With Aston iT Customer collection software, LORIAL has a global view of outstanding receivables and customer dunning. The automation of tasks has enabled the company to improve its accounts receivable.
Lorial is an animal nutrition company based in Eastern France. Created in 2011, it is in partnership with Cal/Lorca and INVIVO. The company generates sales of over 75 million euros.
Nicolas Weyland is administrative and financial manager at Lorial. He agreed to answer our questions about how he has been using Aston AI Clients software for 3 years now.
Why did you choose the Aston AI collection platform? I was introduced to the platform by one of my shareholders. Our problem was managing customer reminders, as they had absolutely nothing. When I took up my job, the daily outstanding debt was really substantial. We had to quickly send out reminders. As one of our shareholders was changing his system and had heard about Aston, we started to think about this solution and implemented it in one of the parent company’s entities and in the other structures.
What were your main objectives? Was it necessary to introduce this collection tool to improve Lorial’s performance? It was really an outstanding receivable with no follow-up. We had very little history. We had to track this outstanding debt as quickly as possible, and above all automate our reminders. The reminders were made one by one with an Excel or Word file.
I tend to use extraction, particularly at the level of balances, to follow up with the team in charge of collections, and then to follow up with them to see which balances have increased and which are abnormal. There’s also the possibility of having weekly follow-up curves.
You hold meetings whereù you present this type of support to your teams? How to How does it work? There’s a person in charge of collections. I send him an e-mail with a statement of the sums due, highlighting the biggest arrears. Based on this, we talk to each other, and at the end of the week we have an update on our customers to discuss any difficulties.
Overall, are you satisfied with the collection and credit management solution? Yes, there are two parts: The first part is customer reminders, which means that you have templates immediately available for reminders. This will really help to unblock the situation. Then there’s a more collaborative part, which we’ve set up with our sales staff.
What would you say are the strengths of the collection software? The strong point for us is that we’ve automated everything to do with reminders. The reporting section is very practical. I can quickly find the information I need. There’s also the collaborative, more retrospective side, which I hope to develop further in the coming months.
What gains have you made in your day-to-day life since using the Aston AI platform?I have an outstanding balance of over €30,000 that I’m going to take a look at. We started out with 1.2 million euros when we were just beginning to take charge of collections. So there was really nothing automated about it. Today we’re down to around 400,000 euros. Being able to issue a dunning letter has changed things. We got some people to pay us. And then there’s the follow-up – the more automated it is, the faster it goes.
Automating tasks saves time and allows us to concentrate on our precious work-in-progress. One of the problems we had was that valuable receivables were lying around. The fact that we can send out reminders very quickly means that we can see very quickly who’s dragging their feet on payments, and we can immediately block the account and avoid having outstandings that grow too large. So we’ve really put the brakes on. That’s why the amount outstanding has dropped. We had an outstanding balance of over 150 days, which is very substantial. For example, on 1.2 million euros, there were 800,000 euros over 150 days. We are now to less than 200,000. This represents a 70% reduction in outstanding maturities.
With almost comparable sales, we’re down from 1.2 million euros to 400,000 euros.
At first there was very little overlap. We started putting up barriers. We asked our sales staff to monitor receivables over 30 days past due. Now we’re immediately starting to monitor outstanding debts, and to send out reminders if necessary. I think that tomorrow we’ll try to send out reminders by email to customers, for example, even before the due date. It’s a strong point that allows me to evolve as I go along. We’re gradually increasing the pressure on receivables. For example, interest on late payments. In the beginning, we didn’t have to calculate it because it was done automatically. Now it’s included in the reminders.
Has it enabled you todetect certain problems that you hadn’t seen before using Aston IT Clients? Indirectly, yes, because when the person in charge of collections receives information that enables them to see anomalies on invoices. As soon as there’s an anomaly, the invoice isn’t paid. This could be as simple as sales conditions appearing on unpaid invoices.
How did the software installation go? Installation was fairly quick. The collections department saw an immediate benefit. Now, my colleague in collections goes straight to Aston IT Clients because reminders are automated.
Would you recommend the Aston platform? Yes, I’ve attended training courses in Paris with other CFOs. I don’t hesitate to talk about the Aston solution, yes. It’s a fast, practical way of managing outstanding receivables.
