AR Insights in Five: Rich Shively and Jess Scheer

In this episode, Jess Scheer talks with Rich Shively, a credit and collections expert with over 27 years of experience, recorded live at IOFM Fall. Rich shares his insights from a panel focused on the common challenges AR professionals face when customers extend credit terms, delay payments, or miss them altogether.

Rich brings a practical perspective, drawing on his vast experience across companies of all sizes, to discuss how AR teams can maximize cash flow and streamline credit and collections without relying on expensive automation tools. He shares best practices for managing manual processes that still make a powerful impact on cash application, credit control, and customer service, offering listeners valuable, actionable steps to improve their collections approach and strengthen customer relationships.

Rich Shively

- 27 years Credit/Collections experience, from small sized companies to multi-billion dollar organizations
- 20 years Managerial experience
- 5 years Safety Management experience

- 2 years cost accounting experience
- BBA – Accounting, Western Michigan University
- MBA – Finance, Western Michigan University

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 Rich Shively. Rich has 27 year of credit and collections experience, from small-sized companies to multi-billion-dollar organizations. He has 20 years of managerial experience, 5 years of safety management experience, 2 years of cost accounting experience, a BBA in Accounting from Western Michigan University, and an MBA in Finance from Western Michigan University. He'll be interviewed by IOFM's own editor, Jess Scheer. 

00:00:56                     

Jess Scheer: So I'm here with Rich Shively, who just came out of his session on mitigating credit risk – great response. What are some of the big lessons that folks took away?

Rich Shively: Yeah, I think probably the big thing is, to begin with, where are we from a financial perspective? We took a broad-based economic factor look, and we were able to kind of go from, okay, we've got a new president coming in. Where is it from an economic perspective? What are some of the key concerns of those who are firmly entrenched with the economy? And how do we filter that down for our credit strategy?

Jess Scheer: Big challenges. The economy is changing. We saw the Fed cut rates again. The economy, on a macro level, is good. But that doesn't mean that every industry is going well, right?

00:01:50

Rich Shively: Exactly. The two things that I pointed out were the fact that transportation costs are still significantly high. They're 18% over a two-year timeframe, and energy costs are still double digits over a two-year timeframe.

What that does is that it impacts the supply chain piece. That doesn't mean those that are labor intensive and transportation intensive are going to have a little bit of a financial struggle, even where we are now. 

Jess Scheer: Absolutely. So when you're extended credit to sell them things, you have to be really cautious.

Rich Shively: Yes, absolutely.

Jess Scheer: So one of the things that I've learned from this conference is understanding the challenges of tracking the industry that a client is in, the market conditions that they're in, the other challenges that face them uniquely, because everybody's in a different situation – in addition to tracking their own financials.

00:02:51                     

Rich Shively: Right. That's absolutely the perfect way of looking at it. I may be in the construction industry – well, there are certain other impacts of the construction. Where are mortgage rates at? That may not impact those in the food service industry, but the transportation costs will.

Jess Scheer: Switching gears, let's talk about the IOFM Fall Conference. What have your big learnings been?

Rich Shively: Oh, they always say, if you go to a conference and you get one good point, it's been a successful conference. I think I've probably gotten two or three good points. The first and foremost is I haven't really looked into the AI piece, and today I attended two conferences that were specific to AI. It certainly got me thinking about it. We're not a particularly large company where I come from Quality Edge, but if you're in a growth and expansion mode, that is something that cannot be ignored long term.

00:03:59

The other one is in – I've talked about it with some other folks. I've gone to a couple of AP sides. From an AR strategy, going to that AP session allows me to understand what an AP manager needs. Maybe it's three-way match. Maybe it's simply getting a better proof of delivery, or something like that, in order for us to be paid from an AR perspective. Those were kind of the two takeaways that I've got. The AI was probably the most interesting. 

Jess Scheer: Great. From your perspective of your other colleagues, would you recommend this conference for them?

Rich Shively: Without question. If I had more folks that I could bring on our AP side of things, I certainly would, because there is a lot to glean. You've got such knowledgeable finance professionals here, with a lot of enthusiasm toward process improvement and "What can we do to be better as a department?"

00:05:00

I would certainly love to bring along other colleagues. 

Jess Scheer: Great. We'd be glad to have them. Thanks so much, Rich.

Rich Shively: Thanks.

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.