Sage whitepaper support-customer-retention_final

1. Support customer
retention and growth
The 6 Benefits of ERP as a Financial Management System

2. The 6 benefits of ERP as a Financial Management System
Customer-facing companies offering financial, hospitality, retail and transport
services, consist of a front-office containing sales teams and customer services staff
alongside back-office(s) dealing with manufacturing, development, administration
and business planning. Whilst day-to-day activities differ between back and front-
office, there will be an ultimate, company-wide goal; keep the customer happy and
continue to grow the customer base.
Support customer retention and growth
PwC reports that customer retention and growth is also at the top of the agenda for
CEOs, with 31% expecting a major change in customer growth within the next year1
.
To achieve this goal, both back and front-office processes
must be seamlessly aligned to ensure customer service is
outstanding, production efficient and a tight handle is kept on
costs and budgets. Many CEOs are increasingly focusing on
balancing efficiency and agility to cut costs without cutting
value or leaving their organisations exposed to external
upheavals.
Customer-facing teams are likely to use a specialist system,
such as a contact desk or a booking system that enables
them to serve customers efficiently. However, a disconnect
between front-office and back-office systems can have a
serious effect on the level of service customers receive.
Aberdeen Group found that a lack of accounting integration
Management of costs and a consistent service to customers is core to driving customer
retention and growth.
causes 56% of respondent’s difficulty in ensuring consistency
across data2
. Enabling customer-facing teams with the
correct data is vital for good customer service.
As an example, when a financial services organisation faces a
delay in processing mortgage applications, some prospective
customers may have applied for mortgages elsewhere, so
competitors with more efficient back-office functions would
win the business, due to faster processing.
Back office accounting integration is known to help
companies achieve a 97% greater annual improvement in
customer satisfaction rates when compared to those with
poor back-office activities and integration3
.
There are 6 reasons for this:
A fully integrated Financial Management System will give your customer-facing team access
to the data they need, when they need it. This means that the correct customer and financial
data is available at the push of a button, leaving your customers happy that they’ve received
a good service. IDG quantifies the result of improved data efficiency as a 9% improvement in
customer service quality and responsiveness, for every 20% improvement in data quality4
.
So whether there’s a need to look at historical transactions, billing details, credit details or
payment schedules, your teams will be enabled with the correct information without having
to look into multiple systems to get hold of it.
Sage ERP X3 fully integrates with front-office and specialist systems, including real-time data
synchronisation, creating a full-consolidation of billing in a customer-centric view. Online
document storage enables further availability of in-depth information. In-depth reporting
and filtering options also eliminates the need for use of spreadsheets and therefore reduces
chances of error to promote data of a high quality.
1. Access to Quality Data and Information

3. 3. Compliance and Efficiency
4. Simplicity
Support customer retention and growth
A Financial Management System will support full management of billing, payments
and revenue. This can include customer payment schedules and transactions, credit
management and revenue tracking across the business.
The increased tracking capabilities will ensure that customers are kept up to date with their
payment schedules. A good Financial Management System will integrate with a Customer
Relationship Management system to send automated reminders to customers for any of
these reasons, thus preventing any complaints around communications.
Sage ERP X3 has an in-built CRM for sending such reminders. It is simple to set up
automated payment processes with global reminders internally and to automate letters,
emails, telephone or links sent from the CRM.
2. Billing, Payment and Revenue Management
A Financial Management System should allow workflows and notifications to be set.
By setting workflows, you will ensure that teams adhere to correct procedures and also
become more efficient in their day-to-day tasks. This could include uploading receipts,
sharing invoices, recording sales or customer data, adding banking and billing details or
uploading Purchase Orders. This compliancy rule creates a simple process for customer
service teams to follow, while also ensuring finance teams can monitor closely and question
or raise anything with the relevant representative if required. Setting up notifications within
processes significantly reduces time spent on administration on the customer facing side,
thus freeing up time to deal with customer queries.
Sage ERP X3 enables close attention to payment process with user-definable processes
whereby administrators can define steps and controls. Purchase workflows also result in
purchase request, orders and open orders being filed and processed correctly.
Most Financial Management Systems can deal with multiple currencies, companies, sites
and legislations. Having these in-built to the system will reduce manual errors, risks and
administration-time. Customer-facing teams will have access to financial details in the
correct currencies and finance teams will spend less time dealing with discrepancies.
Sage ERP X3 covers multi-site, multi-company and multi-currency transactions, with
unlimited in-built currencies and exchange rates. Automation can be set for inter-site and
inter-collective transactions. In-built local legislations minimise risk for global companies,
ensuring they adhere to varying international accounting rules. These features can be used
with integration to a specialist customer system or stand-alone with the ERP system.

4. Support customer retention and growth
1.
PWC, January 2013. The 16th Global CEO Survey
2.
Aberdeen Group, September 2013. Integrated Accounting Platform: Achieving accuracy and efficiency at lower cost
3.
Aberdeen Group, July 2014. Secrets for Improved Productivity and Performance in the Back-Office
4.
IDG Research Services, February 2014. Impact of data effectiveness on business outcomes
Particularly relevant for financial services companies; deploying a strategy around risk
management will improve your overall customer care with better management of disputes.
This is through reliable credit scoring and adaptations according to certain customer
situations.
Sage ERP X3 permits user-definable rules for calculating business and financial risk and
user-defined management rules by representative, risk, statistical, family etc.
5. Risk Management
With a clear view of everything across the business; particularly sales made and money
spent, your finance department will be able to make informed decisions. Aberdeen Group
reports that access to real-time financial data allows companies to improve the amount of
time it takes to make decisions by 11%3
. Results and strategy can be shared around the
business so that customer departments know shortfalls or revenue streams to focus on.
Sage ERP X3 uses interactive graphical processes to create visualisations of data.
Calculated by quality or financial, quantity or costs; filtering is detailed and simple to use, so
that real-time insight is available quickly. Simple data extraction to a reporting program, such
as Excel or Powerpoint will save time in transferring insights into a presentable format.
6. Financial Metrics Management
Why use ERP as your Financial Management System?
There are many financial applications to choose from,
starting with separate financial and accounting applications
which include basic accounting features such as accounts
payable and receivable, general ledger and financial
reporting. For mid-market and enterprise services
companies, Enterprise Resource Planning software will give
the required, in-depth integration required with the front-
office system, to ensure that data sharing and monitoring
can be achieved at a high standard.
Many organisations might not consider ERP as a back-office
system, as they regard it as a complete business process
management system, which would not necessarily be able
to manage the specialist front-office operations without a lot
of investment of time and money. However ERP can provide
a feature-rich, fully integrated system that pulls across all
customer, prospect and financial information for back-office
finance departments to have a single view of spend and
revenue. Seamlessly integrating it with your specialist front-
office systems will enable you to deliver the customer service
levels needed for customer retention and give your staff the
ability to drive customer growth.

5. Support customer retention and growth
Sage ERP X3 is a multi-language, multi-company, multi-site, multi-currency, multi-
ledger, and multi-legislation financial management tool and Enterprise Resource Planning
software that provides comprehensive accounting, quick implementation, scalability and
flexibility options and full integration with your chosen system.
Sage ERP X3 offers great control over accounting and financial data, by allowing users to
define General Ledger analytical dimensions and offering filtering drill-down of financial
activity. Detailed and visual reporting with simple exporting to a chosen presentation
program, give you the flexibility to report quickly to stakeholders. Fixed asset management
functionality is included as a standard, enabling planning and budgeting of assets through
the entire lifecycle, helping the company make the right decisions.
More about Sage ERP X3
To find out more about Sage ERP X3,
Visit: www.sage.co.uk/software-and-services/erp/sage-erp-x3
call 0800 9520082
or email uk.eme@sage.com
Sage Enterprise Market - UK
Sage House
Wharfedale Road
Winnersh
Berkshire
RG41 5RD
Call: 0800 952 0082
Email: uk.eme@sage.com
www.sage.co.uk/software-and-services/erp/sage-erp-x3
© Sage (UK) Limited 2015 HD 05/15