The US food and beverage retailer Oneta Company, which represents companies like Pepsi Cola and Everest Water, had to update its critical accounts receivable business. This article was first published in the Food & Drink Business in March 2021.
With a 150 year history, the Oneta Company now sells more than 2.5 million items per year, but some of their accounts receivable processes were still handled manually.
When the invoice was delivered, employees went to the filing cabinet, found the invoice, made a copy, faxed or scanned it, and then mailed it to the customer.
One day a month, team members would spend four to five hours manually entering each customer’s credit card number and then sending it back to the customer by email, fax, or mail.
Each month there were more than 5000 overdue customer statements that had to be manually prepared for shipping.
It would take about three days and the company would “borrow” staff from other departments to help fold, fill, and stamp envelopes.
Oneta turned to Esker to transform invoice delivery, payment, and collection.
The biggest change was moving the company to a completely cloud-based system.
By integrating with the ERP software, Esker enabled Oneta to continue from its manual methods.
The invoice delivery no longer has to be physically prepared, but has to be sent directly by e-mail at the push of a button.
Customers can now complete payments via a portal or sign up for automatic payment, which relieves Oneta employees.
Esker’s collection management solution stores all notes and collection activities electronically and informs employees about overdue invoices or which customers need to be contacted.
Since implementing Esker, more than 80 percent of Oneta customers have signed up for electronic invoicing.
It was an endeavor, but the company says such high acceptance was worth it.
Edward Reyna, Office Manager at Oneta, says, “We sent out flyers promoting e-invoicing related to bank statements in the first four months of implementation, and drivers had flyers given to customers when orders were delivered.
“Another dedicated employee called customers for a week to collect email addresses.
“The whole process took about six months, but the results speak for themselves.”
The result is a team that is less stressed and overwhelmed and has more time to focus on larger projects that impact the business.