Scottish based AutoRek partners with US Cforia Inc to provide major productivity gains in Cash Collections

Cash Flow is the lifeblood of all businesses, therefore, shortening the time to collect and apply cash to the Accounts Receivable is a key goal for companies.

As revenue grows and the company’s exposure to accounts receivables increases, the size of the Cash and Collection team (C&C) and number of FTEE’s increases to protect what is typically 60% of a company’s available working capital.

But the C&C team expansion does not occur smoothly; it “reacts” after the Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and Days Beyond Terms (DBT) reaches an unacceptable financial point of risk tolerance. When the actual DSO exceeds the target DSO tolerance, the “reaction” comes in the form of hiring another C&C team member or two.

Once hired and trained, the delinquent accounts receive more attention and the DSO/DBT responds favourably and begins to drop below target DSO to acceptable levels...and then this process repeats. This could be referred to as the C&C Wash Rinse andRepeat cycle.

So how do companies escape this traditional react-driven C&C growth cycle? What effect does this fits-and-starts “crisis response” cycle have on your company’s working capital? And what do your key stakeholders think about these practices, particularly related to your C&C team and the productivity of their FTEE’s?

This “Crisis-Driven” environment is pervasive across most C&C departments. In response to the latest crisis deux jour, management will allocate the minimum amount of additional resources and no more. It typically starts with temp staff who never seem to leave. OTC managers are excessively busy. Complicating this further is the lack of access to the necessary IT or consulting resources who could provide assistance in the streamlining of the processes.

This is the significance of the announcement of a partnership between AutoRek and Cforia Inc

Founded in Glasgow and with offices in Edinburgh, London and New York, AutoRek, is a global provider of reconciliation and advanced Order to Cash solutions for both the Financial Services sector and global corporates.

Cforia Software, Inc. is a global enterprise solutions provider, delivering industry-leading working capital and accounts receivable (A/R) automation software. Over 250 enterprises are managing $300 billion in A/R turnover with Cforia today via their Autonomy Software solution

This partnership means that Cforia will now be able to add AutoRek’s learning algorithm OCR capability with AutoRek’s Automated Reconciliations, Advanced Matching Workflow and Cash Application to their roster.

This will dramatically improve Working Capital results for companies and result in a reduced requirement for additional C&C resource. Indeed, labour savings of above 30% are not untypical after the introduction of the combined solution. It also means that growth issues, in terms of turnover, can be handled without an increase in labour requirements.

AutoRek is delighted with this partnership. It is creating considerable opportunities for AutoRek within the US market where the demand for a ‘single vendor solution’ is high, while also offering more to existing customers.

Managing Director of AutoRek, Gordon McHarg says “AutoRek is excited to announce this strategic alliance with Cforia. Both companies are proven global leaders with multinational clients and use the same advanced technology stack. Most importantly however is that both share the same vision for improving working capital for our customers.

With this announcement, we will be jointly extending our global reach and offering companies an end-to-end solution from cash collection to cash application and cash reconciliation.”

Chris Caparon, CEO of Cforia Software added: “With the integrated release of the Cforia Cash Application and Bank Reconciliation Modules, Cforia.autonomy™ has extended our straight-through-processing capabilities for Zero-Touch Posting of EDI, EFT, ACH, PCI Compliant Credit Card, Direct Debit, Lock-Box and Cash payments. Customers will see immediate impacts in capacity, accuracy and key performance indicators while providing increased visibility, command and control of global working capital.”

With the combined knowledge, AutoRek and Cforia were able to come together to build a globally capable system which can provide solutions which solve the complex system challenges of today’s global enterprises.

Both AutoRek and Cforia are companies hugely familiar with multi-currency clients and multiple billing systems and reconcile millions of transactions daily over the UK and worldwide. For one of their clients, AutoRek reconciled 2.4 billion transactions in only 1 hour.