September, 20208 IN MYV EWThe advancement of technology has not only continued at a frantic pace, but the rate of change has also increased. The rate of technological change is now exceeding our collective ability to adapt to it, as discussed in an article by Peter Griffin (no, not that Peter Griffin), published in the New Zealand Listener in 2017. He notes, "We are now living through the `age of accelerations' underpinned by those converging technological advances put in motion a decade ago. The pace of change (speed) and rate of change (exponential) is in many cases exceeding our capacity to cope with change."So what does this have to do with the world of credit & collections, or the overall order-to-cash process for that matter? Virtually no part of an organization is immune to the impacts of technology. In the credit & collections space, this is true in the way that we access and gather information from suppliers of risk data to delivery methods of invoices to the tools we use to prioritize collections to how we apply workflow solutions to customer disputes, and the automation we use to identify and apply for customer payments. Over the last 15 years or so, companies have gladly adjusted to this technological shift, finding ways to be more efficient by use of automation and application of prioritization tools and smart technology. However, over the last few years, this technology is having a broader impact on credit and collection function. The use of customer portals, supply chain financing, electronic data interchange (EDI), and more advanced ERP systems is changing the landscape of collections and ushering in the need for a new breed of collection professionals.We certainly encountered this challenge at Veritiv. Veritiv Corporation (NYSE: VRTV) is a leading North American business-to-business distributor of packaging, cleaning, and print and publishing products with approximately 160 operating distribution centers throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Because of the markets we serve, we encounter varying degrees of complexity in managing our receivables. We've benefited from emerging technologies via enhancements through our ERP system to automatically match more payments, implemented collection tools to prioritize our collection efforts, enabled automated credit scoring with direct feeds from our credit score BY DARIN BALL, DIRECTOR OF CREDIT, VERITIV CORPORATIONHOW TECHNOLOGY IS TRANSFORMING CREDIT & COLLECTIONS
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