How we solved cash collection for Siemens?

What kind of business do you run?

Siemens is one of the global leaders in electrical engineering and electronics with 351.000 employees and a turnover of around 83 billion Euro. As part of Siemens’ Shared Service family we are supporting our operating businesses in the field of Cash Collection globally.

Where are you headed as a business?

The centralized cash collection operation within Shared services is a relatively new setup. After onboarding the services in over 10 locations on all continents we are confronted with very different operational maturity levels and wide range of software and tool support. Our target in the current phase is to streamline all operational units into a professional transactional service – tool support that facilitates automation, process transparency and speed is one of our major keys.

What challenges were you facing and what motivated you to solve them?

In the classical days a cash collector was confronted with a number of applications to deal with – storing contact, adding reminders and handling correspondences in the eMail application, verifying receivables in ERP, handling clarifications via isolated workflow and planning the day via spreadsheets. On the one hand side that scattered landscape isn’t optimal for the collector itself but especially transparency during holidays or handovers was always challenging. In addition – as the information was not available in a structured form – management reporting was a very manual task. All this plus the fact that some very simple tasks like extracting and sending invoice copies to the customer was eating a lot of valuable time highlighted a need for action.

Why did you choose us over the competition?

To be candid it was more a (in the retrospective very lucky) co-incident. In the course of the project we got pressure on timeline and budget which led to the decision to increase the near-shore portion. Being very satisfied with the services and in particular Saltech’s ownership culture made us stay in business with you.

How do you use our product / service, and how do you find that process?

After completing the Cash collection management application Saltech is supporting us in our global rollout, continuous improvement as well as in regular maintenance. Especially in fast-pace rollouts all of those elements need to work as well-oiled gearbox.

How have you benefited from using our product / service?

First of all we hold a nicely designed and working piece of BPM software in our hands. From my business perspective this is a great achievement already. The extra-mile for me is the experience that everything is all-right under the hood as well. Having commonly designed layers and the bespoke modular setup in order to cope with upcoming requirements from Australia to Mexico; it is always a pleasure to see that adaptations within the given functional core are fast, reasonably priced and smooth.

How has our product / service improved your day-to-day life?

Referring back to the challenges of a scattered landscape we moved into an operational mode where we use only one application for all day-to-day tasks. A collection strategy is helping the collectors to create and prioritise tasks, reminders are created automatically based on actions and the collector has a single screen to see all contact details, Accounts Receivable portfolio and all account history. In conversation with the customer the collector can start actions from the panel and the lead-time of some tasks – such as the provisioning of invoice copies – reduced by over 90%.

What have you learned from working with us?

With the right attitude from both sides near-shore-sourcing in software development works very well. After building mutual trust and understanding you guys make Pega’s claim “Build for Change” reality. Being used to relatively long lead times of change requests due to long specification cycles in the ERP world it is good to see that realization times with Saltech are short and based on a mutual idea generation process.

What would you say to other businesses facing the same challenges as you did?

Try to find a solution partner that considers your project their “baby”. Passion and an honest understanding of project ownership combined with the right technical and communication skills of all delivery partners is absolute key to build a solution on a green field as we did.