4 ways to improve your cash flow with predictive analytics

Regardless of its size, every business faces debt collection at one time or another. Financial, telephone or healthcare institutions, for example, use debt collection companies to get their debtors to pay their bills. After a specified period, if the invoice is not honored or the clearance plan followed, the unpaid amounts are sent to recovery. The customer must be informed of this to avoid the surprise effect and the associated annoyances but also to encourage the customer to pay their debt as quickly as possible. Forewarned is forearmed. If your customers know that you are pursuing outstanding payments, they will be more inclined to pay. On the contrary, if they do not feel followed, they could delay payments and you risk a domino effect.

Business financial managers often use predictive analytics. Recovery is no exception to the rule. It is interesting to be able to predict which customers (or what percentage of them at least) might be late on payments and to which collection strategies they are most responsive.

Here are 4 benefits of using predictive analytics in your cash management:

1- to reduce your costs

Debt collection agencies have the tools and experience to expedite the payment of your bills and recover your outstanding debts. Often, they also use predictive analytics. With their experience, they have the ability to provide the right solution at the right time, on a case-by-case basis. They can therefore avoid certain unnecessary and unprofitable recovery steps for foreseeable cases. They therefore obtain results at lower cost.

2- to improve your customer relations

Predictive models can also help improve customer relations. Predicting which customers will potentially be reactive to one type or another of payment reminder not only saves time and money but also maintains adequate customer relations. Some customers will be more receptive to letters, others to emails, phone calls or SMS. Some clients require firm communication. On the contrary, others require gentle dialogue, even in the event of late payment.

An entrepreneur cannot afford to waste time, let alone lose customers. The time saved thanks to predictive analysis can be devoted to profitable tasks, or even to improving customer relations.

3- to optimize your collection flow

Managing late payments is a major economic and commercial issue for businesses. It has always been important to act quickly, but now more than ever. The current economic situation no longer allows businesses to wait. Implementing cash flow monitoring is necessary for any business, regardless of its size and sector.

Predictive analytics helps struggling businesses reduce costs and improve cash flow. Based on historical data, for example, companies can classify their customers according to different criteria such as their profitability, their financial habits and average payment terms. It is then simpler to optimize invoicing monitoring and collection transmission based on the various criteria determined.

4- to simply evolve your financial strategies

With predictive analytics and measuring the impacts of individual changes on your cash flow, you can easily adapt and evolve your financial strategies. The so-called adaptive control or champion/challenger test, for example, highlighted that up to 80% of overdue accounts are often ready to adapt to existing collection strategies, while 10% may favor an alternative strategy and 10% the remaining prefer another technique. By refining the strategy over time, performance can be improved simply and at low cost.

Would you like advice on improving your invoicing flow, avoiding late payments or recovering your unpaid debts? Since 1993, INTERNATIONAL RECOVER COMPANY ® has supported entrepreneurs and financial managers of companies.