Leveraging your customer information to optimize the management of your receivables. This was the topic discussed by Edouard Beauvois, CEO of Aividens, along with his partners from SAP and Delaware, Bart Peijnenburg and Philippe de Beukelaar, during the last Credit Expo in Hertogenbosch.
This day was full of exchanges with the attending companies and marked by a real interest from Credit & Finance managers for predictive and innovative credit management solutions based on Artificial Intelligence.
The transition to innovative technologies is progressing, but there is still a long way to go.
Companies are attracted by AI’s ability to anticipate default risk and analyze customer payment behavior in real time, for example, but implementing it internally is not yet a given.
In fact, most of them still operate with non-automated processes, making them vulnerable because of the lack of control over their receivables.
“Many companies are not yet familiar with AI today. The reason is that there is still a biased perception of innovative solutions. AI projects seem complex, time-consuming to manage and require deep data clean-up. However, fintechs such as AiVidens standardize data to allow their users to work with basic data, generating very good results, without having to start huge data projects.
We also see a second obstacle to innovation: data security. When we talk about SaaS, we obviously refer to data in the cloud. Business departments are still wary because they are not aware of the advanced security mechanisms offered by SaaS and cloud providers, which are designed to overcome this feeling of insecurity. ” Edouard Beauvois
Are you going to use AI to deal with increased credit risk?
The challenging economic times we are facing today will be followed by an economic downturn and increased credit risk.
In this context, every late payment has an impact on your receivables portfolio and costs your company more than before.
The current and future economic situation makes it even more important to use innovative, digitalized collection solutions. If you miss out on this opportunity, your efficiency is likely to decrease because of:
- Lack of understanding of your customers and inappropriate actions
- Lack of precision and anticipation
- Increased costs due to mistakes in collection activities
- Loss of time when checking the information collected in the different systems used
In short: your outstanding payments are increasing, customer satisfaction is decreasing, and your collection teams are overwhelmed and demotivated.
These manual processes have many flaws, while innovations such as AI allow to automate them, consolidate different systems, but also improve visibility and cash flows.
“The coming months will be important for innovation because the current economic context is an opportunity for all companies which have not yet started this transformation to start it.” Edouard Beauvois, CEO of AiVidens.
Innovation, a universal priority for companies in 2023.
It’s important to continue to educate corporates about AI to prevent these innovations from being used only by visionaries. The transition to innovation, like the digitalization of companies, can be done progressively with the help of experts.
A major challenge in the coming year will be to help companies better understand AI and how it can be used in their own business.
“2023 will be the year to start implementation projects. We won’t be talking to credit and finance managers about return on investment, but rather about maximizing return on cash, meaning the extra cash that will be brought in through an innovative solution. The cash gain will justify the cost of implementation. This is the new approach we want to make companies aware of today.” Edouard Beauvois
Events like Credit Expo are the best way to explain this reality to companies and to make them aware of the added value of using innovative solutions such as AiVidens.
