Business file. Interview with Serge Mosselmans, partner.
Credit Function, the magazine of Credit Management trades. February 2014
Presentation of Taiga
Founded in 2009, TAIGA publishes in SaaS mode an innovative platform for reporting and monitoring operating flows, dedicated to improving WCR and cash flow. TAIGA combines operational advice and development of dedicated web tools.
The platform, labeled as early as 2010 by the Finance Innovation Competitiveness Cluster, consists of different complementary business modules and already has more than 1,000 subscribers worldwide.
The Taiga platform offers 3 modules for monitoring and controlling the operation of companies :
- Taiga Cash Forecast : Consolidation, reporting,cashflow analysis
- Taiga Debt & Securities : Monitoring and management of the debt as well as off-balance sheet guarantees
- Taiga Cash Collection : Monitoring andmanagement of outstanding clients
All the modules proposed by Taiga were developed by the technical teams of the company and were specified by the founding Associate Directors. These modules are the result of more than 30 years of combined experience of the Managing Partners in the optimization of BFR large groups in France and internationally. These experiences were acquired in consulting firms (KPMG, Kearney AT, Andersen, Mazard and Resulteam, …) and operationally through the exercise of the credit management function (Dell Europe South for 5 years).
Today, and beyond its publishing activity, Taiga offers its clients operational consulting missions to optimize customer outstandings and implement good credit management practices. The tools are enriched every day by this experience, and constantly offer users changes: reporting indicators, ergonomics, new collaborative features, …
Taiga Cash Collection : the putting under control of outstanding customer
Taiga Cash Collection is an innovative web tool that is designed for Account Managers, Credit Managers, Financial Managers and, more generally, all players involved in Credit Management and Customer Recovery (Businesses). , ADV, BU Manager, …)
Taiga Cash Collection meets the main operational needs of recovery:
- Provision of complete analysis and reporting dashboards, tailor-made and fully customizable for anyone in the organization
- Quick and easy analysis of old balances and prioritization of stimulus actions for managers
- Management of recovery actions by manager / business / customer / etc.
- Management of customer information needed to ensure customer recovery (accounting information, risk and credit limit, customer contacts, business, …).
Taiga Cash Collection is a Saas tool that can be installed in just a few days in any organization. The tool is “synchronized” with accounting (ERP) once a day. For that, it is enough to develop in the ERP a request generating a file of the detailed aged balance. This is the list of all non-literate coins of the outstanding client with all the information available in the tools (customer information, invoice, commercial, BU, analytical axes …). Once this file is generated and deposited on a secure and dedicated server, the tool retrieves the information and updates itself with the client accounting automatically in a few minutes.
The installation of Taiga Cash Collection is extremely simple, without complex interface with the ERP, and is done on average between 1 and 2 weeks (training included).
Operational management of customer outstanding in Taiga Cash Collection is done on 2 axes:
- Recovery status : to identify clear steps in the evolution of the qualification of invoices in the relaunch (Not relaunched, in Mediation, Litigation, Promise of payment, …)
- Blocking causes : to precisely define the reasons why customers do not pay (technical dispute, billing, cash flow, etc.)
Beyond the information, on the accounting data (invoices, amounts, deadlines, …), the customer information (name, address, contact, order number, …), the statutes and causes of blocking, the tool also manages risk management data: credit limits and customer scoring.
An innovative and totally flexible reporting system
At all times users have access to powerful, fully configurable and updated real-time control panels.
Each user (General Management, Credit Manager, BU Manager, collection manager, commercial) defines in a few clicks the indicators he needs.
Each reporting table is constructed as a PivotTable based on a comprehensive list of performance tracking metrics such as:
- Total aged balance, by client, manager, salesperson, customer segment, area, BU, by status of stimulus etc.
- Top 10-20-30 …: Customer, dispute, payment, invoice …
- Total DSO, by customer, maturity and evolution ratios ….
- Volumetrics of the wallets, customer, coins, ….
- …
The tool can have up to 40 different lines of analysis of outstanding client (portfolio, legal entity, BU, commercial, country, division, …).
These dashboards are accessible to all users when they connect to the platform but can also be sent automatically and in push mode by email. For example, you can automatically send each sales representative of an organization every week an email containing a detailed dashboard of the outstanding amount of his client portfolio:
- Old balance by type of customer of the salesman,
- Top 10/20 commercial customer with stimulus shares,
- Customer’s commercial disputes by reason of blocking,
- Evolution of outstandings, DSO, expiry rate of the commercial,
- …
Simplicity and ergonomics
Taiga Cash Collection has been developed with the constant aim of simplifying its use and installation as much as possible. The tool is parameterized and installed in a few days with great flexibility. User training is done in half a day.
The menus and functionalities are fully configurable by the administrators of our customers without needing an IT expertise.
The ergonomics of this software is very intuitive and each user has the ability to organize the display of data in the tool as desired. The tool works much like a structured Excel PivotTable where each user defines:
a. What he wants to see online
b. What he wants to see in column
c. What he wants to exclude or filter on the data
The tool exists today in 6 languages, but can be translated directly by the Customer or Taiga.
Outlook and evolutions
While keeping its simplicity of use and installation, some features are under development and will be deployed in early 2014. These new features are designed to make the tool even more collaborative. Thus a module of “Circularization online”, will give the possibility to a customer (through the sending of an email) to qualify his outstanding directly in the application. This same module can also be sent to sales representatives.
Finally, a module for forecasting receipts is also available. Its forecasts will be based on the analysis of the balances on date, the qualification of outstanding amounts in the tool by the managers as well as on the paying behaviors of the different customers over the last periods.
