The challenge
A new entrant to New Zealand’s electricity retail market, Flick introduced an innovative model allowing consumers to absorb the risks and rewards of wholesale electricity rates. Based on the overwhelming success of its offering, the company experienced massive growth, expanding its user base from 1,200 to 16,000 customers within roughly a year and a half. “We quickly realized that the internal systems we put in place were not going to scale,” says James Leslie, Financial Controller at Flick.
Flick’s finance team billed customers with an overtaxed accounting platform, invoicing 6,000 to 8,000 users weekly. When the high volume of transactions resulted in a system crash, the team resorted to managing the company’s general ledger with an Excel spreadsheet. Additionally, to collect payments from customers, Flick relied on an app that failed several times a month and made it difficult to follow up on overdue invoices.
Only Flick’s finance team could view current customer balances in this setup. If a customer called with a balance inquiry, a service representative would put the caller on hold, walk over to the finance team, ask for the customer’s balance, and return the call with the information. If the customer had any follow-up questions, the service representative would put the caller on hold again. “This was a really disjointed process that delivered a poor customer experience,” says James.
The solution
In the wake of its accounting system crash, Flick began evaluating invoicing solutions. “The evaluation process was based around our view of what Flick will look like in a few years,” says Leslie. “Our solution needed to be flexible, cloud-based, cost-effective, and have the ability to scale significantly. Invoiced ticked all the boxes.”
Flick performed testing to make sure the platform could handle its transaction volume, loading 500,000 invoices into the system. Additionally, the company engaged Invoiced to add new access functionality, ensuring that users could view but not alter billing data.
Confident that the technology fully met its requirements, Flick deployed the Invoiced solution for 21 staff members, including:
- Six finance team employees use the platform to send approximately 64,000 invoices each month, identify outstanding bills for collections, filter customers for targeted communications, and upload distributor credits for allocation to the appropriate invoices
- Four developers who use the solution’s application programming interface (API) functionality to push invoices into the platform
- Eleven service representatives can now easily view and share balance information with customers
“Our solution needed to be flexible, cloud-based, cost-effective, and have the ability to scale significantly. Invoiced ticked all the boxes.”
James Leslie, Financial Controller, Flick Electric
The results
Flick built a new payments-taking app and selected new accounting software, both of which will easily integrate with the Invoiced platform. “The support we have received from Invoiced is awesome,” James said. “We are happy with the solution, which works well for our business.”
With the Invoiced solution, Flick replaced its spreadsheets and manual processes with streamlined, automated workflows, freeing its finance team from time-consuming A/R tasks. Plus, finance staff can quickly locate outstanding invoices, ensuring that funds owed to the company will no longer go uncollected.
Flick’s service representatives can now view key customer information in the Invoiced environment, saving each team member approximately an hour daily. And for the company’s customers, the service experience has improved dramatically. Instead of lengthy wait times, callers dialing in for assistance have efficient, professional interactions with the service team.