Affiliations
My first experience with a solution provider in the Accounts Receivable Consulting space was HighRadius Corporation. It was at a very early stage of the companies history. I learned of them during my time at Hormel Foods when I was Manager of Support Services while attending the National Manufacturer Deduction and Resolution Group (NMDRG) meeting.
I credit NMDRG and the members with helping me better understand the Deduction space, what tools were found to be effective in solving and helping to answer burning questions I had. I formed lasting friendships and connections that would later become clients of Optimize Receivables as well. I was encouraged to try out this share group by Ford Symonds who was the Credit Manager at Hormel Foods . This turned out to be the greatest experience for me.
Many that participated in quarterly in-person meetings were within the Food and Beverage space. The people who attended these meetings were those that were key stakeholders within their organizations for managing or actually responsible for the research and resolution of Deductions. These were front-line type of people that truly understood the challenges and were directly involved. The sharing and collaboration was incredible. I ended up becoming a board member of this great organization and credit this group for having a deeper and lasting impact at Hormel and beyond.
It was common during these group meetings to have round-table discussions about topics. There were usually about three to choose from. There was one particular meeting that had a lasting impact during a round-table. I chose the topic of securing customer backup. This was a challenge for us and we thought surely with these large fortune 100 companies that at least one had a solution. All the retailers, distributors and wholesalers had their own way. Some were being emailed to a salesperson or broker, some to Deductions specialist, some provided as part of the remittance documentation, some from portals, some via fax or USPS mail. I thought surely some of these largest of organizations had an effective and efficient process but I left that round table bewildered. I guess the best I could say is that we weren’t alone in our challenge.
Within a few weeks of that time, I received a voice message from Ford Symonds. He forwarded me a message from a vendor that he thought I should check into. This wasn’t the first of its type, often I ignored these type of calls. However, this particular time I was compelled to return the message because they mentioned they had a solution for capturing customer backup.
I had my first call with Dan Chapman who was a salesperson for HighRadius. I learned of a solution they had for capturing customer backup from customer portals and emails. I was actually amazed that I hadn’t heard this from one of the esteemed members of NMDRG at the time. However, I listened, I listened intently. I thought….could it be? We ended up doing a trial of their claim capture for three accounts, three large retailers. I could not believe the instant difference it made. Naturally we had to change our processes to best use the capability. I had to make sure the Deduction Specialists were a part of the change and provide feedback along the way. But, we were all amazed. Literally. Each morning we had all of the claim documents and the details captured without anyone having to login and download each and every one individually. Sometimes we would get several hundred in a day. What used to take us days took us now a few minutes. We started by simply selecting all new transactions in the worklist and printing all. Yes, this was the days of printing everything! There wasn’t another way to handle efficiently with the tools we had at the time.
We were celebrating. This was so exciting to us. I continued to ponder, why hadn’t I heard about this from my colleagues. I felt like it was an incredible discovery and was so fortunate to have followed-up on a cold call. I continued to have conversations with HighRadius because I couldn’t help but wonder what else they had the capabilities to do. I got to know the salesperson, Dan Chapman who had pretty much been with the company since the beginning along with the founder and CEO, Sashi Narahari, whom I grew a deep and lasting respect for. We learned that our next step was for them to do an assessment. Sashi was the first to come onsite. He sat with the Deduction Specialists, asked a lot of questions and listened intently. The team had only one complaint upon his departure, he didn’t hardly take a single note. To them that signaled that he couldn’t possibly retain or understand what was being shared. Quite the opposite was actually true. He is brilliant and proved that later in our interactions.
Internally there was a whole other challenge. We had done and utilized the tools at our Accounts Receivable Consulting disposal to the degree possible. We had a color coded filing system, not just by customer but by pending action. We had as much tracking as an email, excel spreadsheet and paper based filing would offer. We felt we had made the most of what we had, always with a continuous improvement mindset that had been instilled in me during the earliest years with the company. This was especially impressed upon me during the Six Sigma training that the Juran Institute provided. We had customized Siebel so that we could use it as a Deduction Management solution and Accounts Receivable Consulting. But we knew we had reached our best days with the tools we had access to.
Since the onsite with HighRadius, we found that a cloud-based solution could be a potential answer. This was definitely uncommon, cutting-edge at the time in the Accounts Receivable Consulting space. Companies tended to use on-premise solutions. The challenge was that the IT resources were always stretched thin. We were always competing and vying for their time to make even the smallest updates. The use of a cloud-based solution was enticing because while it still required IT support to get the interfaces set-up, it didn’t require the heavy initial and on-going heavy support of IT.
Given where we were and the possibility of using HighRadius, I decided to go all-in for the chance to implement HighRadius as our Deduction Management solution. After several discussions and attempts to get recommendations from existing customers, I came the realization we were probably the first. Dan Chapman, chose to be honest with me, leveled with me and said yes, Hormel would be the first Deduction Management solution user. I was glad for the honesty but also incredibly aware that this would make it harder to get the buy-in I would need in a very conservative, risk-adverse company.
It took quite a little doing and perseverance to “sell-in” the HighRadius Deduction Management solution internally. Needless to say, it was the CFO along with the CEO that ultimately said yes, despite other key stakeholders in the organization that felt it was a duplication of the Accounts Receivable Consulting system already available. I knew that I knew that I knew that this was not the case. That this solution had promise, a future, and I had commitment from the very top to ensure success.
This implementation ended up being an incredible success although it didn’t appear that was at first. I could of and should have placed more emphasis on processes and assisting people through change, provide more avenues for feedback along with training. Despite that all, much of the team stuck in there with me. Gave it their best, did all they could to ensure success and that turned out to be the case.
The implementation of the HighRadius Deductions cloud-based solution did some things I did not expect. First, from an operational point of view, it uncovered things, it exposed weakness and bottlenecks I never could see before. It created more accountability because there was no “hiding” anymore. It was no longer a he said/she said. There were time stamps, audit trails and reports that could not be argued with. We used these insights to next level our operation. It was exciting yet trying times.
The truest testament to success was the fact that the Hormel Foods Corporation still uses the solution after over 13 years. It stood the test of time. And fortunately for me, this partnership has stood the test of time for me personally. After about 12 year with Hormel I left, what launched me into an area I had frankly not interest or aspirations, was consulting. I received a call from the HighRadius sales person who grew into a friend that said…we have a company that we think could use your insight. I agreed reluctantly, not because I didn’t want to but because I wasn’t sure I could help them in the way the company needed. My saying yes to this very first consulting engagement with Danone North America was the start to my business.
I went onsite to understand their operations through a series of meetings. I along with Jessica Butler, a trusted and respected consultant I came to know through NMDRG, provided our perspective on what could be done to improve operations. To my surprise and delight, the VP who flew in from NY was not only pleased and compelled by the findings but asked if we could stay on and help them do what we had proposed to do. This turned into a long and fruitful collaboration that lasted over 2 and a half years. After about seven months of working with this client I decided I better make this “official” if I was to carry-on. On July 17, 2015, the company was formed and I’ve never looked back.
Also, one of the greatest compliments was those companies that I had worked alongside as a member and board member of NMDRG and my first clients and have continued. I could not have planned this if I tried. All credit to my God and Father, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for orchestrating and working all these things for my good. Obviously I want good for these companies we have been privileged to serve, but more importantly, I have longed to help the people in these often thankless jobs under incredible pressure to perform with small budgets and sometime less than desirable tools. My desire is to show a way to optimize an operation through tools like HighRadius, processes that align with whatever tools can be afforded and people in the right bus and in the right seat.
It has been my privilege to serve these companies with these genuine, hard-working, diligent doers that often get overlooked for their contributions. I hope any pray to continue to build and develop a team that shares this same desire. We keep our customers first, in all things, and good will come.
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