In my recent post, "The order shipped. So why hasn't it been paid?", I talked about how every overdue account tends to get chased the same way, regardless of size or risk, and how that pattern is what actually drives DSO higher, not customer behaviour. If that resonated, here's where to take it next.
You've probably already got a name in mind, an account, a pattern, something you've been chasing manually for months because nobody's built the case to fix it properly.
Knowing something's broken isn't the same as getting budget to fix it, and leadership doesn't act on a feeling, they act on numbers, so here are three that do the job:
DSO is the one finance already tracks, so tie your specific bottleneck to a movement in this number and the conversation starts on their terms, not yours.
Dispute resolution time is usually the more honest story, how long a payment sits blocked once a dispute is logged, because that's often the real driver behind a high DSO, not unwillingness to pay but a resolution step nobody actually owns.
And touchless collection rate, the share of accounts that clear without anyone lifting a finger, is one of the easiest numbers to put a cost against, since a low rate is just manual hours hiding in plain sight.
"Collections feels inefficient, someone should look at it" gets nodded at and forgotten, while "our touchless rate is 40%, disputes take 18 days on average to resolve, and closing that gap unlocks six figures in working capital" gets a follow-up meeting on the calendar, and the difference between those two isn't effort, it's just having the data pulled into one place instead of living across three people's heads and a shared spreadsheet.
If you're building that case right now, Chapter 3 of The Working Capital Playbook walks through exactly this, how AR teams are using process intelligence to find where cash actually stalls, and turn that into something leadership acts on. It's the second half of the O2C story we've been telling across Order Management and Accounts Receivable, both sides of getting cash in the door faster, so worth grabbing the full picture while you're there.
Download the eBook here -> The Working Capital Playbook
As always, I am keen to know what you think of the playbook, whether there is anything you would like to see from us next, and if there any experiences you're having in your organisation that can help bring these topics to life?
Drop in a comment and share.
Lee