If your collection team is not achieving collection and cash flow goals, you could hire more collectors or work overtime to increase collections, or you can determine where you stand by benchmarking and measuring the performance of your collection procedures and individual collectors to identify opportunities for improvement.
Measuring performance against benchmarks is essential to know if your procedures and collectors are effective. However, benchmarking and measuring performance of your collectors and procedures can be difficult, unless you have the tools to automate reporting on an ongoing basis. Manual self-reporting by collectors can be incomplete and inaccurate, so it may not provide the data you need to establish benchmarks, measure performance and identify opportunities for improvement.
Activity Management Reporting
Activity Management reporting solutions can provide the information you need to know where you stand. You can benchmark and measure your collections team’s effectiveness to identify opportunities to improve collection procedures and individual collector performance. Activity Management reporting summarizes collection activities completed by each member, and the impact of those activities on accounts receivable.
Collection Procedures
With Activity Management reporting you can measure the effectiveness of your collection procedures against benchmarks so you can compare and adjust procedures to maximize collections and cash flow. For example, customers called for relationship building five days before invoice due dates may pay more promptly than customers who are not called or simply sent e-mail reminders.
Why have your collectors followed less effective procedure? Establish benchmarks and measure results to see which procedures are the most effective in achieving collection and cash flow goals. With Activity Management reporting you can monitor the effectiveness of your procedures on an ongoing basis and “tweak” them when necessary.
Collector Performance
Collector activities can be benchmarked and measured to monitor performance with Activity Management reporting. Team members who are not achieving benchmarks can be identified, and coaching programs can be developed to target opportunities for improvement.
Team members who are exceeding benchmarks can also be identified. The methods and techniques of the most effective collectors can be reviewed to identify approaches which may help your other collectors improve performance.
There is no limit to the creative opportunities that can be identified to improve the effectiveness of collection procedures and team members from Activity Management reporting. Knowing where you stand and being able to benchmark and measure performance is essential for effective collections in the new normal.
Lockstep Collect, a leader in cloud-based credit and collection platforms, provides Activity Management solutions to benchmark and measure collection effectiveness. Lockstep Collect is an experienced software partner that can help you to maximize the effectiveness of your collections team and procedures.
If you would like to learn more about how you can benefit from Activity Management solutions, please contact Lockstep Collect at www.lockstep.io.
