Aderant: Aderant BillBlast reduces write-downs and increases revenue at Cole, Scott & Kissane
Background: As an award-winning defense firm with thirteen offices located throughout Florida, Cole, Scott & Kissane processes 80-90% of its bills electronically through an eBilling portal, amounting to upwards of 10,000 invoices a month. With such a high volume of eBills, Cole, Scott & Kissane needed a legal eBilling solution that it could rely on, and Aderant BillBlast’s automated eBill submission, tracking, and appeals management features checked all their boxes.
A Newfound Confidence in Systems Data
Cole, Scott & Kissane’s decision to replace its existing legal eBilling software with BillBlast was reinforced by Aderant’s commitment to addressing the ever-evolving complexities surrounding legal billing. BillBlast’s proven accuracy and billing status insight with real-time reporting capabilities was a welcomed change from the unreliability of their legacy software.
After unflagged billing errors within their existing solution delayed revenue realization, the firm was impressed by BillBlast’s Historical A/R Processing feature. Through the processing of all historical outstanding invoices, the firm was able to uncover failed submissions, errors, and payment issues that were previously unidentified within their legacy eBilling solution. With the ability to identify and prioritize these existing errors, the firm found their confidence in the data generated by BillBlast to be unparalleled. Lauren Polo, Application Systems Administrator for Cole, Scott & Kissane, remarked,
“We have visibility unlike we’ve ever had before; the team is able to operate from a real-time dashboard filtered to those invoices that they are responsible for and are able to own the responsibility of ensuring the bills get submitted to a stage of payment processing by the client. Our collections team was tasked to uncover these issues in the past because the billing team did not have accurate information in the solution they relied on and therefore had to pull that detail from many different places. BillBlast pushes that information to them all in one place.”
With the Historical A/R Processing feature, at-risk revenue was identified, errors were resolved, uncollectable revenue was efficiently written-off, and the collections department was able to focus their attention on collectable accounts receivable.
A Targeted Approach
Under their earlier billing solution, the firm was forced to implement a manual review process to constantly confirm the status of eBills on vendor sites. The process also required team members to monitor an email inbox for errors and short pay notices from vendors; the inability to efficiently cut-through this content resulted in costly missed appeals deadlines, often unnoticed until the collections department reviewed the invoice months later. The firm’s inability to rely on its existing solution was not only a burden on the staff who had to implement these manual processes but was also detrimental to revenue realization and client relationships.
On day one of using BillBlast, Cole, Scott & Kissane was able to operate from a current, accurate status for all invoices. Deduction analytics allowed staff who would otherwise have to devote substantial portions of their day to the manual review process to instead focus their time on “following the money.” Four months into implementation, the firm saw a return on investment significant enough to conclude that BillBlast was “paying for itself.” Ed Aguero, CFO of Cole, Scott & Kissane, noted:
“For anyone considering this product [BillBlast], you will be pleasantly surprised with your return on investment. My partners operate as not just attorneys but also as business investors, and their biggest question is always, ‘When will I see my return on this investment?’ I told them we could expect to see ROI in about a year, but after just four months in, we’ve been able to re-purpose staff and have initiated client conversations that impacted large amounts of revenue that was previously at risk. We have already seen that return and then some.”
Real Users, Real Praise
An audit of over 21,000 of the firm’s existing invoices conducted using BillBlast’s Historical A/R Processing feature uncovered compliance issues in thousands of invoices managed in their legacy eBilling solution. The existing solution’s inability to alert the firm to these issues created a risk of significant loss in revenue. Polo remarked,
“I was shocked when seeing the dashboards, and to be very candid, I freaked out a bit. It is eye-opening to now have visibility into the issues contained within the firm’s billing that I was never able to see before – we had 1000’s of bills that needed billing team member attention that no one had on their radar as needing review.”
BillBlast has also been instrumental during staffing transitions. When two members of the billing department left, the firm was able to easily transfer a member of the collections department into billing; BillBlast allowed the staff member to immediately match the productivity levels of the more seasoned billers. The seamless repurposing of staff would not have been achievable with the limited features available within the firm’s legacy solution.
The benefits of BillBlast have been recognized firm-wide, from the billing department to the executive team. Offering his concluding thoughts on Cole, Scott & Kissane’s transition to BillBlast, Aguero stated,
“The bottom line is that it’s a great product. Our only regret is that we just wish we had made the move sooner!”
Is your firm ready to make the move to BillBlast? Get in touch with Aderant today to discuss how BillBlast can tackle all your eBilling needs.
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