Managing National Accounts commonly splits into three main parts.
– How to manage the National Account’s non-standard rules
– How to manage the non-standard billing
– How to ensure the franchisees (or technicians) know what the special rules are
– Running through how we do it, may give you some ideas for your network
Non-Standard Rules
This is the ‘key’ one because everything else follows from it. It could be needing to use special products, or services, different SLAs, Rates, Purchase Orders, Allowed limits and possibly third party portals once onsite.
It starts first with setting up the National Account. Are there any specific SLAs, rate cards or products and services which need to be used on that National Account’s jobs.
Then when adding the job to the system, any rules you can apply at this point should be applied. This means the job will be created with the correct information, so a valid Rate Card, or SLA, a purchase order when required, etc and this will make the billing process easier, because you’re ensuring that all necessary information is captured.
Jobs with missing information are the main reason for holding up payment.
Non Standard Billing
National Account jobs are usually charged via a time and/or product basis.
We set up rate cards which are specific to that national account, so the ‘wrong’ rate card cannot be used when adding jobs.
Similarly when a specific set of product are required, these are added and set against the National Account, so that only National Account approved products can be added to the jobs
This ensures that the job is correctly priced.
Because we know the billing requirements for the national account, it also means that we can apply special Royalty, or MSF, rules when it comes to Royalty billing at the end of the period too.
How to ensure Franchisees and technicians follow the rules.
As we saw when setting up the job, if the system will automatically apply the restrictions for that National Account, the franchisee, does not need to remember all the details. The system guides them to ensure they only select valid options.
Similarly for the technician’s app. When they are on site, the App ensures that they capture all the information they are required to do at the required time, even if that is ensuring they log onto (and off off) a customer’s third party portal.
When they are reaching an allowed limit, the technicians are warned so that they can contact their franchisee to gain additional approval for the extra spend, ensuring that they don’t go over budget without realising.
Summary
By building into your system the rules around National Accounts, you gain the following benefits
National Account jobs go through to payment with less interaction
Franchisees get paid faster
Less work at Headoffice managing the ‘queried’ Invoices
If you would like to know more about how we manage National Accounts, please contact us.
