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Client team

  • The Spanish subsidiary of this Global speciality chemicals business in a highly competitive market, with manufacturing and blending operations in Country.
  • A Spanish Project Leader with extensive experience in Spain and Latin America, supported by local analysis and execution capability.

Project aims

  • The business had good overall levels of order to cash performance for this market with DSO at 121 and overdue debt at 16%.
  • However, market stability and risk were identified as a threat and they wanted to increase control over credit and lower the debt risk and reduce overdue debt and DSO.

What we did - our role and activities

    Role

    • Identify areas for risk reduction and opportunities in the order to cash cycle to deliver improved results.

    Activities and Deliverables

    • Analysis of key processes, account set up and order management to collection processes.
    • Opportunities identified in sales incentives, customer terms management, dispute surfacing and resolution, account segmentation and collections strategies.
    • Solutions designed and implemented within 10 weeks to maximise collection activity, reduce risk though credit limit and account review processes; initiated dispute surfacing, tracking and resolution.
    • Management and staff workshops held to develop new processes and gain buy in.
    • Provided overview for new customer service organisation and strategic account planning.

Successes

  • Completed a Total Care review 4 months after the assignment finished.

Results

  • Larger slow paying customers overdue debt reduced by 20%.
  • The exposure to unused credit limits reduced by 20%.
  • Debt rollover from 1 month to 2 months down from 55% to 32%.
  • Overdue debt going down to 12%.
  • DSO reduced to 115, against 4 day increase in market terms.
  • Disputes resolution time down from 20 to 4 days.
  • Debts older than 60 days reduced by 7% .
  • Reduced proportion of debt ageing and lowering risk.