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Company Overview
BR+A is a 500-person full-service MEP engineering firm that works across a wide range of markets, including academic, corporate, healthcare, infrastructure, and science & technology. They have 12 offices spread across the US and Canada with headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts, and projects that span the globe.
The firm has experienced significant growth over the past few years. Jim Fleuriel, Chief Financial Officer, explains how he has enabled his team to keep up with the increased financial workload without adding resources.
Why EleVia Software
Electronic Invoicing Empowered BR+A to Increase Output Without Increasing Headcount
When Jim joined the organization, the implementation of EleVia Electronic Invoicing (EI) was under way. They needed a simplified, standardized invoicing process and found EI provided an easy way to access and sort data based on what was important. Most of the staff utilizing EI aren’t accountants. They want to quickly get the information they need, get it done, and get back to engineering.
EI has allowed PMs and executives much better visibility into what matters, empowering the team to get invoicing done 30-40% faster.
Every month, Jim runs a report he calls ‘The Big 3’ that calculates revenue, invoicing, and collections. “It’s amazing how much our invoicing volume jumped year over year after implementing EI,” Jim states. “Comparing Q3 2021 (pre-implementation) to Q3 of 2022 (post implementation and training) we invoiced 42% more quarter over quarter. Looking at the numbers year over year, we were able to invoice 29% more in 2022 versus 2021. Again, with the same number of staff. It’s astounding.”
Automated A/R and its Impact on Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and Collections Volume
Collecting A/R used to be a cumbersome process for BR+A, and until recently, chasing receivables fell on Jim’s plate. For each client with outstanding invoices, he was required to run a report within Deltek, export it to Excel, manipulate the data, and draft an email to the client. Repeating this process for each client was a heavy manual lift.
In May of 2022, EleVia A/R Management & Collections (ARM) was implemented to simplify and automate their process. The EleVia product support team worked with Jim to build out an A/R management sequence that would meet BR+A’s specific needs. With one click in ARM, an email template is drafted that includes a list of overdue invoices and a carefully crafted message that elicits a response from the client. The messaging automatically coincides with the collections efforts as the invoices continue to age. Jim has found this automated A/R management process has had a tremendous positive impact on efficiency and collections volume.
In under one year using ARM, Jim estimates DSO has dropped 10-15 days and collections have increased by 30%. In Jim’s words, “I absolutely, positively attribute these improvements to ARM. I would not have been able to do the level of collections I did in 2022 without it. The best part is I think we are just scratching the surface of everything we can do with ARM.”
A seamless transition from Deltek Vision to Deltek Vantagepoint
EleVia’s tools have become fabrics of BR+A’s daily operations. Recently they made the transition from Deltek Vision to Deltek Vantagepoint and the EleVia support team ensured there weren’t any interruptions throughout the upgrade process.