A public company in the funeral home industry with over 1,500 locations sought our support to execute its digital roadmap transformation. As part of this effort, the company needed to automate interactions with utility vendors by converting their 10,000 utility accounts to online accounts with automated payment terms using bank drafts and ACH payment methods.
Our team of subject matter experts worked with the company’s accounts payable department to develop and execute a detailed project plan for the digital conversion. Prioritizing the utility vendor accounts, we developed communications to support the effort, including email and call scripts. We also established reporting metrics to track progress on converting eligible accounts to autopay, coordinating the payment method and the autopay process changes with the client’s AP team.
The team successfully converted 75% of eligible utility accounts to autopay arrangements, including 94% of the highest-priority accounts. The digital conversion allowed the company to realize significant and lasting monthly savings in manual check processing and late fees. After helping the company establish a successful process to convert vendors, we handed the ongoing project management effort over to the AP team to maintain the journey and fully realize the business case with a payback of less than one year.