Reducing DSO by 20 Days Across 9 Companies: The Example of Plenetude
Simon Rauturier, Administrative and Financial Director of the Plenetude group, explains how he manages his group's cash flow with Agicap.
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Key takeaways
Plenetude is an engineering firm based in the Rhône-Alpes region, specialising in project management and safety and health protection coordination (SPS). It consists of 9 companies, 85 employees, and generates a turnover of 7 million euros.
The group has been a client for over 2 years, during which time its turnover has nearly doubled.
Thanks to Agicap, Simon automates the detailed analysis and consolidation of his financial information for reporting, can determine the best financing mix for growth, and has reduced his DSO.
" Thanks to Agicap, we have been able to make decisions on opening branches, investing in our operational equipment, and also for our office works. "
9
entities make up the group, including 6 branches.
20-day
reduction in DSO post-Agicap deployment
12
bank accounts connected to Agicap.
Customer’s history
The Plenetude group was founded 25 years ago by Laurent Penicaud and Sylvain Girardet in Lyon. It specialises in energy renovation and integrates numerous trades, from engineering to site supervision, including fluid, thermal, and structural design offices. Its clients are mainly condominiums and offices in the tertiary sector.
For example, the group renovated 3 buildings of the Château Gaillard condominium in Villeurbanne, including facade refurbishment with external thermal insulation, renovation of collective heating, and installation of 120 solar panels.
The group has experienced accelerated expansion over the past fifteen years. Following the opening of the Annecy branch, branches in Grenoble, Chambéry, Sallanches, and Vienne followed. The group now covers the entire Lyon region and the Alpine arc. In terms of numbers, the workforce is expected to grow from 85 to over 100 by the end of 2023, while turnover has seen double-digit growth for the past 4 years, reaching 7 million in 2022.
It was in this context of growth that Simon Rauturier joined three years ago as Administrative and Financial Director. His daily tasks focus on finance and management control, but his scope also includes the IT department. He currently manages a team of 2 accountants who work on general accounting and collection.
" Agicap has allowed us to make the right decisions with much more confidence than managing our cash flow on Excel. "
Customer’s needs
Provide consolidated financial information across all trades and territories to senior management and deliver relevant financial information to each manager, despite accounting and legal activities being distributed across several distinct entities.
Save time on data processing to be able to step back, create scenarios, and make the right decisions.
Reduce the time to collect customer receivables and the time spent on follow-up to increase available cash.
Know the cash flow capacity to finance their growth and determine the best financing mix for each project.
Solution
The first part of Agicap's deployment aimed to address the challenges of automating cash flow data processing, allowing Simon to focus on analysis and decision-making. Indeed, while project management is housed under separate legal entities, the design office part is spread across multi-territory legal entities. Before Agicap, the finance department spent a significant amount of time reprocessing this data in Excel.
" Agicap provided me with data that I had little or none of, which took me a lot of time to produce and consolidate; and even some data I could not aggregate due to lack of time. "
Agicap was thus deployed across the entire group's scope, including its 9 companies (including a holding company) and connected to its 12 bank accounts and ERP. Transactions and invoices are uploaded daily to Agicap, where they are categorised by the algorithm and feed reports into dashboards. Simon then uses this information for his reports to senior management and operational managers: "To extract our cash flow data and our monthly reporting, we rely solely on the KPIs provided by Agicap." This allows him to have a consolidated view but also of the performance of each trade.
Agicap also enabled the creation of cash flow forecasts for 1 or 2 years. For example, in the context of business development, Plenetude was able to compare the acquisition of a firm with internal development by opening offices and recruiting staff, as well as comparing financing options to define the best mix. “Agicap allows us to compare different financing scenarios. Recently, for example, we decided, by making 24-month cash flow plans, to finance a month of WCR through a banking institution,” explains Simon.
The year 2022 saw Agicap launch a new module for dunning and collecting customer receivables. At that time, the Plenetude group noticed an increase in its DSO. Due to its growth, the group was managing between 400 and 500 customer invoices monthly with a follow-up process that had not evolved sufficiently.
Simon therefore renewed his trust in Agicap by becoming one of the first Cash Collect clients. The results quickly materialised, with the time spent on dunning and collection halved and a 20-day reduction in DSO. In addition, Simon gained visibility, particularly on the real-time calculation of his DSO.
In summary, for Simon, Agicap is "a reliable, ergonomic, and revolutionary tool for cash management" and is "a leader in the SME segment."
Conclusion
Agicap is the ideal software for managing group cash flow, as it allows financial data to be consolidated and deconsolidated to present the right information to each stakeholder while saving time for the finance department.
Agicap is an evolving software that grows with its clients, regularly developing new features based on their feedback and needs.
The impact of Agicap is both qualitative (confidence in decision-making, visibility on the future) and quantitative (optimisation of the financing mix, reduction of DSO).
