Heather King
All right. All right. All right. All right, if everyone can please take your seats because we are going to keep this train running with our next session of the day, everybody, we’re gonna have a poll that starts this one. So make sure you know how to use that Whova app that we love so much. And if you have questions, awesome, if you don’t, we’ll be fine. But we love questions. So make sure you jot down what you’re thinking and that you’re not shy to answer in that microphone. Alrighty, so I’m going to introduce our next session. Planning. Sorry, your questions were answered. So if you don’t have any questions, this is going to go pretty fast planning and executing multi-million dollar deductions automation projects, with our two speakers, Roger Anderson, he’s the Senior Solutions Consultant at Optimize Receivables. He has 15 plus years of experience in the deduction space serving many roles throughout. So this includes being a deductions analyst, a supervisor support services, post audits, Project business analyst, Solutions Consultant and HighRadius administrator. And if you were here for our very first sessions of the day, you will remember Ganadeep Rey Patlolla is the Director of Finance transformation at HighRadius. expertise includes implementing business systems and improving operational processes, utilizing a mix of industry-changing tools, technologies, and statistics. So let’s give our duo a round of applause.
Roger Anderson
Well, thank you, everybody, as you can this, hopefully, this presentation will kind of lead into all the conversation earlier from AJ on the staples Kellogg’s team and I think even the previous one will hopefully tie some of that altogether a little bit. As you said, I have 15 years of experience in the deduction space primarily. I work for a company that was one of the earlier adopters of the HighRadius deductions module. And I also now have been a consultant for the last three years, actually four years now. So I have a lot of knowledge with how to radius especially, especially in the deduction space. One of the things we’ll be talking about today is, why is it required? How to plan for that project? And when I have some frequently asked questions, what we’re gonna do for a lot of this presentation is gonna be a short presentation, we’re gonna ask for a lot more feedback from the audience compared to probably the last few. So it’ll be more of an effort to be as much as interactive as possible. And don’t be afraid to ask questions. If I can answer it now or guide you, you can answer now. We’ll follow up later and see if we can come up with your answer. So why should you have your item, your deductions process automated, the Kellogg’s team kind of touched on it quite a bit, actually, it saves a lot of time, you have a production manager, which they said in their presentation as they have now over 60,000 customers, which is a lot of deductions coming in, and $65 million balance, that is a huge huge reduction ballot. If you don’t have the right system in place for the processes, you’re going to drown quickly. Of course, you’re going to have to have that resource versus ROI, you may not have the right resources to cover what you need to. And then finally, just to create efficiencies in the process and the staff, like everybody said prior, if you don’t have the right buy-in from the staff, any project is probably doomed to fail.
So the first poll question is Do you agree that automated deductions is an important focus for your organization? And when I first looked prior to this, there’s quite a few that said yes, which is a good sign. Because what we find, especially in the AR world, the deductions kind of get lost in the big picture unless you’re working in the actual space yourself. This is unfortunate, because like Kellogg’s team said, it does eat up a lot of your cash.
Heather King
Well, you have the majority who did say yes. So you have about Gosh, three quarters said yes. 25 out of 40 or so we have 27? Who said yes. Eight who said no and four who said maybe they just cannot decide?
Roger Anderson
Okay. So maybe the question at this point for the ADA said, No. Why do you think it’s not important to automate the deduction space? Maybe we don’t have to answer now, we can maybe follow up after this too. But I’m kind of curious as to why. Or maybe it’s just that your organization doesn’t deal with a lot of deductions that could be a key driver, but kind of curious in that situation. So probably the key to planning that successful project, of course, is knowing what your system can do now and what your processes currently are. AJ touched on quite a bit, where I know what your processes are, and maybe try to fine-tune them before you get to this point. We don’t want to try to force your process into HighRadius. You kind of want to try to get it to a point where your system and your process kind of mirror up together and that may be built off that, as he said earlier, he tried to force your process in, you’re going to have a lot of frustrated analysts that are just going to get this point in the system and what they what the expectations were that they’re hoping to get out of it. Identify what you’re going to do, what your scope of the project is, you’re gonna include Cash App Deductions, Eipp, credit, collections, are you just gonna focus on one piece of that module? Of course, looks for the available solutions. Maybe there’s just not HighRadius could be other solutions out there. But also, what are you using internally to get away from the spreadsheets as much as possible. And of course, get your customer requirements clearly identified. This could be pretty key. One thing we’ve learned over the years is, if you think it’s a minor requirement, don’t forget about it. Because sometimes those minor requirements can come back and bite you at the end when you don’t realize that you had that requirement. Now you move into deployment, you’ve already done all your planning, you get already built. Now, here’s where the fun begins. Part of this deployment, which we’ve learned quite a bit over, is test, test, test everything possible. Don’t think of potentially any scenario that could come out of this, we’re working with a client right now implementing the collection space that we’ve identified over probably 300 testimonials so far. And that’s just for the collections and credit, we’re also doing the invoice tracking. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna try to test potentially every potential scenario that we could think of. When you’re doing this, make sure to include your key teams. I think the last presentation I talked about, you sometimes forget about the group in there. For any project, make sure you try to get the key business stakeholders involved. As soon as you can in the process, even during the build process. The client we’re working with right now again, has the business owners they have IT involved they have, they have their testing team involved, they have pretty much anybody’s going to be doing any part of this implementation involved in the project at the very get-go as part of the design, so that way, they can identify quickly then, especially from IT perspective, as a business owner wants it, but then it can step in and say wait, you know, we got to do this, this and this, to get that to you, and how to get that resource. And of course, now you go live after you go live, nothing truly ends, how a few have touched on already, where it may not go perfect. You have to plan for that. Or like the Kellogg’s team said they went live right when COVID started and have, of course, everything has to be remote. So that may be more challenging. Also, don’t forget that you have to have your training in place, and maybe have your team trained already. And then just make sure they understand how to use the solution. So now we get into the right,
Answer,
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
Roger and I will like to do some q&a. And this is where we would like to make it interactive with the audience here. Roger, so you and I have been working for a long time on top of your key accounts, and how to improve deductions, adoption, process improvement, all of those things. So if you don’t mind grabbing the clicker. Let’s use that.
So I think, coming from an industry expert, where you have been doing reductions management for a long time, how do you guide your accounts, your customers to kind of pick the right solution? It could be you know, technology embedded, you know, SAAS on-prem, it could be anything, but how do you kind of guide your accounts to pick the right solution?
Roger Anderson
So your question. So basically, how we approach it is, what can that solution do for you? Is it going to support what you do now? Is it going to be able to grow with you as you grow? Is it going to be to help you out with your own internal processes and maybe help identify you? What you can do for yourself. Yeah,
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
so kind of another follow up to that one. How do you help your accounts keep upright? A solution built today may not be relevant or needs to be updated again in a few months or a few years? How is that continuous improvement process? How do you make that a part of their core culture? How do you kind of bring in some practices into those elements there?
Roger Anderson
So what are we what I’ve done in the past, especially from when I used to work at this administrator for the greatest program is depending on who the solution is, is making sure they keep you in front of any new releases or updates and then having somebody key in your group or your company that’s paying attention to those releases as they come out. Because those releases could be key to what’s being optimized like HighRadius has a monthly release. I think everything is the third weekend. So I would look, I would look at those releases and see, okay, what’s new? What’s gonna be forced into the system? Or what’s gonna be a line extension? If that line extension? What value is going to bring to my team? Could I take advantage of it? It could benefit my team, or is it just going to be okay x more solution or HighRadius what that solution is going to be? And how it’s going to improve my life.
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
Okay, so moving on to the next question. This is a common question, right? When you are going to implement, what are the best practices? When you bring in the solution you’ve identified? HighRadius is the solution. Consulting teams come in, do the things from a business perspective, business process perspective, what are the implementation, things that the team would need to know best practices, but can you guide them through?
Roger Anderson
First off, I will make sure you document your requirements in detail. No, no requirements, minute or minor? What we find is we’ve worked with a client that we’ve identified, they came up with like 20, or 30, requirements we got done. And we come back with 200 requirements that they should think about, which is quite a bit, but it was a lot of minor details that they didn’t think about twice, they just thought about, here’s the big picture. But maybe there are little pieces that they maybe didn’t even know about the product or even their own process. That’s where we worked in this space before. We’re able to help that client go Okay, wait, have you thought about this, this or this? Or have you thought about doing this? Are we good? Did you know the product can do this? So that’s where we come in, where we not just know the process. We also know the HighRadius product. So we can kind of bridge that gap between there and say, Hey, HighRadius can do this or can’t? Or have you thought about, you know, this tool here? What more can we do with it?
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
So to kind of follow up on this and add it to another layer of common question is who should own? Who should own the implementation, you know, it business, HighRadius, or kind of like, what’s your take on it? What’s the suggestion that you would make on the ownership of the implementation of a process-driven SAS product,
Roger Anderson
I would identify a key project manager who can bring everybody together, we’ve been involved in projects where they may have forgotten about a piece of it, and then realize that this file format has to be this way or that way, or no, we have to pull up from here. So it’s going to take a little bit more effort. So that we have to identify key somebody in that in your organization, or maybe that in your organization that can help bring all these pieces together and go, Katie, somebody from the business owner from the production space, or from the Cash App space, or from the credit space. And I also need my T group, because they have to tell me, you know, I have to get those files from that team. So if I don’t have them on board sooner, you’re going to delay the project even more. And the potential is really meant to look at a third party because maybe you don’t have the resources internally, or you just don’t have the bandwidth to support that project. Even after the project’s done, you still need somebody to kind of keep the project your system going and be optimized as much as possible. What I found personally, is for some of the people that we worked with, they didn’t have somebody in there, like that administrative system. So the system broke, who do you reach out to your who’s your contact between you and HighRadius or your solution. Or somebody can maybe know the system in an all a bit more kind of keeps contact with everybody internally to and say, Hey, let’s do this, this and this, and quickly make updates to the system as they see implementation come in. So that’s where potentially might have had that resource internally again, but maybe somebody outside the system that can help either guide you or kind of help be that resource for you, manage system for you, on your behalf.
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
It’s more of a technical question. How do you help build the integration between HighRadius and the ERP? Kind of maybe you might have touched on a previous question if you want to elaborate more on this.
Roger Anderson
So the technical know-how is basically knowing not only your internal systems, what your ERP is, can do what they’re doing now? What solution are you using now, but what can HighRadius do for you also? So having that product knowledge is beneficial? One thing to think about when you’re if you’re just starting out with her radius is making sure or any solutions, making sure Do you truly understand what their product is going to give to you, as HighRadius, communicate that back to say, Hey, we got this great, nice, shiny new toy, here’s what’s going to do for you. But make sure you ask the right questions at the HighRadius and say, Hey, what about this? Or can you give me more details? It may be tough at the very beginning because you know, they’re gonna have just the basic slides that they have. Well, they might not be, you know, detailed enough for you but at least ask the right questions. Don’t say, hey, I need to do this. And they probably do it. If they say yeah, we can do it. Maybe challenge just make sure Kay Do you know of any, any of your clients that do the same process in that same moment? Yeah.
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
Okay. Moving on to the next question, how do you evaluate the vendors? How do you also evaluate consulting partners for our customers?
Roger Anderson
So as I spoke to earlier for your vendor is basically can they grow with you? What do they have out there for product solutions now? Are they going to be able to assist you, or they’re just going to say, here’s a product, here’s the solution, just dump it on you. And from there, it’s, you never hear what they want from them again. As for a partner, that’s where the key might come in, as you might think of, you’re thinking to yourself, Okay, I’m paying HighRadius on paying my group, why should I bring in a third party that can pay again, that kind of help? That third party could be kinda like your goal between HighRadius and your solution? And you? Because I’ve been involved in a project where we’re part of design. The business owner asked the question, what they wanted for the requirement, the consultant HighRadius heard the requirement. But you can visually see from my perspective, as a singer, who’s watching their interaction, the client was saying one thing, HighRadius is hearing one thing, they’re saying one thing, but you can see that really, they weren’t, they weren’t, they weren’t on the same page, there was a gap. So you can always see that there’s going to be a gap at the end of the day. So that’s where the third party at the end, especially now, the processor in your system, is bridging that gap between you and that in HighRadius.
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
Thank you, we can open the floor for more questions now.
Heather King<.b>
All right. Does anybody have any questions for Ganadeep, Roger? Oh, boy. I know there’s a break coming. But you know, any questions First, we don’t always get everybody up there to be able to answer them. Yep.
Audience1
So you were talking about pre-deployment, and doing extensive testing, from a partnership? From the business, IT side on, you know, our side versus, you know, the HighRadius side? Do you guys come in with preset scripts? Because we talk about the differences in deductions, the basis is the same across the board for most businesses. So do you have those preset scripts? Or are we building them at that moment? And then from a training standpoint, how involved is HighRadius in the actual implementation and delivery of training to the end-users? Right, you want to?
Roger Anderson
So I’ll answer the part from the consultant piece, what we’ve done as a consultant, we’ve actually built the test scenarios and test cases and actual steps ourselves, based on what we learned through the design and the build, and the pre-build and kind of okay, here are what we’re how it’s being built. Now let’s build a test scenario to match that requirement. And how are we going to identify it? So most testers can be even tested out? Do the buttons work properly? You know, as all the buttons know, it says we’re going to do this, but does it really truly do this? Or is it even in that system? Like it should be? From a HighRadius perspective?
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
Yep, we do extensive testing, too. But it’s kind of like in phases, we do a system integration testing, user testing, and all of those features and also, extensive testing on enhancements, right? We do internal testing for standard code bases. But when you have an enhancement, or we have customization that’s tested extensively. Upgrades
It’s only 48 hours.
So to kind of add to most of those things, the multiple leases, we have two kinds of leases once we recall as your four-six upgrades, which are product and upgrades like if he has like core features that we’re adding, which are the low impact that all users or all accounts can utilize, like let’s say loading, speed has been improved in the back end, or pagination is improved. Those would be the extensions that we will be focusing on all accounts, those no actions required from the accounts, then you’ll be having these extend these line extensions, which are features that we would want our accounts to review and, and if they deem appropriate, we will want them to request them to be installed. So basically, you know, we don’t want to install something that will be something that you haven’t either asked, or you don’t think it’s appropriate. So that will be the difference.
Roger Anderson
And spirit follows up on your training question. Part of that question, too. As a consultant will help if, if, if it’s needed, we’ll help build the training documents, maybe lead the training sessions, be there even have to go live to kind of lead your team of okay, here’s how to do this process, and here’s how to use HighRadius and kind of take some of That off if you don’t have a dedicated training team internally that can help do that for you.
Audience 2
In that same space do you have found success at all in putting the additional onus onto the client except writing their own acceptance criteria, or additional testing for their groups as well? Is that part of your standard practice?
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
So I think the question if I understood, right, is the onus on testing? So I’ll give it an answer. And then Roger can answer, we always feel like the business knows. The use cases that we are building, the business knows that in and out from technology providers, hospital providers, we may be not knowing the nuances. So it’s always essential that the business comes back to this truly in-depth testing of all possible variations to the business cases. So, unfortunately, yes, the onus has to be on because they will be the end-users, right, the end-users will have to be able to break the system, for the consulting team to go back in and fix it and have success on day one.
Roger Anderson
And one thing to think about to have that testing phase is not just HighRadius, or maybe a third party helping you out but maybe identifying people on your team that could become your subject matter experts, they start learning a system, we’re headed with Andrew, hey, while you might identify stuff that may be even during his annual oops, we forgot about this process, what are we going to do? Or how are we going to account for that. So you don’t have to have your whole team of all maybe have a few key people that you’ve trust, that are going to be the ones that are going to say, We love this system, we’re going to push it forward, and are going to be the ones that your team goes and says, Hey, how do we do this, they become your internal, your internal, I don’t know how to say it a
centre of excellence or
Yeah, it’s kind of like your collaborators.
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
And I think one more call out, I would call these elders. When we’re doing design sessions. We know your process, we know the impact areas. But then once we go live, then we realize, Aha, there is a downstream impact to another third party system or somebody is using a report that you didn’t know about that is going to get changed or no longer being used. So all of these like real-world situations that then get caught upfront, we would want the users to be able to like put themselves and Day in a life situation and maybe even do an extended user base testing, right? You do the main highways testing, and then you will go into your backend ERP system, or complete the entire lifecycle. Till it’s closed.
Audience 3
Yeah, I’m just a question in the CPG. Industry. In theory, a valid trade should be touchless. But what we see in our company is a lot, there’s a lot of manual interventions. And I’m just curious to see and from your experience using HighRadius as a deduction module, where have you seen trade to be pretty much automated. And if that’s even possible,
Roger Anderson
Kellogg’s touched on a little bit, especially in your trade space, for a period, if you have a Kroger account, and you have the claim agent built for Kroger, they’re going to pull a lot of that claim document with it, but they’re also going to pull a lot of the key attributes of that document, it’s going to pull out the promotion dates, the deal ID prices per unit that you’re going to take Okay, now I see those attributes that your traces from then have it, you migrate that in, you bring that awesome HighRadius, and then what you can do then they can build a resolution process and I can use this attribute from the Kroger claim, match up with what my trade systems say, Okay, now this is a match-match. And that’s where if you’re confident with what the results are that say, like Kroger where it gives you all the rich attributes, you could pretty close, closely automate, automate that one. If you have a customer that doesn’t give you a lot of details, yeah, you’re not gonna be an automate that when you start to have a lot of manual intervention, but your big companies like your Kroger, your target, they provide some they provide dealer information, some item information, plaque you’d like to your bigger accounts are going to have those attributes available to you to do a lot of that auto resolution, especially in a trade space.
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
I always joke that all the accounts have the same problem with Kroger, everybody with Kroger, Amazon, Walmart, they all have the same problems, right? We all need to form like a Kroger anonymous support group. Because the same LaMonte portal, the same deal ID the same claim concerns. Everybody does the same thing slightly differently. Every company doesn’t do the directions process identical. But if the end goal is the same, you want to minimize touchpoints. All the bots will support it and it also depends upon what are your backend processes outside of the core hybrid system? TPM system or other ERP systems? How do they all play in concert? Are they in harmony, not able to talk to each other properly? Sometimes it takes a few months for us to really stabilize all of these things. It doesn’t happen on day one, unfortunately, sometimes, but that country’s improvement culture comes from, you know, a much higher level of leadership driving those downstream.
Roger Anderson
Yeah, cuz I have a client that we work with right now. That’s, that’s an automated Kroger. They’ve got to the point now where they don’t even look at the Kroger, at least trade-related deductions that come in the system or identify attributes that we’ve identified as what we want to use, it finds it in a trading system. And it’s gone that same day. So as soon as that deduction hits, it’s out the door, it’s gonna sit for that long. So they’ve built enough confidence in that process now that they don’t even think twice about it anymore, especially for Kroger.
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
Now, it shouldn’t matter.
Heather King
Alright, we have time for one more question. Good question so far. Anyone want to take the left? Oh, Okey dokey.
Audience 4
So this is more of a HighRadius question, wondering if you have a user’s group with this knowledge base that you have from over 700 customers across various industries and processes where you can put your different clients together to tap into that knowledge base? Because maybe the project manager doesn’t have all the answers, the company doesn’t have all the answers. You may be working with a consultant, you may not just be trying to help that process.
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
Good point, I think we should head there, we’ll take that
Heather King
I can answer that question. We’re actually building that right now. So we are in the process of putting something like that together. I’m not gonna say it’s gonna happen tomorrow. It is a big project. And we’re building a team around it. But that is on the docket for within the next year or less. We want it as soon as possible, but we want to do it right. But it is on the docket to put that together. Yes.
And just so yeah,
Roger Anderson
Just so you’re all aware, too, that as our consulting company also has a kind of sharing network that we’re starting to launch also, kind of not industry-specific to HighRadius, but more and more around the Deduction space. So it’s not just gonna be focused on this HighRadius. It’s around processes, too. And some feedback there.
Ganadeep Rey Patlolla
Okay. Heather, we have a success story to share. If you have a couple of minutes. We’ll wrap up real quickly. Yep. So
Roger Anderson
Alright. So one of the clients that I’ve been talking about is basically already a Cash App. They worked with our owner and their cash app application implementation project. They then brought us back and said, Okay, now let’s add the deductions module and the claims module to that space. So we help them with that. So basically, using they brought us on is they didn’t have, they didn’t have other resources, biggest thing that they learned what from the Cash App project is that they felt comfortable enough in, hey, we need this third party resources, hey, can you help bring us in, that’s where the bridging the gap came in. There was one party saying one thing, another one’s hearing this, but they’re really not coming to the same conclusion. Now, today, we’re working with that client, again, to help implement the credit and collection space. So we’re getting our feet wet. And so that space now, which we’ve never touched really yet, another one that guy deeper bolts are working on right now is they implemented HighRadius a year ago, the Cash App and deductions, but they also are upgrading their ERPs. So they’re doing a double-edged sword. So now they’re a year into it, they found that there’s still some gaps in HighRadius that we’ve kind of helped identify that they may not have been aware of that there are certain attributes that they could have turned on, or didn’t know that this exists or that existed. And we’re kind of also helping them through their ERP transition as much as possible to kind of identify, hey, there’s something more going on here. And also to add, start putting more reason code on their cash app process. So when it comes in as an induction, they’re quickly easy, more easily identifiable to say, Hey, this is what this deduction for. Right? Alright. Any other questions after this, feel free to reach out to me. I’ll be walking around or sitting around here yet. So thank you.
