“We can’t close our books in less than 10 days.”
“Sorry, you need to go back to that customer and renegotiate terms we’re able to bill for.”
“Our back office cannot meet the demands of our growing business.”
Does any of this sound familiar? These are just a few of the statements leading one to believe it’s time for a back-office modernization. For many leaders, the thought of overhauling the billing system (or systems) elicits nightmares akin to a charging bear. These aren’t flashy initiatives, can be lengthy and expensive, and have a disproportionate value proposition across the many parties required to make them successful. This discussion focuses on the organizational planning necessary for such transformations and tees up the technical foundations for future Ravus articles.
Develop the Business Case
Igniting these transformation initiatives should start with a compelling business case that supports the investment required to make it a success. Discretionary spending is generally tightly managed within the business and as you compete for funding, hard facts and figures tend to win. Fortunately, the challenges you face in billing are quantifiable and the data required to build a strong case for investment is at your fingertips already.
At Ravus, we have cataloged 40 KPI’s and Outcome statements that span 10 departments and can help orient you on the areas of your business you want to improve and the corresponding return on that effort. We feel that taking the time to sit with these, assess the areas that stand to have the broadest ROI, and then craft a phased approach as part of business case creation is the best path to successfully gaining traction.
Here are few metrics that span multiple departments to consider:
- Days to close revenue
- Time to activation
- Percent of invoices receiving an adjustment
- OpEx decrease
- Monthly credit / dispute volume
- No-touch invoice rate
- Billing inquiries / month as a percentage of invoices sent
- Days Sales Outstanding
Sponshorship & alignment
Regardless of what corporate initiative you are taking on, from the minor to the major, there is one common make or break element involved - alignment. Not head nods in the boardroom or Zoom call, but true top/down, cross-department alignment on the business case, outcomes, and work required to deliver.
The decision to transform your Billing processes and technology is one of the largest and most inherently risky initiatives to take on. Billing is binary. It either works or it does not, and it must work. The stakes are high. Billing projects have a high rate of failure and often require other teams to behave differently.
Why is the failure rate so high?
These transformations have other material implications as well:
Regardless of what corporate initiative you are taking on, from the minor to the major, there is one common make or break element involved - alignment. Not head nods in the boardroom or Zoom call, but true top/down, cross-department alignment on the business case, outcomes, and work required to deliver.
The decision to transform your Billing processes and technology is one of the largest and most inherently risky initiatives to take on. Billing is binary. It either works or it does not, and it must work. The stakes are high. Billing projects have a high rate of failure and often require other teams to behave differently.
Derek Magnusen
