Profile management is essential to running your operations smoothly and efficiently and increasing cash flow. It is the process of gathering and maintaining customer and vendor master data. Maintaining master data means updating that information on a regular basis. Following are some reasons why you should regularly update customer and vendor master data.
Bounce Back Emails
Emails that bounce back waste your time and require additional follow up to research the problem. Whether the addressee is no longer employed by the customer or vendor, email address has changed or the company has closed, profile management can help you avoid wasted emails and the hassle of fixing them.
Incorrect Phone Numbers
Incorrect, changed or disconnected phone numbers, and the research needed to update them are a needless waste of your time. Regular maintenance of master data can help avoid this time burner.
Clean Data
Maintaining clean master data by regularly updating information keeps your operations running smoothly and efficiently. If master data is not clean it can lead to shipping errors, billing errors, disputes, unauthorized deductions, chargebacks and unhappy customers.
Your company’s adoption services should facilitate onboarding with clean data and regular updates. It will make your company easy to do business with and lead to good customer relationships.
Quicker Payments
Updating master data helps to accelerate collections and cash flow. It corrects the errors and stale data that can lead to operational foul ups, disputes and unauthorized deductions that delay payments and increase costs.
Self-Service Updates
The best way to maintain customer and vendor master data is to provide a self-service portal for account management and updates. You can try to maintain master data on an ad hoc basis by relying on customer notices and information from internal personnel and other sources, but it can be hit or miss. The result is that you learn about the need for an update after a problem has occurred, a dispute is filed or an unauthorized deduction occurs.
Customers and vendors want to be able to self-manage their accounts with your company. It will save you time and lead to increased customer satisfaction. It is a win-win situation.
Update Reminders
Whether you have a self-service portal or not, it is a good idea to email reminders to update profile information on a regular basis. Experience can be a guide as to how often you should send reminders. Some companies do it quarterly, others on an annual basis or anniversary. If you have a rapidly changing customer or vendor base you may want to send reminders more frequently.
Automated customer communications can help you maintain customer master data for quicker payment. Automated credit and collection solutions can help you achieve your cash flow goals.
Lockstep Collect, a leader in cloud-based credit and collection platforms, can help you collect cash in 4 ways:
- Cloud-based solutions
- Automated customer communications
- Customer self-service
- Collection Activity Management
Lockstep Collect is an experienced software partner that can help you maximize your collections and cash flow in the new normal.
If you would like to learn more about how you can benefit from automated credit and collection solutions, please contact Lockstep Collect at www.lockstep.io.
