Pretty cool if you have all your business data centralized. But for business users, it could be useful to do something similar directly with APIs of the tools they use (e.g. SFDC, Gainsight, NetSuite, etc.). Is that in the roadmap or are you familiar with another tool that does that?
> A smart contract that auto-pays upon (phased) delivery, etc.
That's a solid idea in theory. We tried something similar but had a tough time getting companies to be comfortable with the autopay feature (e.g. like your comcast or cell phone bill) because most people think that the role of accounts payable is to pay as slowly as possible without pissing off your vendors. That means that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but to nag politely is a nuanced art. The folks who do it the best manage the relationships with the people that actually cut the checks super carefully. They view it as the last step in their customer engagement cycle. Happy to chat more about what we've learned or how we're approaching this: carlos[at]tesorio.com
You're probably referring to factoring, you're right... age-old product. The opportunity here is to bring sales & customer success automation to the unsexy accounting world.
(Disclosure: I’m the co-founder & CEO of Tesorio, YC S15)
Awesome discussion. Agreed that this is very tough to just outsource, paying you for your services is the final step in the customer experience. CFOs and even sales or customer success teams want to treat customers very carefully in a personalized way.
Sending out automated reminder emails is called ‘dunning’ and most accounting tools will do this for you automatically. But as people mentioned, if you can’t really exert pressure, how do you get someone to pay? It’s similar to sending spammy sales emails vs. personalized messages that will get someone’s attention. Also, most big companies will just ignore your late fees.
We’ve found that the best teams at this manage their relationships and they know every last detail about the person who actually cuts the check at their client. We’re actually currently tackling collections from another perspective - we basically built a product that combines the best parts of sales CRM and customer engagement tools.
The way to get the CFOs to buy though is to help them with their cash forecasts. A good collections tool is an A/B testing machine that lets you capture information from the folks doing the collections so the CFO’s team can create more accurate forecasts.
Our website showcases our active products (Forecasting, Forex, & Analytics), but we’re currently in Beta with the Collections tool. Would love to show it to you and get your feedback. My email: carlos[at]tesorio.com
Thanks for the shout-out brianbreslin. I’m co-founder & CEO of Tesorio (YC S15) and in the past I founded a factoring company. Factoring solves the collections problem in a way but it can be expensive and may send mixed messages to your customer that your cash flow wasn’t strong enough to wait for payment. We started Tesorio because we kept seeing folks misuse factoring as a source of financing, not as a point in time solution to a working capital gap. It gets expensive fast, it’s like payday lending for business.
Collections in the B2B world is more broadly defined as the process of reminding your customers to pay you, not so much the breaking knees part. Most companies over $15MM in revenue have at least one person doing this.
We see the collections process as the final step in a good customer experience… so we’ve built a product that combines the best parts of sales CRM and customer engagement tools. Our website showcases our active products (Forecasting, Forex, & Analytics), but we’re currently in Beta with the Collections tool and would love to show you it and get your feedback.
Feel free to reach out to me directly: carlos[at]tesorio.com