Photo of Burc Ulusu, Credit Control & Contract Supervisor and Dilan Narin, Business Controller.

Three solutions in one deliver working capital improvements for Atlas Copco in Turkey

The challenge

Atlas Copco has been operating in Turkey since 1950 to help its customers to increase efficiency with sustainable productivity solutions. Its products are sold to the ultimate customer via the following channels: distributors, direct sales and indent sales.

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The company wanted to guarantee timely collections, enhance visibility and control, improve efficiency and establish real-time information reporting capability.

The solution

The company started using a credit card acquiring solution provided by a pioneering supply chain management and financing portal for both small and medium enterprises (SMEs) based in Turkey. The platform provides for multiple banking collection methods and aids SMEs and large corporations by shortening the cash cycle for sellers and lengthening for buyers.

Best practice and innovation

“We were working with only one bank and before making sales, we asked our customers to pay up-front which was a limitation on our potential sales,” says Dilan Narin, Business Controller.

Citi has been the company’s main banking partner in Turkey and during 2020, the bank and Octet partnership started three B2B solutions, which are now offered on the Octet platform: credit card acquiring, multibank direct debiting and request to pay.

Working with several banks for credit card acquiring, collections made via credit cards was not a feasible solution for Atlas Copco. With this credit card collection method, the company can offer terms and collect securely from its customers without asking them to pay up-front. From an implementation perspective, with the involvement of IT, sales, strategic partnership and business development departments, it took just two months to get the system up and running, including the negotiation of the documentation, system testing and integration. “We can make the collections via credit cards from eight banks in total via the Octet portal without integrating with each bank individually,” explains Narin.

Atlas Copco has been able to achieve its desired goals of consolidation, enhanced visibility, efficiency and real-time reporting.

Key benefits

• Days sales outstanding (DSO) was reduced by 20%.
• Visibility and control improved by 80%.
• One-stop shop delivered.
• Increase in sales volumes.
• FTE savings by 30%.

Atlas Copco has set very high goals and aspirations.

“We all live in a challenging and demanding world, having robust and efficient systems and processes play an important role in our success. With Octet’s unique value add proposition, we can consolidate banking partners, increase efficiency, gain visibility and insight and last, but not least, we have improved our working capital,” explains Narin.

The company now has a single digital solution, helping to achieve all its desired goals.

There are markets in which the company operates which use credit card payments as their preferred payment method and the company can now reach out to them with an efficient payment offering for its customers. Also, internally there was a lot of manual intervention to receive payments from classic point of sales (POS) processes when the company had to extract money via credit cards. This has been removed.

This solution has supported the company to increase business volumes and supports its current customers with extra offerings to create efficiency in their operations.

The Adam Smith Awards is the industry benchmark for best practice and innovation in corporate treasury. The 2021 Awards attracted a record-breaking 309 nominations spanning 40 countries. To find out more please visit: treasurytoday.com/adam-smith-awards.