Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Bill Collecting - One Size Doesn't Fit All

02/05/2019

We've all stressed over collecting on debts owed to us. Whether it's a top client or a close friend who fails to pay on time, it's no fun to make that phone call and ask for the money that's due. Surely any system that can automate this process is helpful, but are all bill collection options created equal? For businesses back in the day, the process was manual and accepted as such: print paper invoices, mail the invoice, make a call, send past due notices, open mail and aggregate checks, visit the bank, and update journal entries to balance the books.

Today, we've advanced with technology and software that drive process efficiency and accuracy. There are e-invoicing options, multiple accepted payments types, and deposits can be posted to your bank within seconds. These features are all touted by a plethora of software packages, all claiming to address the same pain points:

Longer than desired DSO

Increasing credit card processing fees

Operational and personnel costs to process receivables

PCI compliance risks

However, A/R management software struggles to apply across verticals, overlooking industries with complex workflows like advertising and media. In our business, we have advertisers (brands), agencies, reps, DSPs, SSPs, station groups, and networks navigating various systems trying to reconcile an invoice that could span a number of campaign timelines, payment gateways or processors, and banking entities. The many players involved throughout this workflow amplify payment pain points, but additional industry idiosyncrasies further drive complexity:

Cash-in-advance (CIA) / pre-payment orders

Various payment types (EFT, ACH, CC)

Multiple media types (TV, radio, digital)

You have to ask yourself, Can I get away with a general solution or could a specialized set of tools address my needs better?

Let's take health care as an example a primary care physician can diagnose and handle a common cold or cough, but we'd likely be referred to a specialist if we had chest pains. In the same way, paying & collecting on an invoice for car parts is handled differently than an invoice for a multi-month ad campaign that ran ads on local broadcast TV, online banner ads, podcasts, and streamed digital video ads on YouTube. Add in details like the buyer scheduling quarterly payments for billing purposes, and it's obvious you need software that has been built with these industry-specific challenges in mind. If your software hasn't considered these scenarios into its functionality, you'll be forced to resort to hacks or work-arounds that add friction to workflows, ultimately resulting in increased cost and lost margin.

While any payment solution can offer help to your business, only advertising- and media-specific solutions can stand up to the weight of their demands. Getting the job done and getting the job done right can make all the difference you don't want to be left holding a hammer in one hand and a bag of screws in the other.

Click here for more information on WideOrbit's solution for managing A/R and collections.

For press inquiries, contact media@wideorbit.com.
LINK: https://www.wideorbit.com/bill-collecting-one-size-doesnt-fit-all/...
See more stories from wideorbit

More from WideOrbit

20/03/2024

Understanding Converged Linear and Digital Ad Sales Tools

Television advertising has traditionally revolved around linear broadcasting, with advertisers purchasing airtime spots to reach a broad audience. But with shif...

06/03/2024

Selling Cross-Media Campaigns: Combining Linear TV and Digital Ads to Maximize Revenue

The world of advertising has undergone a transformative evolution. As a percenta...

31/01/2024

Enhancing Media Buying and Selling with AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing processes across virtually all industries, and the media world is no exception. In the constantly evolving media...

24/01/2024

Media Industry Trends to Watch in 2024

While expectations are high for the anticipated increase in political ad spend for this year's elections, that influx of cash is just one of several trends ...

08/01/2024

Media Trends 2023: The Year in Review

WideOrbit began 2023 with the merger with the Lumine Group (TXSV: LMN.V) in February. Our partnership with Lumine builds on our 25-year foundation and contribut...

15/11/2023

Uncover hidden efficiencies to get the most out of WO Automation for Radio

In today's increasingly competitive landscape, radio broadcasters demand a strong, flexible, and user-friendly automation system to keep listeners engaged a...

16/10/2023

Moving Media Sales Automations Forward

Traditional sales processes have presented significant challenges to broadcasters for years, involving highly manual workflows and high-touch, low-tech, back-an...

11/10/2023

WO Digital Hub: Consolidated digital order management for publishers

WO Digital Hub is a consolidated digital order management platform for unifying digital ad sales, operations, execution, and finance across multiple properties ...

29/09/2023

Recap: WideOrbit Connect User Conference 2023

We had a great time at the 2023 WideOrbit Connect User Conference and hope you did as well. Here's a quick recap of the conference by the numbers. Total r...

20/09/2023

Myth vs. fact: Broadcast TV advertising and marketplace buying

Broadcast TV has long been proven to be the most effective medium for building brand awareness. It is also perceived as both difficult and expensive to buy, res...

06/09/2023

Five things marketers should know about buying TV advertising in an automated marketplace

For brands looking to scale their campaigns, there's little question that br...

16/08/2023

Customer Story: WUIS-NPR Illinois Streamlines Operations with WideOrbit

Seamless integration of radio automation and traffic systems saves time and money WUIS-NPR, the University of Illinois Springfield's NPR radio station, is r...

09/08/2023

What's new in WO Network 2023

The latest release of WO Network, our flagship network ad sales and commercial operations platform, introduces key benefits to help cable and broadcast TV netwo...

07/08/2023

Go from order-to-cash fast with full-featured A/R automation

Purpose-built for the media industry to extend automation throughout the entire accounting cycle, WO Payments Suite helps media finance teams manage unique acco...

31/07/2023

Introducing WO Fusion: Next-generation, cross-media ad sales supporting alternate audience measurement currencies

As media consumption patterns evolve, advertisers want to buy TV, audio, and dig...

12/07/2023

Control station operations while on-the-go with WO Automation for Radio Mobile

WO Automation for Radio (AFR) Mobile is an iOS application specifically designed to enable control of WO Automation for Radio from anywhere. Other systems usin...

05/07/2023

Political advertising campaigns benefit from TV marketplace ad buying

The hotly contested elections of both 2020 and 2022 drove record-breaking political advertising spend, demonstrating that TV remains the best choice for achievi...

05/07/2023

What's new in WO Traffic v23.0

The latest release of WO Traffic, our flagship broadcast media ad traffic operations platform, introduces key benefits to stations and station groups, helping g...

14/06/2023

Efficiently manage the simultaneous creation of voice tracks for multiple stations with WO Automation for Radio Group Voice Tracking

Radio stations are facing unprecedented cost pressures and need to deliver quali...

10/05/2023

Advanced TV advertising: Balancing addressability and reach

With the increasing risk of a major recession, increasing interest rates, and historic inflation, brands are scrutinizing ad spend more closely than ever. When ...

26/04/2023

How WideOrbit is streamlining ad buying and selling processes: An interview with Brian Thoman, Managing Director of Marketplaces

In today's rapidly evolving media landscape, streamlining the ad buying and ...

27/03/2023

Alternate audience measurement currencies, the Joint Industry Committee, and WideOrbit

For as long as we've been talking about linear and digital convergence, we h...

08/03/2023

Automate broadcast TV ad sales with WO Marketplace to improve offer quality, maximize yield

Increasing audience fragmentation and shrinking ad budgets are hallmarks of toda...

06/03/2023

What's New in WO Media Sales 2022

In today's media landscape, sales teams are challenged with generating impression-based proposals. Inefficient workflows slow execution time and new dataset...

27/02/2023

WO Omni streamlines operations with cross-media sales, traffic, and billing

WO Omni helps broadcasters with bespoke regional requirements save time and increase revenue by centralizing cross-media sales, traffic, and billing operations ...

21/02/2023

The automated broadcast TV marketplace: What's new for buyers and sellers

The growing demand for omnichannel marketing campaigns highlights the need for automated marketplaces that provide brands and agencies with simplified access to...

08/02/2023

What you need to know about CTV vs. broadcast advertising

The convergence of traditional, over-the-air broadcast TV and connected TV (CTV) presents new opportunities for advertisers to engage with their audiences. CTV ...

06/02/2023

Improve efficiency with automated scheduling templates in WO Automation for Radio

Scheduling templates in WO Automation for Radio offer improved efficiency to sui...

30/01/2023

Media Industry Trends to Watch in 2023

The WideOrbit team spent some time analyzing industry data and influencer predictions to identify some of the trends to watch in 2023. The trends that jumped ou...

23/01/2023

Spot TV automation pushes forward

The automation of processes associated with both marketplace and traditional spot TV ad transactions has been gaining momentum, particularly when it comes to tr...

13/01/2023

Introducing ZingX: Buying local broadcast TV advertising just got a whole lot easier

Despite the exponential growth in digital advertising over the last two decades,...

05/12/2022

WideOrbit at NAB New York: The evolution of buying and selling broadcast TV advertising

It's high time to debunk the myth that linear broadcast TV is dying. Broadca...

18/11/2022

Automate Airtimes and Direct Response workflows in WO Traffic and WO Network

WO Airtimes and WO Long Form DR for WO Traffic and WO Network help media organizations save time and money by automating workflows. WO Airtimes automates airtim...

14/11/2022

WideOrbit at NAB New York: Streamlining the Management of Multi-Platform Ad Campaigns

At this year's NAB Show New York, Will Offeman, WideOrbit CPO, sat down with...

01/11/2022

Celebrating National Broadcast Traffic Professionals Day

The first commercial broadcast was on KDKA radio in Pittsburgh, PA, on November 2, 1920 - that's 102 years of traffic logs! National Broadcast Traffic Profe...

26/10/2022

Automate the import of material records with Electronic Materials for WO Traffic

Electronic Materials for WO Traffic helps streamline the import of material records, helping broadcasters increase efficiency by quickly importing material asse...

11/10/2022

Media planning for 2023? Don't overlook the power of local broadcast TV

As we approach the end of the year, marketers' thoughts turn not to holiday campaigns - those should already be locked in and launching in a few short weeks...

07/09/2022

WO Automation for Radio for live football play-by-play

Those Friday Night Lights are switching on and radio stations across the country are gearing up as another exciting season of live football broadcasting gets un...

06/09/2022

Television turns 95: Celebrating with our favorite commercials

Ninety-five years ago, on September 7, 1927, Philo Farnsworth transmitted the first all-electronic television image. Unlike previous efforts at television trans...

24/08/2022

Celebrating National Radio Day and Radio Commercials Day

With National Radio Day on August 20th and Radio Commercials Day on the 28th, we thought we'd celebrate both by gathering a few radio stories from our colle...

16/08/2022

WO Automation for Radio for small broadcasters

Cost effective solutions to streamline station operations WO Automation for Radio can help stations of all sizes streamline operations, both in-studio and remot...

02/08/2022

WO Network 2022: New features to improve efficiency and maximize revenue

WideOrbit remains committed to working closely with customers, to help them improve their existing processes through continuous improvement in our core products...

20/07/2022

Update: Media industry trends to watch in 2022

Early this year, many in the media industry were anticipating 2022's hotly contested mid-term elections would lead to a significant increase in political ad...

10/06/2022

Ad-supported streaming is good news for both consumers and advertisers

Netflix dominated headlines earlier this year with news of significant Q1 subscriber losses globally - down by 200,000 in the US alone - losses that led to the ...

25/05/2022

What's new in WO Traffic v22.0: Automated addressable ad replacement is here

The latest release of WO Traffic, our flagship media sales, traffic, and billing software, introduces our revolutionary addressable ad replacement solution for ...

20/04/2022

WO Media Sales 2021 and 2022: Empower your Sales teams to sell smarter

With the increasing complexity of today's media landscape, TV sales teams require the ability to generate multi-media, multi-platform proposals quickly and ...

04/04/2022

WO Network's Reweight Analysis Report: Deeper insights to save time and money

Trying to reweight or remix multiple Plans and Deals across multiple properties ...

09/03/2022

Save time and money with streamlined digital order management

Digital order management between broadcast traffic and billing software and digital ad solutions has traditionally been a manual process, requiring duplicate da...

02/03/2022

Top 10 Cybersecurity Tips to Help Broadcasters Reduce Risk

With current world events, the threat of cyberattack has never been more top of mind, both internationally and here at home. The risk of a ransomware attack is ...

01/03/2022

Streamline radio operations with integrations to save time and money

Radio stations frequently struggle with disparate systems that are cobbled together to meet constantly evolving needs. Too often, the resulting data inconsisten...