The Challenge
Werner Electric Minnesota is an independent electrical supply distributor offering customers their expertise alongside a wide catalogue of products. With a history that stretches back to 1920 in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin, they’ve successfully grown to feature eight branches with a 140,000 square-foot distribution warehouse.
After bringing the Werner Financial Services team in-house, they quickly began to realize the many inefficiencies that needed to be addressed. With their outdated and manual billing processes, employees were bogged down trying to keep up with many aspects of the order-to-cash cycle. The company’s DSO and cash flow were affected by this as well, and customer satisfaction started to dip.
The Solution
The Werner team first implemented Billtrust Invoicing and worked with Billtrust to encourage customers to use their online portal to view invoices 24/7 and pay however they wanted. They then expanded with Billtrust Cash Application, which simplified and shortened the time to process customer payments. Most recently, they decided to round out their toolbox and implement Billtrust’s newest solution, Billtrust Collections. This customer relationship management (CRM) tool helps Werner automate customer communications and increase their account coverage to better address past-due payments.
The Results
Through Billtrust Invoicing, 88% of their customers now accept digital invoicing, saving time for their team. With Billtrust Cash Application, they’ve achieved an overall match rate of 67%, helping to process payments faster. Furthermore, Billtrust Collections allows them to increase account coverage and automate customer outreach by emailing all the relevant details when invoices are overdue. From 2019 to 2020, Werner encouraged customers to pay overdue invoices an average of 2-3 days earlier with Billtrust Collections. These results have lowered DSO by 5+ days, which for every day it’s lowered, has a positive cash flow impact.
“Before Billtrust Collections, we struggled trying to balance between working the large dollars vs. the small dollars, and it wasn’t efficient. This tool eliminates that struggle by automating our outreach and increasing our account coverage.”
Bonnie Halvorson, Financial Services Manager
Werner Electric Minnesota
