them. Most importantly, they contain a wide range of interactive functions that can be initiated directly from the ibill, including direct access to epayment options, feedback about problems, reminders, access to view all accounts on-line and even invoice data downloading. SymphonyFRM ibills are designed to provide clients with a "single-touch" experience. When they receive an ibill they can choose to raise a "Query" directly from the fee if they are unhappy about something, or "Schedule a Payment" either now or for the due date. They don't have to print, save or come back to the bill again for processing at a later date. SymphonyFRM will also auto-populate all the transactional and reference information you require for easy reconciliation. The SymphonyFRM ibill combines both an image of the invoice as well as the data. This means that your clients can view the fee for acceptance or query, and then download the invoice data to a CSV file for processing and uploading into the accounting software for approval and invoice loading. We will also customise your ibill template to look exactly how you want it, ensuring full alignment with your brand image. You can have multiple templates to suit different branches, business units or service lines. SymphonyFRM clients are experiencing between 60% and 95% adoption of ibills which translates into an equivalent reduction in print and distribution costs. 3

4 Credit Management Managing the post transactional relationship with clients is a critical part of any firm. For firms that provide credit to clients, the big challenge is to get paid, and in a timely manner. A significant percentage of working capital is often consumed by slow payers. Because the systems and processes for this all important function are typically very manual and time consuming, the cost of collecting what is owed to the firm is considerable. SymphonyFRM is designed to automate a large portion of the very menial and manual processes and communications associated with Credit Management. A customisable workflow engine defines triggers, content and communication channels that best suit the needs of the firm, as well as the profile of clients and their preferences. Queries and disputes are managed efficiently using the task management functions, allowing either fully automated workflow, or rapid manual escalations. The dispute management workflow can be tracked and reported on to ensure full transparency of any delays associated with dispute resolution within the firm. The research on payment culture found that 44% of businesses have strict credit control facilities, and were much less likely to have a serious issue with late payment than the 16% with informal set-ups. So credit control teams clearly work. But what is it they actually do, and how do you go about implementing one? Full tracking and reporting ensures that any legitimate barriers to payment are resolved in a timely manner. The comprehensive Client Dashboard makes it quick and easy for the credit team to manage client follow up work as required. Time and motion studies carried out indicate that SymphonyFRM is around 15 times more efficient than the equivalent full manual process. The automated, multichannel communications system also ensures that ALL slow payers are proactively contacted using "low cost touches" wherever possible. 4

5 epayment SymphonyFRM includes a variety of epayment options that can be launched directly from the electronic fee or from within the SymphonyFRM Portal. Unlike a traditional static PDF fee, the electronic version is interactive and carries with it all the data associated with the fee generated within the practice management system. Clients are able to make an epayment direct from the electronic fee. They no longer have to print out the fee to have it processed, or go to their banking site to arrange payment. The electronic fee by epayment methods include Credit Card, Direct Debit, or any other epayment service desired. Clients that have a number of invoices to pay can choose to go to the SymphonyFRM Portal where they can select any or all of the open fees for epayment. The majority of on-line epayment systems are designed for web-based ecommerce transactions. Typically they only offer a "Pay Now" option, and do not cater for electronic fee payment, not entirely helpful for most clients who prefer to pay on or around the due date. So in addition to "Pay Now", SymphonyFRM can also offer "Plan Payment" which allows clients to easily schedule a future dated payment at the time they receive the electronic fee or view their account via the SymphonyFRM Portal. For all epayment options, the transactional and reference information is automatically preloaded by SymphonyFRM into the correct fields in the payment gateway making it quick and easy for your clients to pay, and at the same time ensuring you receive all the correct information for simple and accurate reconciliation of payments. SymphonyFRM also provides the firm with a "Payment Plan" module that manages schedule of repayments including fees, communicate this with your client and then provide on-going monitoring for correct repayments. Reduced cost to service, better cash flow forecasting, faster and more accurate receipting, allocations and reconciliation, reduced DSO, and greater client satisfaction are just some of the many benefits resulting from these fully integrated payment options. 5

6 The majority of on-line epayment systems are designed for web-based ecommerce transactions. Typically they only offer a "Pay Now" option, and do not cater for electronic fee payment, not entirely helpful for most clients who prefer to pay on or around the due date. Reduced cost to service, better cash flow forecasting, faster and more accurate receipting, allocations and reconciliation, reduced DSO, and greater client satisfaction are just some of the many benefits resulting from these fully integrated payment options. Credit Management & Payment Console The SymphonyFRM Console is designed to assist credit managers to follow up slow payers, collect payments and get problems solved quickly and easily. Customers can make payments or raise a query directly from interactive reminders. Credit managers can convert a "commit to pay" into an actual credit card or direct debit transaction, over the phone. If required, you can quickly set up a schedule of recurring repayments. Queries and disputes can be lodged and tracked through to resolution. Results include, commit to pay ratios - upward of 80%, reduced collection effort 50% - 75%, and improved cash flow from 20%-60%. This web based system requires no integration, is easy to deploy and easy to use. The SymphonyFRM Console can be upgraded to a full EIPP / EBPP solution. 6

7 Integration SymphonyFRM is a cloud-based solution that is designed to easily integrate with your existing and future accounting, ERP, practice management and CRM software. The required client and transactional information is synchronised as often as required each day to ensure SymphonyFRM is updated and working with near real-time data. The information is securely transferred either by way of industrial grade middleware such as SymphonyBPA, or via an API. SymphonyFRM can also connect to more than one database. This might be to provide consolidated fee presentment and collections across multiple legacy systems supporting a number of different products or services, or it might be to centralise billing and credit management across a number of branches or business units. With a CRM system, SymphonyFRM will typically integrate to this as well to ensure the front-office and back-office functions are sharing relevant information to provide a much more comprehensive single view of your customers. Because SymphonyFRM is web-based, there's no local desktop software to deploy or manage. All users require is an internet enabled device, and they can access the system anywhere, at any time. 7

8 Client Access FRM SYSTEM Confirm or Deny Acquire r Settlement Cleared Funds t1 Request & Transact Bank Settlement Cleared Funds t1 Client Bank FRM Portal FRM Cloud PM - ERP Billers Bank Request & Transact Aggregator Pay File Type CC/DD Invoice Match Operator Date & Reduces Administration Reconciliation accuracy > 30% Credit Team Effort GoCardless ClientID Visibility Cleared Funds t2-t3 High Security Agregator Agregator ID No Visibility Cleared Funds t3 t4 Payfile only Settlement

9 NWS House 1e High Street Purley Surrey CR8 2AF UK T: Copyright 2016 Symphony Professional Solutions Limited. SymphonyFRM is distributed under an OEM license with OfficeTorque Limited 9