Question

Topic: Strategy

Quote To Cash” Cycle Time To Less Than 50 Days

Posted by vasudev_kamath on 12/10/2013 at 3:48 AM ET 250 Points
Transforming business through improvement in “Quote to Cash (Q2C)” cycle

Quote to Cash (Q2C) initiative encompasses all functions within the Q2C chain starting from qualification of opportunity, sales, delivery, billing & collection processes. Q2C project groups are divided into Quote to Order (Q2O), Order to Login (O2L), Login to Customer Acceptance (L2A) and Acceptance to Billing & Collections (A2C).

The Q2C initiative aims at improving processes thereby reducing the cycle time right from when an order is logged to the stage when the customer is billed for the services and revenue is generated. In accordance with our key business imperatives, the Q2C initiative endeavors to improve customer satisfaction(CSAT), reduce turnaround time (TAT), enhance productivity, improve CSAT, faster revenue realization & streamline business processes across the Q2C chain.

The “Order to Bill” cycle time was nearly 104 days before this initiative was undertaken.

With the start of Q2C initiative in FY12-13, 35 projects were implemented which led to 35% reduction in “Order to Bill” TAT bringing it down to 67 days & 13% improvement in productivity.

Some of the high impact improvement ideas implemented were- India & International order login process unification, Introduction of automatic work allocation tool in provisioning, Improvement in TAT for Onnet feasibility responses, Value Stream Mapping of Service Delivery processes to identify & remove Non value added activities, etc.

This year the target is to achieve more than 20% improvement in TAT i.e. to bring down the cycle time to less than 50 days consistently.

However, there are multiple factors which act as barriers to improving the TAT. Some of the major hindrances are-

· Offnet feasibility response time

· Manual delays in order login & doing it first time right

· Customer dependencies like delay in sending signed or relevant documents, incomplete site and incorrect contact details etc

· Delay in receiving site permission from government authorities

We are looking for innovative ideas to identify opportunities for improvement and solutions which can lead to enhanced customer experience, faster revenue realization, reduction in TAT and productivity enhancement with increased efficiency. We are looking for ideas to make our processes more effective, efficient & streamlined thereby reducing the “QUOTE TO CASH” CYCLE TIME TO LESS THAN 50 DAYS consistently.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Moriarty on 12/10/2013 at 2:12 PM Accepted
    So who's treading on you to get the cash in faster? I was discussing something like this with a client this morning - and it all came down to the higher management wanting "results" but not really wanting to do anything about them. My point in saying this is that to my mind, you don't need faster money, you simply need more of it coming in.

    It adds up to the same thing really. Only in the long run you've got more in the bank than you'd have if it just arrived there quickly.

    Now you're in telecommunications and you could easily "enhance customer experience" just by improving your help lines. Communications is the biggest bugbear in the communications market, mainly because everyone's too busy selling it to bother doing it. Get this right and you'll find that whilst the money doesn't come in any quicker, it'll come in a lot heavier.

    In short, you don't need more effective processes, you simply need to feed them a better class of customer. That way your efficiency will double or treble - if you have any kind of sales funnel, it's actually pretty darned simple to double its effectiveness. I've met cases where the improvement has been well in excess of 10x. More importantly, it was at the same level of advertising spend (or less).

    I will warn you that the improvements depended on the client having a real drive for quality in their service. Not speed, not efficiency and not technology - service to their customers. It's where the money is - and always has been.

    What are your thoughts on this?
  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 12/10/2013 at 5:57 PM Accepted
    I am at somewhat of a loss not knowing what product you sell and to what market. Order times vary greatly based on product. Those products with higher costs (purchase price, cost if the product fails, implementation cost, etc.) generally have longer lead times.
  • Posted by vasudev_kamath on 12/11/2013 at 5:11 AM Author
    Hi Peter (henna gaijin),

    Ours is a Global Telecommunications Company which deals into MPLS, IPLS, Leased circuits, Data Centers, etc and everything you can think that a Service provider in a telcom company can provide.
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