AR Insights in Five: George Uko and Jess Scheer

Join us for a quick, insightful 5-minute episode featuring George and Jess, two thought leaders in Accounts Receivable. Recorded live at the IOFM Fall Conference & Expo, this episode dives into their biggest takeaways from the event, industry lessons learned, and practical insights for AR professionals.

George and Jess will share their most impactful moments, including sessions that sparked new approaches and innovative ideas in AR. You’ll gain practical tips from their session takeaways that can help streamline AR processes and improve workflow efficiencies. You’ll also hear about the latest tools, trends, and best practices that are shaping the future of AR.

George Uko

George has 20+ years of credit management experience in various positions. He has worked with American Express, Commerce Bank, Bayer Animal Health, Thermo-Fisher, and Staples. George’s background includes Fraud Management, Chargebacks, Cash Application, Credit, Collections, New Accounts, Reporting, and Forecasting. George enjoys developing high-performing teams and utilizing AI technology. He is a dedicated and proactive finance professional with a strong background in credit and fraud management. He is an ambitious and hardworking manager who draws upon a solid base of knowledge and experience to develop new strategies and policies. He collaborates with multiple levels of a company to learn and share best practices. He has a process improvement mindset, and seeks ways to improve productivity and efficiency.

Jess Scheer

Jess is an award-winning business reporter focusing on financial operations. He has spent more than 25 years creating must-have content for professionals in the finance arena. He serves as Executive Editor of the Institute of Finance & Management (IOFM) and the Cash Management Leadership Institute (CMLI).

Transcription

Grace Chlosta: Welcome to the IOFM podcast. This is a podcast for accounts payable and accounts receivable professionals who want to stay in the know with current AP and AR trends and ideas. We'll be interviewing professionals in this space on a wide variety of subjects, including automation, artificial intelligence, career growth, compliance, leadership, and much more.

Today we'll be interviewing George Uko. George has 20+ years of credit management experience in various positions. He has worked with American Express, Commerce Bank, Bayer Animal Health, Thermo-Fisher and currently works for Staples Promotional Products. George's background includes fraud management, chargebacks, cash application, credit, collections, new accounts, reporting and forecasting. George enjoys developing high-performing teams and utilizing AI technology.

He is a dedicated and proactive finance professional with a strong background in credit management and fraud management. An ambitious and hardworking manager who draws upon a solid base of knowledge and experience to develop new strategies and policies. Collaborates with multiple levels of a company to learn and share best practices. With a process-improvement mindset, he seeks ways to improve productivity and efficiency. 

00:01:20

Today, he'll be interviewed by IOFM's own editor, Jess Scheer. 

Jess Scheer: Well, I'm here with George Uko at the Fall IOFM Conference. We just came out of his session, where he was talking about five ways to optimize process improvement. So what were some of the big takeaways from your session?

George Uko: I think some of the big takeaways is to really understand your CRM. What does it offer? What are some of the things that you can do with it?

Probably the biggest thing that was a takeaway is what version you're currently using with the system, because one of the things that we learned over time is you may have Oracle, you may have SAP, but it also depends on what version you have. 

00:01:57

Those different versions are the ones that give you that additional flexibility in utilizing some of the automation. 

Jess Scheer: Right, so we're talking about ERPs.

George Uko: Mm-hm, correct.

Jess Scheer: So the challenge is they keep updating, right, for SAPs. S/4HANA the latest and greatest, but some folks are so many versions back; they're having a challenge catching up. What are some of the new features that you're seeing that are worthwhile updating?

George Uko: You know what's interesting is one of the ones that – my last presentation was more around as far as the payment processing. Before, we had to use as far as another vendor to take as far as the payments [sic]. So we were paying X amount of dollars for that. Lo and behold, I learned, as far as with SAP and Oracle, they could do the same thing. It may not be as robust, but, at the same token we were paying (as far as those additional fees). So, by utilizing that, we're actually going to be saving some money.

00:02:56

The other thing that did is also telling us that we need to relook at what we're paying for, for the automation, and trying to determine: Is it worth keeping the automation, or can we reduce some of the automation? 

Jess Scheer: And that's huge because automation is not cheap.

George Uko: Correct.

Jess Scheer: And for AR teams, especially the midsize to small ones – the large, massive, multibillion-dollar AR teams can justify investing in whatever tool they want. They've got the scale to justify it. But those that are under a certain threshold really have to make some hard choices.

George Uko: Correct.

Jess Scheer: And we're talking about not just cash out, but whether they want something scalable to add things over time. It's a real challenge. But the fact that ERPs can provide some of that is fascinating.

George Uko: And I think a lot of times businesses aren't watching their ERP systems enough to know that there are updates. There's different things. But the other thing that I've also learned is some businesses don't update their ERP system, so they don't have the latest and greatest of that particular system.

00:03:57                     

Jess Scheer: So let's switch gears and talk about the IOFM Conference. We're wrapping up day one. What have been some of your lessons learned?

George Uko: Lessons learned? Once again, networking, talking to as far as different people. Another thing, lessons learned, is true from all the different conferences I've been [to] with IOFM. You're not in this alone, so getting out there, talking to people, understanding that what they're running into is probably the same thing you're running into. And probably the biggest thing I would say is learning the best practices. So when I get back to the office: "Hey, here are some of the best practices that I learned. Can we go ahead and adopt some of these best practices?"

Jess Scheer: I've been saying this all day, but the learning isn't just the two and a half days that are here. It's networking with folks that then become your best friends that you learn from all year long.

00:04:44                     

George Uko: Exactly. And with AR itself, a lot of times you feel like you're on your own island, so being able to talk to other people [who are] running into the same situation is probably the best thing ever.

Jess Scheer: Awesome. Given that, would you recommend coming to a conference for your colleagues?

George Uko: Oh, I would definitely recommend [it] because, once again, there's a lot of knowledge being shared. The more knowledge that you learn, that you can take away, the better your organization is going to be.

Grace Chlosta: Thank you so much for listening to the IOFM podcast. Remember to head on over to the Member Forum to discuss today's episode and provide ideas for our next one. And to stay up to date on IOFM's current events, both in-person and virtually, head on over to IOFM.com.