Finance Team Faced Efficiency Challenges in a Fast-Paced Complex Business Environment
A global manufacturer of humidity control products, Boveda serves a wide variety of industries, offering solutions for maintaining the flavor of cigars, protecting musical instruments, sustaining optimum food storage conditions, and preserving medical cannabis. Boveda’s wares, including its popular twoway humidity control packet, are carried in more than 2,500 stores globally.
With hundreds of customers to serve, Boveda’s small finance team was challenged to find ways to maximize its efficiency in a fast-paced, complex business environment. The team realized it could benefit from a solution that would help them manage the financial relationship with their portfolio of customers.
“Because we are a team of only three, we needed support for the things we just didn’t have time for,” explained Tara DeCrow, CPA, Boveda’s Senior Accountant. While the team was able to undertake pieces of an account management program, they did not feel they were running a robust program for the 300+ accounts with which they have payment terms. “For example, we needed to monitor customers to ensure we have them at the correct payment terms and credit limits. We also had to evaluate others who wanted payment agreements.”
“There is a lot of risk around credit terms, so we started looking for solutions to help us with things like Payroll and Accounts Receivable,” said DeCrow. “We decided to reach out to Dun & Bradstreet – and the relationship has grown wonderfully from there.”
Boveda Chooses D&B Finance Analytics to Scale Credit-to-Cash
Boveda‘s finance team choose Dun & Bradstreet’s D&B Finance Analytics Credit Intelligence solution to help them efficiently manage the company’s finance operations, in turn increasing returns, reducing cost through automation, and also enhancing the end customer experience. Boveda chose to make use of the complete D&B Finance Analytics Credit Intelligence solution, including its three modular applications: Decision Maker, Portfolio Insight, and Account Manager.
DeCrow said D&B Finance Analytics Credit Intelligence has helped Boveda scale its credit-to-cash operations, enabling it to issue instant credit decisions, standardize credit review processes, conduct advanced portfolio and account analysis, and manage its entire portfolio, helping to reduce Days Sales Outstanding (DSO).
“Decision Maker, Account Manager and Portfolio Insight are each a huge help for us,” DeCrow said. “Each of the D&B Finance Analytics modules help us evaluate customers in terms of industry risk and business risk, so we can get insights into a variety of activities, where we might receive valuable data that something is going on in China for example, that might help us in planning.”
“We use this data to help us decide who gets credit terms at our company – there is very little beyond what we have built in Decision Maker that helps us make our credit decisions. That’s how much we rely on Dun & Bradstreet to determine credit terms for potential term customers. It’s been a huge improvement for our team, and we love it.”
“We use Portfolio Insight to update aging reports monthly, and once we upload those, Account Manager is where our other bread and butter is,” DeCrow said. “That’s where we pull up reports, get update notifications and emails based on the data that’s in Account Manager. So, we might see if there is a bankruptcy that occurred, an insolvency, or some entity might be at higher risk than a month ago. We have a lot of useful notifications coming to our email based on data in Account Manager. It’s been very helpful, and we pull reports here and there to see if we need to change the amount of credit limit, or credit worthiness in general.”
Realizing Time Savings and Lowering Bad Debt Write-Offs
Boveda has saved time and reduced bad debt write-offs as a result of using D&B Finance Analytics Credit Intelligence.
Time Saving
“Our time savings are two-fold,” DeCrow said. “It’s time saving for our team to be able to rely on Dun & Bradstreet data and metrics for our decision making. We also save time in being able to perform ratio analysis and create scorecards. Otherwise, we would have to pull data from financial statements and manually key it in. I estimate that about 25% of our time we would otherwise spend on these activities is handled by D&B Finance Analytics.”
Loss Reduction
“Where we really see benefit is in the amount that we would have had to write off for bad debt expenses had we not used a software solution to help us make good decisions with risk,” DeCrow explained. “We have had hardly any bad debt expense. In fact, there are only three customer balances each year over the past three years that Boveda’s finance team has had to write off, which is fantastic when considering there are over 300-customers annually, on average. The Boveda finance team also relies on regular alerts and notifications about customers, a vital source of actionable information provided by D&B Finance Analytics Credit Intelligence. “We’re either relying on notification emails or checking and reviewing for new credit application or just digging into customer performance,” DeCrow explained. “It impacts us every day.”
Great Support Allows Boveda to Lean In on Credit Risk Improvements
DeCrow also points to customer support while using D&B Finance Analytics Credit Intelligence for the most efficient returns. “I want to shout from the rooftops that Dun & Bradstreet’s customer support is fantastic!” DeCrow said. “When you’re trying to lean in and do a better job with credit risk for your company, it’s great to have knowledgeable staff that’s helpful, available and timely on support. Dun & Bradstreet has helped us build a great system for credit risk. We’d recommend it to anyone.”
Similar results are not guaranteed. Dun & Bradstreet does not validate accuracy of customer statements made in customer stories or spotlight articles.