Silos: They’re great for agriculture, but terrible for finance organizations.
Every company knows the frustration of silos. Data gets stuck, teams work from conflicting systems, and everyone feels the fallout. At Cintas, Cash Application Manager Kerry Banks dealt with this daily. Before Billtrust, her collectors and customer service reps only had partial access to payment data. With only half the story, multiple people were searching for the same answers, creating duplicate work and unnecessary frustrations. It was like detectives hunting for the same answers, working different cases with the same clues.
The tricky thing about silos? They look simple until you tug on the thread and realize they’re woven into tangled processes, mismatched technology, and bad habits no one remembers starting. And nowhere does this mess hit harder than accounts receivable (AR), where every delay shows up in one place: your cash flow. That’s exactly why companies are turning to accounts receivable automation to break down barriers and keep cash flowing.
Let’s explore the underlying issue of AR silos, how they impact the order-to-cash (O2C) cycle, what a holistic operation looks like, and how you can make it happen in your own organization – faster than you think.
Why Silos are So Hard to Fix (and How they Hurt AR)
As I mentioned, silos aren’t just a tech problem. They’re structural, cultural, and behavioral, which is why they can be tricky to fix.
They’re baked into organizational design. Companies are built in hierarchies. That structure makes data naturally flow up and down versus across. Ever wonder why a collector follows up on an invoice that’s already been paid? It’s because their view still shows it as open while another team sees it as closed. A classic case of siloed visibility.
They feed off technology gaps. It’s easier to add a person than to overhaul a system but having Jane or John Doe carry data from one system into another slows everything down. Then there’s the issue of bad data – incomplete info, changing data, or conflicting details that delay invoices, skew forecasts, and frustrate both employees and customers.
KPIs pull in different directions. This is perhaps the most damaging driver of silos. When teams run in parallel but measure success differently, operational friction is inevitable. A perfect example: Sales chasing top-line growth while AR focuses on customers introducing more financial risk. Without alignment, credit allotment policies can slip out of sync, and everyone feels the impact.
Learn how to optimize your cash application KPIs with AI automation.
Culture resists change. Whether it’s learned or reinforced, silo thinking runs deep. Think about a new hire’s first day on the job. They’re introduced to every department and shown how it all connects, but it’s different once the day-to-day sets in. Collaboration gradually narrows. The rest of the organization starts to feel like someone else’s world.
Complexity multiplies. Global teams, remote work, regulatory requirements, the implementation of more software solutions, and the sheer scale of digital data have all made silos harder to untangle than they were even a decade ago.
Trading Problems for Productivity
The Finance Manager at Malin saw this reality up close. Posting cash used to take their team an entire day. Even then, payments didn’t always get applied on time. With AR automation through Billtrust, that same process now takes less than two hours – a 75% efficiency gain.
Four Big Hits When AR Silos Go Unchecked
In today’s world of B2B payments, finance needs to become a proactive, strategic partner. AR automation is one of the sharpest tools you can use to make that shift. Otherwise, you risk silos impacting in a big way.
1. A fractured view of the customer
AR tracks invoices and disputes. Collections has outreach notes. Credit managers see risk scores. Customer service reps field complaints. Sales leaders know the deal terms. Each team holds a piece of the payment story, but no one sees the full picture of how customers pay and engage. Without that complete view, you can’t adjust terms, shape policies, and act strategically to balance business objectives with customer realities. This creates grit in the system – tiny bits of friction that wear everything down. It’s hard to eradicate because the source isn’t always obvious.
2. Insights that never leave the room
AR data is a goldmine, but if it stays walled off, it never reaches the people who need it. A customer’s late payments might be a retention red flag for sales. A pattern of disputes might signal a credit issue or even compliance issue. If data is hidden, insights don’t get out in time. Decisions are made blind, and key opportunities slip away.
3. Strategy built on half-facts
Leaders rely on AR for cash flow forecasting, payment risk, and customer behavior patterns – crucial data that steers growth and profitability. When insights don’t make it past departmental walls, leadership is forced to make critical decisions with incomplete information. That can mean chasing growth in the wrong markets, underestimating risk, or missing the chance to double down where profitability is strongest.
4. Customers lose confidence
Mixed messages are a trust-killer, and it unfortunately happens too often in AR. A customer calls billing about a payment and hears one story, then calls customer service and gets a completely different answer. If it keeps happening, it could be enough to push them towards another provider.
The Case for Accounts Receivable Automation: Minimizing Silos, Accelerating Cash
Imagine having a comprehensive, real-time understanding of all your AR activities. That’s the promise of AR automation: data flowing seamlessly, teams working from the same information, and customers getting a consistent experience at every touchpoint.
| Benefit | How It Works | Learn More |
|---|---|---|
| Invoices, simplified. | Instead of fragmented delivery, invoices are centralized and automated – sent across email, print, mail, AP portals, even internationally – with full compliance baked in. No more delays, and no more missed formats. | The guide to eInvoicing compliance |
| Payments without barriers. | Customers can pay however they want. Diverse and international modalities are captured instantly, with remittance data flowing straight into your ERP. No manual reconciliation, and no bottlenecks. | Accepting virtual cards in B2B payments |
| Cash application on cruise control. | AI-powered matching dramatically reduces manual intervention. Payments are applied with unmatched speed and accuracy, adapting to your business rules while surfacing exceptions only when necessary. | Turning cash application into a competitive advantage |
| Collections and credit that stay ahead. | Instead of chasing, AR runs proactive, AI-driven workflows. Auto-approvals and auto-decisioning keep credit policies aligned while personalized communication helps collectors focus on the accounts that matter most. | AI tools that make collections move faster |
| One source of truth. | With centralized dashboards, finance leaders gain holistic visibility into cash flow, disputes, and customer trends — enabling real-time insight and better forecasting. | Understanding unified AR platforms |
How Billtrust Makes it Possible (Without a Complete System Overhaul)
An AR automation platform like Billtrust layers AI and integration onto the ERP and financial systems you already have, making holistic AR management a simple extension of your existing environment. Learn why 95% of finance leaders say purpose-built AR software delivers more ROI than simply using their ERP system to manage AR processes.
Our platform tackles silos in every form.
Unified Data: The Ultimate Silo Killer
Instead of replacing your ERP system and other finance platforms, we connect them all into a central data warehouse. This cleans up your data flow, ensuring everyone is working from the same, real-time picture of financial health, buyer behavior, and risk/opportunities. See how Billtrust augments your existing ERP system.
AI Analytics: Siloed Data = Shared Intelligence
With a single source of truth powered by Billtrust Insights360, AI algorithms begin analyzing trends, patterns, and anomalies. Fragmented data transforms into actionable insights that are dynamically adjusted as our platform automatically pulls in transaction data.
Real-time Dashboards and Reports: Visibility Without Walls
Real-time dashboards sit on top of your infrastructure with customizable visibility. AR, finance, sales, and leadership all get the same real-time view of performance, so no one is working blind, and data is presented in the way that’s most useful to each team.
Automated Workflows: Your Easiest Win
Repetitive tasks are streamlined and decisioning accelerated, all while keeping teams in sync with the systems they already use. Billtrust’s Multi-Agent Architecture deploys specialized AI agents that collaborate across your AR operations. These agents handle specific tasks — like triaging overloaded collector inboxes or prioritizing payment reminders for high-value accounts — keeping teams in sync without the manual burden.
Conversational AI: Your Financial AI Assistant
Instead of digging through spreadsheets or bouncing between systems, you can ask Billtrust Autopilot, our GenAI-powered assistant, any question about your financials and get instant answers. Autopilot is available to anyone who needs insights – not just your AR team – breaking down communication and knowledge silos. And because it continually learns from your data – trends, anomalies, and customer behavior – its predictions only get smarter and more accurate over time.
Real-time Anomaly Detection: Your Early Warning System
Payment risks are flagged immediately where all relevant teams can see and respond, ensuring better protection without manual checks across multiple systems.
Peer Benchmarking: See Exactly Where You Stand
Because our platform processes billions in invoices and payments across millions of customers, Billtrust Insights360 leverages the Billtrust Business Directory to surface anonymized, aggregated benchmarks by industry, size, or region. That means you can see exactly where your payment performance lags or leads against peers on critical metrics like Days to Pay (DTP). No need for custom reporting. Data without context is misleading – this benchmarking provides the type of context everyone can rally around.
Keeping It Simple
You don’t need to rip out your ERP or re-engineer your tech stack to achieve centralized AR management. Nor do you need to take on AR innovation all at once. You just need the right layer of intelligence and connectivity to start making what you already have work smarter. Begin with one area of AR – whatever is most painful – and continue to evolve.
Final Tips for Success
Silos will never completely go away. They’re the natural result of how organizations grow and operate. The challenge is how you counteract their pull.
Create a Shared Vision
Make sure every finance sub-team – whether it’s FP&A, accounting, or treasury – understands how their work ties to enterprise outcomes. Finance needs to be seen as a strategic partner, not just a service function.
Encourage Collaboration
Design collaboration into the way you work. Create cross-functional task forces for big initiatives and rotate team members across departments so knowledge and relationships spread naturally.
Break Down Tech Barriers
Technology can either reinforce silos or help dismantle them. Push for integrated systems – or better yet, an AR automation platform that can integrate and automate end-to-end.
Align Incentives
Tie performance goals to big business outcomes, and celebrate collaborative wins as much as individual ones. Incentives shape behavior, so design them to reward alignment.
Design for Both Speed and Integration
Fast-moving companies tend to inadvertently create silos as they prioritize speed and autonomy. The trick is to design structures that deliver both. ERP-agnostic solutions are a good starting place for unifying financial data and automating AR procedures.
As a trusted partner in B2B payments transformation, Billtrust has a clear view into how data blockages disrupt the single greatest driver of business health: velocity of cash flow. On the flip side, we know what it takes to crack systems open so data is exchanged and capital is optimized.
Book a demo to see how AR automation can break down your silos and move cash faster.
