3,000 payments a day. Half the processing cost.
Baldwin EMC is Alabama's largest electric cooperative and one of the fastest-growing in the nation. See how it cut the cost of processing mail payments by 50% while absorbing 50% customer growth.
Eight people, calculators and a daily trip to the bank.
About 3,000 payments reach Baldwin's accounts receivable department every day, most as paper checks, with spikes on Mondays and at the start of each month. A staff of eight opened and sorted the mail, then typed and totaled payments on calculators to build deposit slips.
One calculator mistake meant re-entering the entire batch, and the office was spending too much time and money on payments.
Baldwin needed imaging, recognition and data management in one system.
How the new process runs, step by step
- How payments are scanned, verified and balanced in batches of 250
- How amounts are read and cross-checked, with only exceptions sent for review
- How change-of-address requests on stubs are caught automatically
- The customer bill dispute settled in minutes, without leaving the desk
- Where the 50% cost reduction came from
“Our old receivables process was cumbersome, requiring a significant amount of manpower.”
Absorb growth. Not headcount.
Read the full story of how Baldwin EMC modernized payment processing.