The client

Rexel Canada is a leading distributor of electrical products. It is a part of the larger global company Rexel (RXEEY), headquartered in Paris, France. It operates under three banners throughout Canada: Nedco, Westburne and Rexel Atlantic. It maintains 198 branches with 2,220 employees that support sales in the billions.

Previously, Rexel Canada ran its credit and collections operations under five decentralized managers. To help improve results, Rexel brought in Geoff Last to lead as the newly created national credit and collections manager.

The challenges

Faced with five independently operating organizations, Geoff encountered various processes and faced skepticism regarding his ideas for improvement. Across the five organizations, Rexel had 55 people supporting the credit and collection functions.

Geoff recalled, “Before GETPAID, the teams were printing aged trial balance reports, highlighting them with markers and making notes on them.” This practice provided zero visibility to the actual work being performed and did not lend itself to providing a platform to improve results.

The solution

Rexel in Paris and in the U.S. had already begun utilizing GETPAID when Geoff began searching for a solution that could provide automation. During this time, Rexel Paris began a “cash-in-motion” study to review working capital. Based on this study, the Paris office recommended that Rexel Canada implement GETPAID as well.

During the implementation process, Geoff consulted with the Rexel U.S. team, who did a complete consolidation of all operations into one office in Dallas, Texas. He wanted to follow the same blueprint, but Rexel Canada did not have the resources or the luxury to complete a consolidation during the rollout.

“It was not easy in the beginning to convince the teams to use the new system. They wanted to use their old processes,” stated Geoff. He modified his approach to use a common technique in change management. He targeted key individuals to convince them of the benefits of employing GETPAID, who then became proponents of the improved process within their own teams. The vision that he demonstrated has now positioned him as a big resource for process improvement.

The results

Automation was a key element for Rexel Canada. With the implementation of GETPAID, it has instituted risk-based collections, dispute management, the GETPAID mobile app and the customer portal. Each component provides a real benefit to achieving automation.

The strategic risk-based collections artificial intelligence (AI) engine automatically assigns appropriate strategies and priorities to collections. Rexel is currently in the process of implementing an auto-dialer to further enhance the automation of the collections process.

Within dispute management, the team now communicates closer than ever with the sales team. The mobile app allows Geoff to access live data while in credit meetings with the sales team. The customer portal allows the customer to self-service to retrieve invoice copies, mark disputed invoices and make payments.

Rexel Canada and FIS are partnering together to improve results even further. Not satisfied with maintaining the business with the already improved results, they are looking to expand automation in the future through handling order hold releases and even utilizing the AI that drives GETPAID’s cash application solution.

Rexel Canada is also exploring the potential benefits of transferring the current self-hosted solution to an FIS hosting environment to simplify its internal IT infrastructure. This strategic partnership is strengthened by the commitment of Rexel Canada to continuously improve and by the commitment of FIS to help it get there.