Case study

LED Supply Co.

Discover how LED Supply Co. cut DSO by 30% and automated collections across hundreds of customers.

About the Company

For over a decade, LED Supply Co. has been on a mission to distribute advanced LED lighting, affordably, with great customer service. Once a small company based in the founder’s living room, it now boasts a 17,000 sq. foot headquarters, employees across five states, and distributes fixtures for 250 manufacturers.

Revenue

$25M+ / year

Employees

30+

AR Invoices

6,000+ / year

ERP

NetSuite

Challenges

Naturally, the company’s growth surge has some teams catching up. CFO Dory Pluger recalls a time pouring over outstanding invoice reports with her collections team. The business boom from construction projects during the pandemic was great–but added thousands of outstanding invoices from hundreds of customers. Like at most companies, legacy ERP and accounting software made inefficient AR follow-up worse.

Software constraints exacerbated the issue: Some of LED Supply Co.'s customers had up to 50 invoices outstanding. Staff had to separately download and attach each invoice to a manually generated email. The piecemeal process (which included tracking in Google Sheets) didn’t deliver. LED Supply Co. also couldn’t offer customers an online payment option–shrinking profit per account. Although the process was industry-standard, Pluger knew automated collections were within reach.

Solution

Customers were willing to pay once reached in the right manner and at the right time: The problem was scale–and finding software that unlocked it. Days later, a serendipitous call from Payference came.

“I’ve seen my share of software demos,” Pluger notes. “Companies usually overpromise, overstate their AI, and present features only using demo data.” Payference’s promise to connect live to her NetSuite instance in twenty-five minutes – without IT – shocked Pluger.

“My goal is to really test, even break, a new software. With Payference, I couldn’t. Within minutes, I saw my data and new insights. Follow-up emails were primed to send. Nothing else required.”

LED Supply Co. also consulted two other vendors during due diligence. “No one offered me a demo with my data. They wouldn’t promise a quick on-ramp either.” LED Supply Co. needed immediate return: “I basically am the IT department,” laughs Pluger.

A drawn-out implementation or technical, IT-dependent project was a non-starter. Risk Profile Total $2.35M Still, Pluger was skeptical. Going from demo to operational with a finance and accounting team is unnerving. “From day one, I received individualized attention. Payference answered any questions on our weekly calls. Quickly, we were running on our own.”

Results

The real test came when the COO wanted to test drive Payference. His first response: “This is amazing, can we just use this for all of our cash flow and collections management?’”, recalls Pluger.

Team leadership appreciates the simple, clear, visual reporting on everything from DSO and bad debt to sales ratio and payment trends by customer.

According to Pluger, Payference isn’t just easier, it also delivers meaningful ROI. Before Payference, LED Supply Co.’s DSO was 65. Today, it is under 50 – improving cash flow

“We have automated, outbound communications and follow-up sequences. Further, our payment options expanded.” With the click of a button, customers can pay via credit card or ACH. Pluger appreciates that storing sensitive data is a thing of the past, too.

Finance loves the improved productivity. But other teams are also excited. “In a leadership meeting, the Sales team shared how clients actually enjoy the payment experience.” They asked: ‘Can we send all our invoice communications through the new platform?” “When’s the last time sales and finance loved the same thing?” laughs Pluger.

Of course, not every step was seamless.

“Early on, we had the occasional reporting or data load bug,” admits Pluger. The difference, she says, is that the team provided immediate fixes. “We never had to file tickets or deal with long hold-times.”

In fact, Pluger notes how her feedback made its way into the product development roadmap: “We talked about features like generating invoices and displaying open credit memos, and I was told that Payference planned to make these updates.” She assumed a year or more.