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Agenda
Credit and Collections Challenges Today
Oracle
VeriSign
Operations Snapshot
Challenges
What We Gained
Q&A
Conclusion
Automated
Administrative
Processes
Customer
Segmentation,
Scoring,
Strategies,
Filters
Oracle Receivables
Prioritized and
Automatically
Scheduled
Work Items
Comprehensive
and Transparent
Customer
Interactions
Management
Reporting
Oracle Payments
Credit Policy
with
Automated
Scoring and
Checklists
Manual and
Automated
Credit
Applications
Credit
Analysis and
Decisions
Credit Risk
Management
Oracle Financials
India SSC
128 C&C analysts
Project Goals
Update Oracles Credit & Collections Systems
Corporate DSO
Cash Targets
Aging % over 90 days
Relative Weight
25%
30%
25%
10%
10%
$ Amount Owed
Collection Strategies
1 - 15
16 - 30
Hard (0-45)
Pre-Del
Invoice Date
+20,
>$100K =
Courtesy
Call
Days PD
Action
Call #1
Dun #1
15
Call #2
20
Dun #2
25
Call #3
61 - 80
31 - 60
Medium (46-75)
81 - 120
Soft (76-100)
Days PD
Action
Days PD
Action
15
Call #1
15
Dun #1
25
Dun #1
30
Call #1
30
Restrict LC
45
Restrict LC
Call #2
60
75
Call #3
90
Dun #3
120
Final Demand/Legal
30
35
40
Call #5
45
Dun #2
50
Dun #3
60
60
70
Call #7
70
80
Final Demand/Legal
90
Expected ROI
Credit Scoring
Scoring:
Customer Financial Data
Internal Metrics
Payment history, high credit, current account aging, disputes
Sales forecasts
External Data
D&B, S&P, Moodys ratings
Media reports
Country Risk Ratings
Credit Limits
Based on score
Order exceeds
customer credit
limit (from OM,
OKS, PA)
Annual Credit
Review Inititated
AR Credit
Check
Process puts
order on hold
External Data
Entered Via
Checklist
Order on Hold
Credit Process
Automated Credit
Scoring
Credit
Classification
Assigned
Credit Limit
Assigned
Credit account
established, Credit
Review date set.
External Data
Entered via
checklist
Automated Credit
Scoring
Order released,
Credit Review
date set
New Credit
Classification
Assigned
New Credit
Limit Assigned
- Automated Process
- Manual Process
Project Challenges
Moved to Regional SSC Model
Romania in 2006
Costa Rica 2008
Global Training
~ 260 Credit & Collection Employees
Operational restrictions
AIT resources
Close period restrictions
Patching schedules
About Us
+ VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN) is the trusted provider of Internet
infrastructure services for the networked world. Billions of times
each day, our SSL, identity and authentication, and domain name
services allow companies and consumers all over the world to
engage in trusted communications and commerce.
+ Internal Data
+ Risk Profiles
High/Low/Moderate
+ Collections Strategies
+ Work Items
Work Items get assigned to the Collection Analyst for Review and
Follow-up with the customer
Score
Strategy
90
Pre-Delinquent
40-89
26-40
Delinquent
20-25
Seriously Delinquent I
1-19
Seriously Delinquent II
Collections Workbench
Pre Delinquent transactions are not delinquent transactions but however needs early
stage collector review and a customer call given the high dollar amounts.
Pre-Delinquent Transactions are identified by Oracle Collections and a work item gets
pushed to the collector prompting the collector to do one of the following and close
the work item
Call Customer to check if they have received the Invoice & if they are all set to
pay on the Due Date
Send Pre-Delinquency Dunning Letter
There has been a number of instances of prompt payments as a direct effect of PreDelinquency follow-up process
We recently identified an invoice for $1.55M which had a problem and talking to
customer early helped prompt payment. But for this process, we would have
known this issue a month later
Average savings of around 1m$ a month which would have otherwise gone
delinquent
2004
Bad Debt Write off dropped from 5.9 million USD dollars in 2004
Q&A
Michael Puccinelli, VeriSign
Anil Madhireddy, VeriSign
Tim Graham, Oracle (Credit and Collections)
Julia Baeva, Oracle (Development)
Adjustable Automation
Best practice
Segmented Strategies
Tailored customer
messaging
Configurable Scoring
Best practice
DEMO
grounds
On the Web
Among Peers
http://blogs.oracle.com/financials
Oracle Mix
http://mix.oracle.com
Receivables and Revenue
Management: Demo Pod S052
(Moscone South)
search.oracle.com
Credit and Collections
or
oracle.com
mpuccinelli@verisign.com
amadhireddy@verisign.com
Introduction
The objective of this white paper is to present a case study of how VeriSign was able to use the
Oracle Credit and Collections suite (Credit Management, Advanced Collections & Dun &
Bradstreet toolkit) to re-engineer its credit and cash cycle and improve cash flows. The first
section of this paper offers a case for automation of credit assessments based on internal and
external data and an overview of a comprehensive scoring model that helped determine
customer credit terms i.e., payment term, credit limit and credit classification and manage credit
risk. The next section of this paper will discuss building blocks for collections scoring and
strategies that help credit become cash faster and how they were automated using Oracle
Advanced Collections. While both Credit Management & Advanced Collections are independent
applications within the Oracle E Business Suite, the key to successfully implementing this suite is
the know-how to integrate them into an effective tool that offers functionality gains substantially
greater than its parts. The last section of this paper highlights the specifics of this integration.
Besides, the paper strives to present the above concepts with a balanced blend of functional and
technical flavor (supported by discussions in Appendix A & B) that provide insights to both
business managers & implementation consultants on possibilities with an implementation of
Oracle Credit & Collections Suite.
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New Customer Reviews: Every new customer needs to be reviewed based on external
credit data to determine the risk profile of the customer that helps assign appropriate
credit limit & payment term. Customers will need to be classified in terms of credit risk &
an appropriate review cycle assigned to the customer record.
2.
Sale Order Reviews: Once a credit limit is established for the customer, there needs to a
process that ensures that the assigned credit limits and payment terms are not breached.
Credit checking functionality in Oracle Order Management offers an automated
framework to implement this control. This will be discussion in detail in the later part of
paper.
3.
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A system is as good as the parts that make them. It is important then to understand the building
blocks that make up an effective credit management model. This section of the paper lays out the
seven building blocks and discusses each of them in detail. The objective here is to provide
readers appreciation of the seven essentials for a good credit management system and how
Oracle Credit Management with its standard integration with Oracle Order Management, Oracle
Receivables & D&B toolkit help tie these blocks into a well integrated system.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
External Credit Data: Credit Data forms the base for credit assessments and both internal and
external data is required for an effective assessment. While internal is available within the
company, external data requires data integration with credit agencies. Oracle Credit Management
has a standard real-time integration with Dun & Bradstreet which helps download external data
in credit management application ***Note: This real time integration with D&B was temporarily
withdrawn in 11i due to issues with SSL certificates at the time of writing this whitepaper. It was restored
a few days later. You may check with Oracle on their guidance to use this integration. R12 customers will
require additional patch 7047848.
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Credit Analyst can also download data into Oracle using DNB Bulk Import process instead of
real time data download. It is to be ensured that this data is updated regularly to maintain the
integrity of the credit review process.
Tip: There may be other agencies that provide the credit data similar to D&B. This calls for a custom
integration with credit management so data can be downloaded into HZ_PARTY_INTERFACE,
HZ_FINANCIAL_REPORTS & HZ_CREDIT_RATINGS tables.
Internal Credit Data: Internal credit data is relevant for existing customer reviews and sales
order reviews. Past billing information and payment history is available in receivables system
and it is left to the implementation team on how best to use this data for credit analysis.
Tip: Collections information like Customer Account status, Customer (collections) score or collections
metrics like Weighted Average Days Delinquent or Weighted Average Day Late as appropriate can be
considered for Internal Data analysis.
Scoring Model: Implementation consultants could build scoring models that analyze key
external customer data along with internal data to help determine credit decisions. What data
points to be used and the weights to be assigned may depend on the nature of business and the
credit agency providing the external data. The following screenshot presents a snapshot of the
scoring components and weights that make up the VeriSign composite scoring model.
Tip: You may define Additional Data Points within the credit management application to display the above
data points on the case folder along with the Composite score. This will provide credit analyst with an
overview of the customer external and internal credit record and help submit credit recommendations based
on their credit analysis.
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Customer Credit Limits: While credit data forms the basis for analysis, credit decisions are
implemented using credit recommendations submitted by the credit analyst as part of each case
folder. Assignment of credit limit and payment term is one of key decisions of credit analysis.
Organizations may chose to maintain credit limits at customer account level or bill to level or
party level. Again, maintaining in one currency or multiple currencies is another complex
implementation decision.
Tip: There are issues around maintenance of credit limits at multiple levels (party, account or bill to) and
maintenance in multiple currencies for the same customer and it is suggested that credit limits are
maintained at one level (either customer account or bill-to) and in single currency only to keep the design
simple. Oracle has global exposure functionality that converts multiple currency exposure to the currency
of the credit limits at the time of credit checking.
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Payment Terms: Besides credit limit, payment term is another key determinant of customer
credit. Inappropriate payment term may result in customer getting better terms of credit than
deserved. Interestingly, Oracle Credit Management does not provide a mechanism to assign or
update customer payment terms as integral part of credit review process. It is therefore essential
that payment term determination and assignment is integral part of the new customer review
process even if this update can only be done manually. Besides, there needs to be control
mechanism that prevents payment terms from being overridden at the order/transaction level
without authorization. You may set your customer profile not to override payment terms. Tip:
Alternatively, you may also build this control into sales order credit checking process. This will be
discussed later in this section.
Credit Classification & Review Cycle: Customers will need to be classified in terms of their risk
profile and an appropriate review cycle assigned. Credit classification & Review cycle go hand in
hand as they form the basis for periodic credit reviews. Customer with a higher risk classification
may need to be reviewed more often than a customer with a low risk profile.
Tip: Though updates to credit classification and review cycle can be done by credit analyst from credit
management, Oracle update does not include the logic to update review cycle automatically if credit
classification changes. We at VeriSign built this logic as part of credit management workflow
customization wherein, customer classification is changed from moderate risk to high risk, the review cycle
changes from half-yearly review to quarterly review.
Tip: Credit Management keeps record of credit review dates Last Review Date & Next Review Date.
Credit Review Dates are stored in Customer Standard -> Profiles Tab -> Tools -> Credit Review Dates.
However only reviews generated by Periodic Review Program update the credit review dates on the
customer standard. You may consider customizing the credit management workflow (ARCMGTAP) to
include updates to review dates as appropriate.
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Sales Order Credit Checking: This is probably the biggest element of credit review process. Its
one thing to determine customer credit limit and have this assigned to customer account, whats
more important is to ensure that the credit limit and terms assigned at the account level are not
breached at the order/transaction level. Credit checking functionality in Oracle Order
Management offers a framework where sales order amounts are credit checked against customer
exposure. Orders will be placed on hold if they fail credit check and a case folder is generated
and routed to a credit analyst. Credit Analyst may release the order based on review or the order
may remain on hold and eventually cancelled by the order entry team.
Which brings us this question: what makes up customer exposure? Customer exposure needs to
include both OM & AR exposure. Besides, the amount of the order calling the credit check
process, it is recommended that OM exposure be set to include orders in credit check failure hold
and also any un-invoiced orders. AR exposure includes all open receivables balance. There are
other exposure calculation options (like inclusion of tax, shipping etc) available in the credit
check rule configuration but the above discussed elements need to be the bare bones of customer
exposure calculation.
Tip: The standard credit check rule only checks for customer exposure against assigned credit limits.
Interestingly, this may be not be comprehensive enough for a complete order review. You may want to
check if payment terms assigned to account were overridden and customer provided with a term not
beneficial to the company. You may want to check if the customer account has not been reviewed for a long
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time that even the assigned credit limit may not be reflective of current conditions. Or check if there is a
balance thats significantly aging but within the credit limit. VeriSign built credit check process to operate
on 4 criteria (standard + 3 custom) by customizing the standard credit check process.
Tip: You may want to consider how credit checking would work for subscription/service contract billing if
these contracts are entered as orders in Order management before they are created as contracts in Oracle
Service Contracts.
Tip: You may want to check if orders paid by credit cards are required to credit checked. If they need to be
exempt from credit checking since credit cards are already authorized, you may consider assigning these
orders with a credit card payment term which is switched off for credit check thus exempting the order from
credit checking against limits.
Tip: You may want to add an additional data point(s) on the case folder to display the % of credit limit
used. That would help credit analyst to calculate should-be credit limit if the order were to go through.
Besides the above, there are other questions like how do you route case folders to credit
analysts, how to do you set credit usage rules in a multi currency environment which
the implementation teams may need to consider. There are standard routing rules
within credit management which help case folder routing based on a number of
parameters. Credit usage rules work in the background to map the credit limit currency
to checklist currency.
Tip: Oracle has limitations on managing credit usage rules. The assignment rules work well for
single currency environment but you may require some custom extensions to make this work
seamlessly in multi currency environments.
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b.
c.
2.
3.
Account Days Past Due Highest Days Past Due of transactions on Customer
Account.
4.
Higher the collections score, the better the account is. Low score would mean a delinquent
account. An Account which is current gets a score of 100; Pre-Delinquent Accounts are given a
standard score of 90. A score < 90 denote a Delinquent Customer Account. Lower the score, more
severe the delinquency and higher the collection priority.
Delinquent Accounts are further sub-categorized into the following depending on the delinquent
amounts, days past due & number of delinquencies:
Delinquent (36-40)
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A standard VS Account Review work item is assigned by the system for all the above strategies.
A collector is required to review the account and based on review, select the appropriate action
ranging from sending a reminder letter or telephone follow up to sending demand notices.
Tip: Customer Scoring Engine will be set to run as a nightly process. Oracle Advanced Collections will
keep pushing work items to collectors until the delinquency is cured even if the collector already worked on
the some of the work items and customer is promised to pay. This may distort the collectors work item
queues. One workaround is to configure a few follow-up work items with Pre-wait period so that system
will wait for the timeframe set for that work item before populating a new work item.
Tip: You may automate Advanced Collections to send automatic confirmation of payments, promise to pay,
disputes, adjustments, and demand letters to customers. This will be recorded as part of customers
correspondence history in collections. Requires upgrade to IEX.H for existing 11i customers.
Pre-Delinquencies Key to DSO
Pre Delinquent transactions are not delinquent transactions but however needs early stage
collector review and a customer call given the high dollar amounts. At VeriSign, a Transaction is
considered Pre-Delinquent if the Transaction Amount > 25000 USD and Days since Creation is >
7 Days though within Due Date. Pre-Delinquent Transactions are identified by Oracle Collections
and a work item gets pushed to the collector prompting the collector to do one of the following
and close the work item
Call Customer to check if they have received the Invoice & if they are all set to
pay on the Due Date
Send Pre-Delinquency Dunning Letter
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Tip: Pre-Delinquencies are not defined by Oracle in any standard manner. Oracle Advanced Collections
provides flexibility to determine Pre-Delinquencies based on each organizations requirement. You will
need to create custom scoring components and some custom code to define pre-delinquencies befitting the
unique needs to your organization.
Other Highlights:
Besides above, there are other key features which have been implemented as part of Advanced
Collections application. This includes:
Enabling customer level key collections metrics like True DSO, Weighted Average Days
Paid, Average Days Late, and Weighted Average Days Late. These metrics provide
collection analyst a complete snapshot of the customer payment history while reviewing
the customer account. Tip: Configurable metrics may set to run real-time or as a daily update
mode. Daily update batch mode is recommended for better performance while accessing collections
form.
Process to record customer promises to pay coupled with the Oracle functionality of
recording broken promises if payments are not received within the promise dates.
Assignment of Work Items to collectors based on Alpha range and reassignment of work
items Tip: With 11i IEX.H, work Items assignment to collectors can be lot more simplified. One
can use the Collector field in customer standard form and once an appropriate collector is assigned
to the account, then advanced collections will ensure that strategy work items are assigned to the
collector on the customer account (Metalink Note: 314374.1)
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Implementation of Oracle Credit & Collections Suite led to better credit risk
management, collections efficiency as well as Productivity gains
Productivity Gains helped reallocation of resources towards dialing for dollars to help
collections & cash flows
Current & 1-30 Days Past Due Amounts as a % of Total Receivables increased
from 62% in 2004 to 86% in 2004
Bad Debt write off dropped by 60% from the levels in 2004
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Conclusion
There are several factors that contribute to a successful ERP implementation. Perhaps the most
important is the strength of the solution design and to-be process and how this process aligns
with organizational objectives. That is the substance of this case study.
Obviously, there is more technical stuff to Oracle credit and collections than thats discussed in
this paper. The authors have added Appendix A & Appendix B to address some of the technical
questions you may have and offer some thoughts on how to approach them.
Appendix A is a write-up on some of the frequently asked technical questions related to Oracle
Credit & Collections Suite. Though not elaborate, authors have tried to address some basic
questions and more information could be obtained from the Oracle implementation guides and
user manuals. Appendix B is a discussion on the technical integration between Oracle Advanced
Collections & XML Publisher and setups that are required to for this integration.
About the Authors:
Anil Madhireddy is a Sr. Business Analyst and the IT lead for Order to Cash business process at
VeriSign. He has a combined 10+ years of Accounting, Audit and Oracle Financials ERP
implementations experience.
Michael Puccinelli CCE is the Sr. Manager, Global Credit & Collections at VeriSign. He has 25+
years of experience in credit and collections and the architect behind the Credit & Collections
process at VeriSign as discussed in this paper.
Contributing Author:
Parth Agnihotri is a Senior Developer with VeriSign IT. He worked extensively on the Credit &
Collections implementation. He is the brain behind the Advanced Collections integration with
XML publisher and is the contributing author to Appendix B section of this document.
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2.
Check Lists
Scoring Model
Automation Rules
Credit Analyst Assignments
Additional Data Points
These configuration elements require detailed study and understanding before getting
started on implementation. One may refer to the relevant sections of the Credit
Management implementation and User Guides for details.
3.
4.
5.
How does Credit Card Authorizations tie into Credit Check Functionality? In other
words, if credit card orders are authorized in Order Management using iPayments, will
Order Management still perform standard credit check?
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If an order is being paid by a credit card and Oracle Order Management is configured to
perform online authorization for credit cards, you may decide not to perform standard
credit against such orders. You may then setup credit card specific payment terms to be
exempt from credit check. There is a check box on payment terms setup which could be
set to exempt from credit checking. You will need to associate all credit card orders with
this payment term.
6.
What is the functionality behind Additional Data Points? Why is this required?
Not all the data elements required for credit analysis are captured as part of standard
data points. This configuration provides flexibility to organizations to define additional
data points relevant to credit analysis. Optionally, you may include some additional data
points into your scoring model and configure automation rules to perform to force auto
submission of credit recommendations based on a score range.
7.
Are there options to automate setting of credit limits using credit management without
manual intervention?
Maintenance of credit profiles help defaulting of credit limits. You may zero base credit
limit (credit limit = 0) assignments based on credit limits or default a credit limit of say
10K for all customers. (Zero-base is preferred though). You may alternatively set
operating unit default credit limits. Additionally, you may configure automation rules to
auto assign credit limits based on a score.
8.
Are Credit Usage Rules required for Credit Management? What functionality does it
offer?
Credit Usage Rules configuration is mandatory. Credit Usage Rules determines what
currency transactions to be included in the calculation of data point values. Besides,
Credit Usage Rules need to be assigned to customer accounts in order to have credit
applications to create without manual touches. There is a lot of thought which need to go
into how you assign to customers either using on Operating Unit based profile or
customer profile classes. You may even consider customizing credit management
workflow (ARCMGTAP) to auto assign credit usage rules at the time of creating credit
applications in the event credit usage rules are not assigned to customers.
9.
How does the Periodic credit review process work? What setups are required for this?
Periodic Review Process works off the Periodic Credit Review Program. This concurrent
request is available under this Navigation Setup -> Credit Management > Submit a New
Request -> Single Request. Periodic Credit Review Program determines which customers
shall be selected for review and generates case folders for the customer accounts selected.
There are number of parameters to define the selection criteria. Most commonly used as
currency, credit classification, check lists and profile class. The Program is available in
three modes Report only, Generate Review or both. Generally this program is
scheduled for nightly run so that existing customer case folders are generated every
morning.
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10. What types of collections correspondences are available for automation with Advanced
Collections? What configuration is required for this integration to work?
Please refer to detailed discussion on Appendix B for answer.
11. How do strategy work items get routed to collectors?
Strategy work items could get routed to collectors in one of the two ways. You may use
territory management setups in CRM Administrator or use Collectors field on customer
standard to help system determine collector assignment to work item. Using Territory
management helps routing collectors by country, state or area code. There are number of
setups required if you use this option and generally maintenance heavy. Using Collector
Fields at the customer account or bill to level is simple and preferred option for assigning
collectors to work items. Once a collector is assigned to an account or bill to, system will
ensure that all new work items get assigned to the relevant collector.
12. When does a strategy work item close?
Strategy work item may be closed manually after the collector has worked on the work
item. If the delinquency is cured, the work item will close. If the underlying delinquency
is not cured (that is outstanding balance still exists), then the work item could return back
to collectors queue when the scoring and strategy engines run the next day. You may use
a follow-up work items with pre-set pre-wait times to prevent (temporarily) an already
worked work item from coming back to the queue until a follow-up date.
13. What standard collections metrics are available in Advanced Collections? Where does it
display? Does it run real time or batch mode?
Oracle Advanced Collections offers functionality to use pre-configured collections related
metrics. These metrics are available for use at whichever level you chose Customer,
Account or Bill To. Weighted Average Days Late, Average Days Late, True DSO, Annual
Sales, Credit Limit are some of useful metrics. Please refer to Advanced Collections
Implementation Guide for detailed listing of all metric and the formulae.
Metrics get displayed on the collections form Profile Tab. You will need to set this to
Active in Metrics tab using Collections HTML Administrator access. You can set it up
to run by Batch model or real time using Profile option: IEX: Metric Calculation Method.
Batch mode is preferred for better system performance.
14. Can I do credit card payments from Advanced Collections? How to enable this in
Advanced Collections? Can I do online/real time authorizations from Advanced
Collections?
Advanced Collections has standard integration with Oracle iPayments and has the ability
to process credit card payments. However, 11i customers need to on IEX.H Rollup Patch
4 (Patch # 5841737) to be able to do real time authorizations when collectors enter a
payment. Following profile options need to set for real time authorization to work: IEX:
Disable iPayment Processing, IEX: iPayment Payee ID, IEX: Enable Credit Card Payment,
IEX: On-Line Credit card Payment & IEX: Credit Card Payment Remittance
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are
broadly
a.
b.
two
types
of
correspondences
supported
by
this
functionality:
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Required Configuration:
Following are the basic technical setups needed to get the correspondence functionality working:
1.
2.
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Inside the custom Java Class, using Template Helper API PDF file is generated for sending as
attachment. While calling the addAttachment method to Attachment class any name can be given
for the attachment file.
PDF file is added to email message using SMTP_ATTACHMENT: Attachment property of
DeliveryRequest API. In the setDocument method for DeliveryRequest class, email body text
returned by one of Custom PLSQL procedure is passed as parameter. Email will have both
attachment and email body.
Any email subject can be passed to DeliveryRequest API using property SMTP_SUBJECT:String.
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