The economic recession is disappearing and making way for a promising recovery period that challenges financial managers to be creative and strategic in managing their company's working capital. To meet the challenge, business owners and financial managers have access to technology improvements that are finally materializing after decades of promise and interesting data and analytics to help guide decision-making.

With these market trends in mind, financial managers who pull corporate levers are starting to see returns on the bottom line. But this is not without difficulty; the availability of more technology, data and analytics may make the evaluation and selection process more challenging.

Your accounts receivables are superimportant

In CFO's 2012 "Cash & Liquidity Management" report, results from a survey of CFOs and other financial professionals pointed to accounts receivable improvements as a key area for managing working capital. When asked to rank from most important to least important the "main dimensions of working capital," the respondents ranked "receivables performance" first, above both "inventory management" (second) and "payables performance" (third).

When asked what changes would contribute the most to cash flow management, respondents again pointed to receivables performance and collection, ranking both "motivating account relationship holders to support collections activity" and "delivering better reports on account delinquencies across the company" as two of the top three influential changes.

This is in line with cash management advice outside of the CFO.com publication. During a "cash management" presentation at the June 2014 Construction Financial Management Association in Las Vegas, Stephen Lords preached that accounts receivables are by far the most influential way to manage cash in the industry.

But how can you influence receivables performance?

It appears that receivables performance greatly influences working capital, but perhaps the more important consideration is what influences receivables performance?

As interesting as the marketplace is right now for technology products and analytical data evaluations, advice about improving receivables performance is riddled with a lot of anecdotal information. Companies are generically encouraged to nurture customer relationships, for example, or to get more buy-in across the company to the importance of cash and collections.

The only apparent exception to the anecdotal advice is the quickly growing marketplace for e-invoicing and e-payments, which promise to remove paper, postage and unnecessary steps from the payment process to speed up turnaround times on invoices.

While this is great and moves the needle a bit on a company's DSOs, it does nothing to address the bigger accounts receivables questions: How do companies get their invoices treated as a priority above others, and how do they avoid aging receivables and payment problems?

Is the answer better management and inspiration of the front lines? Can companies get measurably better and consistent at receivables performance by managing to policies more efficiently?

Use technology and data to empower staff to influence receivables

Financial managers, business owners and others ought to think about receivables management the same way they think about anything else in their company.

They must look past traditional "financial services" and other service providers and ask these two questions: What technology platforms are available to make our receivables management process better, and what data or analytics can we use to empower the front lines to make better decisions?

In a recent conversation with the CFO of a billion-dollar construction supply company, the CFO expressed that there are technological solutions being built for every business process; it's the executive's goal to analyze each and determine which will make the biggest top- and bottom-line impacts, as well as which would best position the company to meet its goals.

This CFO was exactly right.

First, there are technologies out there to solve almost every business problem. Financial managers must break the mold a bit with how receivables and collections management has traditionally been handled (i.e. through services), and actively look for real technology platforms that can improve their business processes. These technology products are out there, and they are not the new "dashboards" created by a long-time service provider. Go out and find them.

Second, just because a technology exists doesn't mean the technology should be adopted. The business's overall goals must be examined, as should the anticipated impact of each technology. Companies only have so much bandwidth to adopt and implement new technologies, and that bandwidth should be used wisely.

Conclusion: Humans are important, but should be empowered

One reason anecdotal advice surrounds any discussion of receivables performance is because the management of receivables has historically been so personal and manual. Still today, huge organizations with sophisticated ERPs and other technologies, still rely on Excel, institutional knowledge and good instinct when managing receivables.

The fact that receivables management is complex and nuanced does not excuse it from the trend that applies to everything else. This business process can be improved through technology and data insight.

Humans and the experience of controllers, credit managers or collectors will always be important to companies. Nevertheless, if a company wants to positively influence their receivables — as they claim they must to manage cash in the recovering economy — they must embrace what's available to them to empower those humans and make them more effective than ever.