Do your long-tail customers cost you too much?

Every customer is important, but not all customers are the same. Whether it’s a $5,000 order or a $500,000 order, every invoice demands processing. But, is it necessary to spend the same amount of time and effort on every invoice? 

Most B2B enterprises have a significant long-tail customer group that generates a large volume of small, low-value transactions. They typically account for 80% of transaction volume but only 20% of revenue.

With new intelligent business process automation from Apruve, organizations are standardizing and accelerating their long-tail transactions. Apruve enables credit and payments teams to handle their long-tail segment 50% more efficiently. The decreased time spent on manual processes allows for cost savings and allows businesses to refocus their efforts on growing high-value customers that make up their revenue core.¹ Automating payment processes becomes a critical business advantage at a time when 25% of credit departments don’t have enough staff to manage the competing challenges of long-tail and high-value customers.² 

There are benefits with Apruve’s intelligent credit and payments automation: 

• Making everybody more effective and efficient, allowing businesses to do more with less
• Freeing employee resources to focus on growing customer relationships 
• Enhancing decision-making with real-time visibility into processes, prioritizations, and services levels 
• Uncovering opportunities to develop new avenues of growth 

Credit and payments are an ideal function for business process automation because they are high-volume and repetitive. With Apruve, organizations can manage year-over-year growth of invoice volume without adding back-office resources.

Shift from volume- to value-driven

A key benefit of implementing a long-tail credit and payment automation solution is an enhanced customer experience. In the same way that ATMs helped transform the banking industry by automating highly transactional activities, an intelligent credit and payments solution automates long-tail activities, enabling employees to focus on high-value services, customers, and products. Proper intelligent automation is complementary, not a replacement strategy, that empowers employees to deliver efficiency and high-quality service for all types of customers.

This shift from volume-driven to value-driven transforms employee roles. Employees feel more empowered working on growth-driving activities instead of repetitive and routine tasks. They can use their skills and talents for revenue-generating activities such as cultivating existing customer relationships. Their work helps push the business forward, while automation takes care of long-tail credit and payments faster and with fewer errors. Within the first year, automating credit and payments processes can generate 30% to 200% ROI as employees focus on higher-value activities.³  

Shift from transactional to growth-focused

Every interaction is an opportunity to champion a frictionless customer experience. With intelligent business process automation, credit and payment teams transform into a key customer service function that can drive higher profitability. Here’s how: Offering payment alternatives is a differentiator for B2B buyers. Meeting this need can increase customer satisfaction and ultimately, customer retention. Even a 5% increase in customer retention can boost profitability by 25% to 95%.⁴ 

Successful businesses find ways to work smarter. With Apruve, organizations can shift the focus of credit and payment teams from purely transactional to revenue-generating and value creation. By concentrating on activities that generate higher revenues, organizations can improve asset utilization and profitability.

The question every high-performance organization needs to ask is this: How can workforce time and talent be optimized to focus on the highest growth-driving activities while simultaneously improving service and satisfaction levels for all customers?  The answer is intelligent business process automation by Apruve.

1. Based on 2020 Apruve client surveys and feedback
2. https://anytimecollect.com/blog/27-accounts-receivable-management-facts-for-the-cfo
3. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/the-next-acronym-you-need-to-know-about-rpa
4. https://hbr.org/2014/10/the-value-of-keeping-the-right-customers