Charles Plasse co-founder of CashNowSaaS* solution for managing customer financial relations and spreading the cash culture. He tells Cashlab his entrepreneurial story and shares his cash vision with us.
* Software As A Service
Charles, who are you?
“Let's just say I'm a fervent promoter of Cash culture in the workplace!
After studying in business and finance, I was immediately attracted to the operational side of business. I wanted to build my career by combining finance and operations, and if possible in a wide range of situations and business sectors. So naturally I joined a consulting firm specializing in the management and optimization of Working Capital Requirements (WCR).
I stayed there for 10 years, an enriching experience both on a human level and in terms of the skills I acquired.”
How did you come up with the idea of creating CashNow?
“It's simply the continuation of 10 years of contact with my customers and their cash management issues. WCR is simply the translation of decisions taken in the field. However, we now realize that the involvement and responsibility of operational staff is still low, mainly due to a lack of tools and information.
Financial customer relationship management is still not structured enough in companies, given the financial stakes involved. This process is still the poor relation in terms of tools. This is particularly true of sales management, cash management, accounting and inventory management.
The idea of creating CashNow stemmed from this observation.”
Entrepreneurship is a risk. What are the success factors of your project?
“Yes, it's a risk... but a calculated risk! The worst thing is not to take a risk, not to try. Personally, I'd rather have remorse than regret.
In the 1stères years of a project, 80% of the chances of success lie in the quality of the team and its ability to execute. Complementary profiles are important, as is the team's ability to challenge itself. For CashNow, it's the meeting of business and technical profiles.
Next comes the product. This must have a clear value proposition that is easily perceived by the customer. For us, it's the promise of significantly reducing the customer's financial exposure via a technological solution and a collaborative approach.”
Are you talking about customer financial relationship management and exposure? What are these?
“These terms are often used, but I realize that they are still rather vague for many people...
The customer financial relationship covers all the financial elements of the commercial relationship:
- contractual terms: prices, payment terms, payment methods, discounts and rebates, credit granted
- unbilled items: orders, services and products delivered or in production
- the invoiced: invoices, credit notes, disputes, delays
Each of these components has its own optimization levers. So,customer financial exposure (which reflects overall risk) includes unbilled and billed items.
Companies still tend to view the financial customer relationship mainly in terms of the billed component, which is reductive. There are significant levers on the unbilled part.”
Tell us about CashNow
We are a business software publisher, specializing exclusively in the customer cycle. We offer our customers a SaaS platform, enabling operational and financial staff to take action to reduce trade receivables.
Our aim is simple: to help our users reduce working capital, speed up invoicing, and reduce delays and disputes.
We generally see 25 to 50% productivity gains and 5 to 8 days of WIP reduction: this is a considerable challenge for companies. Our solution concentrates all customer cycle information. Whether from the internal ERP sales management/accounting system, the CRM or external information sources (factor, credit insurance, commercial information).
CashNow features
“We offer operational and expert functionalities for each stage of the customer cycle:
- For operational staff: better customer knowledge, faster invoicing processes, sharing of upstream and downstream information, actions in the field, empowerment on contractual aspects, best practices,
- For finance and credit management: prevention, collection, dispute management, risk management through productivity features that let you concentrate on high value-added tasks,
- And for management: reporting and steering."
Aren't accounting ERPs your competitors?
“Far from it! We complement each other and don't do the same thing.
Of course, most ERP systems offer the possibility of consulting an aged trial balance and sending “standard” dunning letters. But this is incidental: these tools are first and foremost accounting information systems. For our part, we are a pure player. customer financial management. We offer functionalities that improve productivity by 25-50%, leverage cash actions and positively energize the organization.
Our main competitor is Excel, so you can imagine the level of productivity. There's still plenty of room for improvement...”.
Tell us about your customers? What's in it for them?
“We are finding that certain business sectors are more receptive to our value proposition: notably BtoB distribution and service activities.
Prenons deux exemples clients :
- One of the leading distributors of orthopaedic equipment
- And that of a key player in IT infrastructures."
For the first one:
We brought :
- Increase the number of reminders sent out to 15,000 customers, boosting collection agent productivity by 50%. Each customer goes through the credit management filter at least twice a month,
- The division by 2 of the due rate in 3 months, brought back from30 to 15%,
- The involvement of sales administration, i.e. 10 additional points of contact in inbound call format,
- A structuring of the process around good practices allowing the sharing and dissemination of customer information.
For the second:
We brought :
- Real-time dissemination and sharing of customer information across 12 agencies, providing a 360° view of customer exposure (unbilled, billed),
- Professionalization of actions on the invoiced: recovery scenario, definition and timing of tasks, prioritization of actions for 23 users. Allowing to generate 25% additional productivity and a reduction of 3 to 5 days in equivalent turnover including tax,
- Acceleration of invoicing, particularly by involving sales representatives and regional managers (80 users). Systematic review of ongoing projects, progress reports, mission production, and invoicing stages. The impact is a reduction of 2 to 3 days in equivalent turnover including tax.
What is the place of innovation in your organization?
CashNow is an innovative tool in its approach and features: innovation is an important element of our value proposition. We dedicate between 15 and 20% of our turnover to the development of new functionalities in order to always bring more productivity to our customers.
What are your tips, your good cash recipes?
“My advices:
- Aligning the right motivations, the right people, the right practices will allow the tool to multiply your actions tenfold.
- First measure your performance, set up indicators. To know your temperature and treat yourself, it is better to use a thermometer!
- « Think globally, Act locally » : keep the levers as close as possible to the customer, animate locally and globally
- Empower the levels, explain things, know how to reward (bonuses) and celebrate successes
Andalign everyone's objectives and expectations: a salesperson will not necessarily have the same perception as the financial person."
Closely monitor your cash flow in a clear and optimised manner with our Cashlab tool.