Using tools in a creative way for Collections

A business process should not be limited by the edges of functional areas nor the tools used to support them.

The process of selling is at its end point the goal of creating cash. Every business depends on creating cash. So the "Sales" process doesn't end with the order. In order for the business to grow and thrive it needs to be able to collect on this order since real costs went into creating the items on this order.

Once the order is received, the Order Management/Finance group needs to verify that all the appropriate paperwork is in place to withstand an Audit of the books then the order progress to a state of "Booked". Some orders may be for product and/or services over time and may also have special payment terms. These variations can be modeled as a cloning of the original opportunity with the date and amount set appropriate for what the contract calls for. This allows also for management reports to be created that show the "locked" bookings as well as cash flow due to the various payment terms agreed to. Unless the order came with the payment, some sort of paperwork like an invoice needs to be created to actually bill for the product or service. The sooner this is done; the sooner the company receives the cash. So having a status that shows when an order has been "invoiced" is critical to predicting when the cash might show up. Note that others in the company beyond Order Management/Finance should be alerted if a client fails to pay an invoice. It may indicate unhappiness with the product or service or the company in general or it may indicate that the client is in financial distress. You typically want either the sales person who just sold it or an account manager to follow up with the client to find out what the issue is. When payment is received, the status should be set to "Collected" and the date of collection captured for use with predicting payments in the future from this client.

Note that with tools such as Salesforce.com you can extend the "Sales" process to include the concept of "Booked", "Invoiced", and "Collected" so that finance can use it for bookings and collections well sales can use it for calculating Commission payments. In addition, a copy of the order can be loaded into Salesforce.com and a link added to the Opportunity page to the Contract that points at the document so that an audit can quickly verify the information in the database agrees with the actual documentation.

Salesforce.com also has Dashboard functionality that allows each company to set up reports, metrics, summary comparisons, and graphics to assist management with vital information essential to understanding what is going on with the business and to making good decisions for the future of the company.

The process shouldn't have to stop were the functional area ends and the same tools can be used by multiple functional areas to track the "whole" business process.