“Find a backwoods business and be the best at it.”

A Message from Billfire’s Founder

A/R doesn’t get much attention from business leaders. CEOs go to bed at night thinking primarily about product and sales. I certainly do.  

A perfect example is the once-popular TV series Mad Men. We watched the adventures of Don Draper and his team as they expertly sold and delivered their ad agency services. But we never once got a glimpse of Sterling Cooper’s A/R department.  

While it may not make for great television, anyone who has seen an A/R department in action knows it shouldn’t be taken for granted. Happy customers and profitable business relationships stand on a three legged stool – sales, delivery, and payment. Each of these touchpoints play a huge role in the overall customer experience, and ultimately drive satisfaction and loyalty. 

Every customer-focused company knows that clients care more about how you manage things that go wrong than how you manage things that are going right. We’ve all got a story to tell about having an issue with a product or service, and being passed around from one person to another, restating the problem over and over again in an effort to get it resolved. These types of experiences have the greatest impact on our feelings towards the companies we do business with.

A/R teams have a great opportunity to shine here, given the volume of work they manage and the amount of time they spend interacting with customers. More than $23 trillion in B2B transactions are conducted on credit each year.  That’s a lot of invoices to send and a lot of money to collect. 

But A/R automation isn’t just about getting paid faster. It’s about understanding all the challenges that are likely to happen during the invoicing and payment process, particularly the ones that lead to negative customer experiences, and re-shaping them to make them faster, more efficient, and more convenient for all involved. Solving these challenges will ensure that the “payment” leg of the customer experience stool is a strong, sturdy one. 

That’s what our “backwoods business” is all about. 

CEOs will always spend their days and nights thinking about product and sales. But that only covers two legs of the stool. By partnering with Billfire, they can rest assured that we are spending our days and nights
laser-focused on that third critical customer touchpoint – A/R.