Upgrading Claims Processing Efficiency And Customer Experience With Cloud Solutions

A colossal supplier of sausages, Johnsonville was founded in 1945. With award-winning product lines including brats, Italian, smoked, breakfast, and snack, Johnsonville’s sausages are sold in 40 countries worldwide. Johnsonville is headquartered in Wisconsin, United States, and has a revenue of $2 billion. The company is the largest American sausage company and is known for its high-quality products. Johnsonville has a significant presence in the food and beverage industry and is committed to improving its operational processes to enhance productivity and customer satisfaction.

Johnsonville wanted to be the best at what they do and identified some focus areas with scope for improvement in their order to cash processes. One area of focus for them was managing their deductions as they realized the highly disruptive impact of poor deductions management on their balance sheet.\n\nDisintegrated Order-to-Cash Systems\nOnce claim documents came in regarding short payments made, deduction teams began their manual research to find the reason behind the dispute. Other internal teams, however, had no visibility into the reason for short payments. While it was already challenging for the deductions team to handle disputes given all the backup data procurement, it also further led to the cash application teams’ inability to apply cash. Thus, the invoice remained open despite payments being received and this led the collector to make customer calls requesting payment from customers who had already paid. The siloed systems thus caused challenges to all the teams involved, resulting in a poor customer experience.\n\nTackling Disputes with Scarce Resources\nWorking with big-box retailers introduced Johnsonville to a vast volume of disputes but they only had a few resources to handle them. They thus struggled with compliance requirements, high cost-to-serve, and a large volume of transactions. They were therefore looking for a less manual and more efficient way to handle disputes.\n\n100% Manual and Time-Consuming Cash Application\nThe cash application process at Johnsonville was 100% manual. With such a massive volume of invoices coming in daily, their manual process was time-consuming and error-prone. It also caused the inability to apply cash the same day the payment came in, causing a trickle-down effect in their entire order to cash cycle.

End-to-End Integration of Automation Systems\nThe HighRadius platform enables a single source of data and smooth internal collaboration workflows, thus resolving customer experience issues. When claim documents come in regarding short payments, the system automatically notifies the cash application and collection teams. Therefore, no unnecessary calls are required to be made to the customer as the single integrated system gets all teams working in concert with each other.\n\nDeductions Cloud\nBulk Resolution of Disputes with Auto Aggregation of Backup Documents\nLeveraging HighRadius’s Deductions Cloud, Johnsonville was able to resolve deductions faster. This is because it enabled their teams to focus on resolutions while the cloud solution auto-aggregated back-up documentation. This documentation included claims, PODs through carrier portals, A/P portals, and TPMs automatically linked them to the deduction.\n\nFor Johnsonville, it also meant that instead of resolving 250+ deductions individually in a week, they could divide them into 2-3 batches and resolve them in less time.\n\nCollaborative Workflows and Faster Approvals\nThe solution brought structured workflows and automated correspondences which reduced interactions with customers. They also fast-tracked the approval cycle by seamlessly initiating the approval workflow across hierarchies. It also supports note-taking and task-assignment internally.\n\nCash Application Cloud\nAuto Aggregation of Remittance Data\nCash Application Cloud freed up analysts’ time through the auto-capture of remittances from various sources such as emails, EDIs, web portals, check stubs, and auto-coding of deductions. This automated their cash application process overall.\n\nImproved Cash Posting with Automated Invoice Matching\nThe automated cash application solution improved cash posting rates for Johnsonville by accurately linking payments with remittances. The solution also ensured auto-linking invoices with payments, even in unusual scenarios, by intelligent customer identification methods. This resulted in an error-free process with AI taking up all the manual work and automating it, making the process easier for analysts.\n\nAutomated Dispute Coding\nJohnsonville’s cash application analysts became more productive by spending minimal time reviewing exceptions. This is because the cash application solution ensured the automatic coding of discounts after an incoming short payment.\n\nSeamless Integration with other A/R Process\nThe solution also enabled collectors to get real-time visibility on payment posting statuses to avoid incessant and unsettling dunning to customers who had already paid. The solution made the process more accurate.

• The HighRadius platform enabled a single source of data and smooth internal collaboration workflows, resolving customer experience issues.
• The Deductions Cloud allowed Johnsonville to resolve deductions faster by auto-aggregating backup documentation, reducing the time spent on individual deductions.
• The Cash Application Cloud automated the cash application process, freeing up analysts' time and improving cash posting rates by accurately linking payments with remittances.
• The automated dispute coding feature made cash application analysts more productive by minimizing the time spent on reviewing exceptions.
• The solution provided real-time visibility on payment posting statuses, preventing unnecessary dunning to customers who had already paid.

• 43% increase in deduction claims
• 96% hit rate by the number of dollars received
• 89% hit rate for checks/electronic payments
• 4.4% decrease in open A/R