The Challenge
Kinepolis is the largest cinema chain in Belgium, and with more than 110 branches worldwide, the chain also plays an important role globally. But daily film screenings are only part of its business plan. The chain also organises events, rents commercial space, offers screen advertising, sells vouchers and organises exchange deals.
All of these factors led to a number of outstanding invoices. When it came to managing customer collections, their original process revolved around the sales departments reaching out to customers regarding their outstanding invoices. This led to decentralization and a lack of consultation with the accounting department. Moreover, this process was carried out in an inefficient, manual way, which was not scalable with the continuous flow of new (expired) invoices and incoming payments.
The Solution
Kinepolis decided to partner with Billtrust to make their collections management more efficient, centralized and ensure stronger reporting. In collaboration, Billtrust and the Kinepolis team decided to centralize the collections management process with the accounting team. Central management makes it possible to carry out operations across all branches. The accounting department downloads a weekly pre-programmed invoice overview from the Billtrust Collections software and delivers this to the various departments. Subsequently, the configuration of the Billtrust Collections software was customized for Kinepolis, making it easy to import different invoice types and so that customers can be contacted in the right order.
“Billtrust Collections offers a total solution which makes our collections management a lot easier. The company listens to our needs and responds well to them on an international level.”
Transactional Team Lead
Kinepolis Group
The Results
With Billtrust Collections, Kinepolis is seeing a major impact on their collections management. Their DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) has been reduced from 41 to 28 days, which means that invoices are being paid on average 13 days faster than before, while the number of overdue invoices has decreased from 60% to 40%. The Kinepolis accounting team can also now quickly and easily consult with its commercial colleagues with the introduction of monthly consultations and weekly reporting. Kinepolis is also very satisfied with Billtrust’s customer service. The monthly software updates and an annual consultation ensure that the software is continuously adapted to the changing needs of the international company that Kinepolis has become. Since the start of their partnership in 2013, Billtrust has scaled to accommodate the growth of the Belgian chain during its expansion to the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, France, Canada and the United States.
