The Challenge
Dakota Supply Group (DSG) is a distributor dedicated to providing all the right connections to their customers in the electrical, plumbing, HVAC, refrigeration, communications, utility, automation, waterworks, on-site sewer, water and well, filtration and metering technology industries. Their team provides customers with solutions that let them maximize their employees’ productivity and increase companies’ profitability.
Up until 2018, the DSG accounts receivable (AR) team was relying on old, outdated processes for customer invoicing and payments. Every month, they were faced with customer calls requesting copies of invoices and statements. This consumed a lot of time and resources. They were also very limited in their capabilities when it came to electronic invoice delivery options, and unable to accept digital payments. This drove up costs to process and deliver documents.
The Solution
The new credit manager at DSG recognized the opportunity to enhance these manual processes. He was familiar with Billtrust from previous experience, but the DSG team did their due diligence and also looked at two other competitor solution providers. They ultimately decided upon Billtrust due to its suite of order-to-cash solutions. They first implemented Billtrust Invoicing to offer their customers flexibility with invoice delivery, and worked with the Billtrust eSolutions team on an email campaign to contact some of their biggest customers to improve digital adoption. They later implemented a self-service portal to allow customers to view and now easily pay their invoices online.
The Results
In the time since they have implemented their Billtrust solutions, DSG has already seen results. They were able to save $44,000 on postage fees for invoicing and statements in their first year, and nearly $14,000 of that was through the bullpenning feature available through Billtrust Invoicing. From 2020 to 2021 and with the help of the eSolutions adoption campaign, they were able to grow the number of customers receiving electronic invoices by 44% (from 51% to 74%). And as of March 2021, 18% of their receivables are collected through online billpay.
“By increasing digital adoption, we’ve significantly reduced customer calls asking for copies of invoices, which saves on the cost of the copies and the time it takes our AR department to respond.”
Brent Lundeby, Credit Manager
Dakota Supply Group
