Part One: AR Coaching Tools Change the Game
In this two-part series, we will explore the best ways to coach and mentor your accounting team to grow engagement, employee satisfaction, while upskilling the team, as well.
Achieving accounts receivable (AR) department KPI goals has been a difficult push over the last two years. Upheaval and stress from the pandemic has taken a toll on AR teams, and turnover stemming from the Great Resignation has challenged collections performance. With these massive shifts taking place, there has never been a better time to refocus on mentoring and coaching your AR team.
Performance analytics tools can help you mentor and coach your team. AR coaching analytics help you to understand the performance of individual team members so you can focus on the collection skills and activities that need improvement. With analytics tools you won’t waste time going over collections skills that team members have already mastered.
Team members appreciate the feedback based on objective results by individual collector that AR coaching analytics can provide. When approached correctly, coaching based on objective results is received as positive re-enforcement not as negative criticism.
For coaching to be successful, there must be trust. Employees need to trust the organization, their coach, and in the idea of coaching. And, at the same time, the coach/ manager has to have trust in the employee. This will lead to a stronger relationship between them and ultimately to better collaboration and successful coaching.
When trust is there, the AR teams will be more willing to accept the coaching as positive (never be negative) and increase their engagement and workplace satisfaction. Personalized performance coaching shows teams that their employer cares about them and invests in their professional development. As a result, they are more likely to feel motivated to improve their performance and contribute to the organization’s goals.
With individualized performance analytics you can coach your team in three key ways.
1. Refresh Collection Skills
Today, AR team members may be struggling to stay ahead of the curve, caused by working long hours and remotely. Collection skills have probably suffered. Performance analytics can show collectors their individual performance, while identifying areas to improve.
2. Enhance Techniques and Strategies
Effective collections require good collection skills and knowing the techniques and strategies to successfully collect difficult and complicated past due accounts. With more eyes on managing cash flow, increased late payments may be here to stay for a while. Use performance analytics to identify the skills team members need to strengthen, then empower them to negotiate payment plans and partial payments.
3. Focus on Priorities
In the heat of the day-to-day battle to stay on top of collections and achieve department KPI goals, it’s easy for team members to get off track and lose focus on high priority tasks. Performance analytics can help you identify areas where your individual team members need to refocus their efforts on priorities to improve performance.
With AR automation you can leverage AR coaching analytics to mentor and help individual team members improve performance and stay ahead of the curve on late payments. They’ll feel generally more engaged, and leverage those skills for years to come.
With a connected accounting solution, like award-winning Lockstep, for your finance team to coordinate work with customers and vendors, you can go digital and enjoy the benefits of office automation.
