In 2010, two powerhouse tool and hardware suppliers merged in a $4.5 billion deal that created Stanley Black & Decker. Despite the size of the newly merged entity, its credit and collections team was operating in a manual decentralized environment.

The $10 billion company also was undermined by an in-house billing system that was costly, time-consuming and slow to get invoices to customers, resulting in sluggish payments. To address these challenges, Stanley Black & Decker created an order-to-cash center of excellence, a team tasked with streamlining working capital processes, accelerating payments and reducing past-due accounts receivable (AR) balances and days sales outstanding (DSO).

After creating new processes to make reducing AR balances a priority, the team implemented SunGard's AvantGard GETPAID software to assist in consolidating data, automating manual collection processes and driving collections management.