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Vodafone Mobile Services Ltd, Highly Commended, Best AR Solution

Published: Jan 2018

 

Photo of Ashutosh Kumar, Standard Chartered and Chintan Parikh, Vodafone Mobile Services Ltd.

 

Vodafone has implemented a virtual account-based auto-receipt generation process via near real-time reports received using an SFTP channel into the billing system. This has enabled Vodafone to significantly streamline its order-to-cash process, reduce manual efforts/handoffs in the application of receipts. The treasury and collections team now have complete visibility of collections, mapping directly into Vodafone’s billing system.

Vodafone India multi-functional team

Vodafone India is a provider of telecommunications services in India with its operational head office in Mumbai. Vodafone India has a market share of 18.42% with approximately 200m+ subscribers and is the second largest mobile telecommunications network nationally.

in partnership with

Improved reconciliation for a better customer experience

The challenge

Vodafone India’s business is spread across 23 different circles across India and involves complex physical and electronic collections. However, Vodafone has a technology-driven culture to devise solutions for its customers. As a result, the treasury team wanted to automate all electronic collections, which would result in automating cash allocation and application directly into the billing system, thereby reconciling receipts with the outstanding orders which will eventually lead to the faster release of services to its customers.

Given that Vodafone was receiving intra-day statements for reconciling receipts; it was important to identify the remitter, match it to the existing distributors and finally post the receipts into its billing system which would then result in quicker invoicing and ultimately successful delivery of goods and services to the distributor.

The solution

One of the critical objectives of the AR reconciliation solution was to ensure faster application of cash received to its logical purpose, thereby ensuring faster sales invoicing and seamless delivery of goods and services. From a treasury perspective, the team went through a rigorous in-house process of selecting banks/partners who could help them do this without changing too many processes internally.

In today’s world of digitisation and fast paced technological innovations, we should keep pace with technology-driven culture to get strong-rooted and future-ready. Keeping the customer centric approach and devising user-friendly solutions for customers is the key rule of success and growth. And technology and automation can be strong tools to achieve this.

To do this, Vodafone, working with Standard Chartered, implemented a virtual account-based auto-receipt generation process via near real-time reports received using an SFTP channel into the billing system. This has enabled Vodafone to significantly streamline its order to cash process, reduce manual efforts/handoffs in the application of receipts. The treasury and collections team now have complete visibility of collections, mapping directly into Vodafone’s billing system.

While treasury was facilitating the change process, it was the collections, IT and controls teams who worked diligently to ensure a robust process change in the reconciliation of receipts from distributors. This activity of application of receipt which could have taken anywhere between four to six hours is now completed in less than 30 minutes.

Best practice and innovation

Vodafone has harnessed its technology-centric culture and is in the process of driving higher sales by delivering goods and services near real-time from the time of receipt of cash. With the setting up of an automated generation of all receipts directly into Vodafone’s billing system, the collections team have a much higher visibility of cash, leading to faster invoicing and release of goods ordered.

The company will not only be able to generate receipts near real-time but has also built a monitoring mechanism for the delivery of files, which adds additional controls. The entire system is robust, scalable and will act as a building block for future developments.

Key benefits

  • Automated receipt application with a significant reduction in errors due to complete removal of manual intervention. Teams now focus more on exceptions and faster invoicing than the reconciliation of receipts.
  • Near real-time realisation of receipts to distributors account in the billing system, thereby augmenting faster invoicing and delivery of talktime.
  • Tight integration with Standard Chartered directly in the core billing system ensures near real-time updates.
  • All electronic payment mode supported for receipt and realisation – another big step in the digitisation of the reconciliation process.
  • Speed to market by crunching the receipt generation timelines.
  • Achieving robust control and risk coverage with a simplified process, automated interface and removal of errors.

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