84% Recovery and $2M Cash Flow Gains: How Sutherland Transformed Collections for a Global Tech Giant

Industry: Retail & Consumer Packaged Goods | Services: Automation

Client Overview

The client is a global leader in intelligent communication experiences, enabling businesses worldwide to connect seamlessly with their customers and employees. With a strong commitment to operational excellence and ethical business practices, our client sought a partner to enhance its collections efficiency, improve cash flow, and create a more predictable accounts receivable process.

The Challenge

Streamlining a Legacy Collections Process

Effective collections management goes beyond chasing payments—it ensures a healthy cash flow while maintaining strong customer relationships. Our client faced challenges with inconsistent collections processes, rising overdue balances, and excessive manual effort in managing invoices and account statements. To address these inefficiencies, Sutherland was engaged to introduce structure, automation, and analytics-driven insights into the collections function for enabling accelerated cash recovery, reduced aging debt, and enhanced financial visibility.

Key Challenges:

• Increasing Aging Balances: Cash collection efficiency remained at 76%, consistently falling short of the 80% target.
• Manual Processing Bottlenecks: Generating Statements of Account (SOA) took 36 minutes per case, slowing down the collections cycle.
• Delayed Cash Recovery: The 90+ days overdue balance continued rolling forward, impacting financial stability and forecasting accuracy.
• Quality and Accuracy Concerns: Lack of standardized tracking led to errors and inconsistencies in invoice management.

The client required a more structured approach to collections—one that streamlined processes, enhanced efficiency, and delivered a measurable financial impact while freeing up internal resources for strategic initiatives.

Sutherland Solution

Digital-First Collections Transformation

Sutherland implemented a strategic mix of automation, analytics, and process optimization to enhance the client’s collections operations, driving efficiency, accuracy, and measurable financial impact.

1. Data-Driven Collections Strategy: To improve collections tracking and risk management, Sutherland developed informative dashboards that provided greater visibility into overdue accounts and high-risk customers.
2. Automating Statement of Account (SOA) Processing: To accelerate Statement of Account (SOA) processing and reduce manual efforts, Sutherland introduced RPA-driven automation.
3. Standardization & Process Efficiency: To enhance process standardization and tracking, Sutherland established a structured follow-up framework for overdue invoices.
4. Accuracy & Quality Control Enhancements: To improve accuracy and quality control, Sutherland implemented enhanced validation and error-reduction measures.

The Outcome

Intelligent Collections Deliver Business Impact

Through its partnership with Sutherland, the client transformed its collections operations, achieving measurable improvements in efficiency, accuracy, and financial performance.

• Higher Collections Efficiency and Reduced Aging Balances: Data-driven insights helped to improve more accurate cash forecasting and risk management, preventing accounts from rolling into higher-risk aging categories. Given the enhanced visibility, adding to the structured follow-up process, collection efficiency has steadily improved, which brought enhanced financial stability to the client.
• Faster and More Cost-Effective SOA Processing: The time required to generate Statements of Account (SOA) was reduced from 36 minutes to under 20 minutes per case, representing a 16-minute efficiency gain per transaction. This optimization resulted in $0.093 million in annual cost savings, significantly reducing operational expenses while enhancing operational efficiency.
• Greater Standardization and Process Control: Establishing a structured collections framework and automating the Statement of Accounts, provided faster and accurate reporting of outstanding balances. This not only enhanced clarity to customer but also reduced disputes, improved internal tracking and follow-up processes, making collections efforts more predictable and efficient.
• Enhanced Accuracy and Reduced Errors: 98%+ accuracy rate achieved with minimized processing errors, reduced customer escalations, and strengthened the reliability of the collections process.

Sutherland’s cost-effective, scalable solutions addressed critical challenges while consistently meeting and exceeding client’s expectations. This collaboration reinforced Sutherland’s role as a trusted and strategic partner.