Tesca: Building a Group-wide cash culture with My DSO Manager

The challenge: Building a Group-wide cash culture across an international industrial organization

As a global supplier to the automotive industry, Tesca operates in an environment where operational excellence and financial discipline are inseparable. With approximately €350 million in annual revenue and more than 20 manufacturing sites across Europe, North Africa, Asia and the Americas, the Group manages a highly decentralized Accounts Receivable operation serving some of the world's largest automotive suppliers.

Unlike many industrial groups, Tesca negotiates commercial agreements centrally while each manufacturing site invoices customers locally. While commercial contracts are negotiated at Group level with automotive manufacturers, invoices are issued locally by each production site to Tier-1 suppliers operating within their respective regions. This decentralized model provides operational flexibility but also creates significant complexity for Accounts Receivable management and the Order-to-Cash (O2C) process, requiring consistent governance across multiple countries, entities and customer relationships.

When the company entered a period where liquidity became a strategic focus, management identified Accounts Receivable as one of the largest untapped sources of cash generation.

When cash became a strategic priority for the Group, Tesca embarked on a transformation that extended far beyond implementing new software. The objective was to establish a true cash culture, supported by real-time visibility, standardized collection practices and shared accountability across the entire organization.

"At one point we realized that profitability alone wasn't enough. What really matters is having cash available. When we looked at where our cash was, we found it sitting in inventories and customer receivables."

Aurélie Fillon - Group CFO - Tesca

The context: Managing Accounts Receivable in a decentralized organization

As a result, Accounts Receivable performance depended heavily on local practices, making it difficult to obtain a consolidated view of customer exposure and overdue receivables across the Group.

Previously, teams had to extract data from the ERP, process it in Excel and manually reconstruct the history of customer interactions.

At the time, the level of overdue receivables represented a major challenge for the Group, particularly in terms of optimizing cash flow and improving working capital management. Rather than viewing collections as solely a Finance responsibility, executive management decided to transform cash management into a company-wide priority involving Finance, Credit, Sales and operational leadership.

Fast deployment across an international organization

The project was delivered on a particularly ambitious timeline. Only a few weeks after the kick-off, deployment was already underway across the Group's various entities:

1. 1
   January 19, 2024: initial presentation of My DSO Manager as part of the tender process.
2. 2
   February 20, 2024: contract signed.
3. 3
   February 23, 2024: project officially kicked off.
4. 4
   Mid-April 2024: on-site training in Spain.
5. 5
   Late May 2024: on-site training in Morocco and Tunisia.
6. 6
   Late June 2024: on-site training in Slovakia, Germany and Portugal.

This hands-on, local support played a key role in the project's success. By involving local teams from an early stage and training them directly in their working environments, Tesca accelerated adoption of the solution while fostering consistent practices across the Group.

While some sites adopted My DSO Manager immediately, others required a more gradual transition. The platform's flexibility made it possible to tailor the pace of deployment to each team's level of maturity, while maintaining consistent governance, processes and KPIs across the Group internationally.

From local collections to Group-wide governance

My DSO Manager became the central platform supporting this transformation. Instead of each manufacturing site managing collections independently, the Group established a common framework allowing overdue receivables to be monitored centrally while preserving local operational ownership.

The platform provides a single source of truth across all entities, enabling management to identify payment delays, investigate disputes and intervene before issues escalate.

Daily visibility has replaced periodic reporting. Management teams can immediately identify unusual payment behaviour, monitor collection performance by entity and ensure that corrective actions are taken without waiting for month-end reporting.

"This new level of visibility fundamentally changed the way Accounts Receivable was managed across the Group."

Aurélie Fillon - Group CFO - Tesca

Every reminder, interaction and customer commitment is documented directly in My DSO Manager, providing full visibility and traceability throughout the collection process. The platform also makes it easier to distinguish genuine commercial disputes from administrative issues and straightforward payment delays, allowing teams to focus their efforts where they can have the greatest impact.

This shared visibility has improved data quality, encouraged greater discipline in accounting processes and enabled faster resolution of payment issues.

"Everyone has access to the same information, from the collection specialist to the Managing Director. This level of transparency creates accountability across the entire organization."

Jean-Marc Thore - Group Treasury Manager - Tesca

Measurable improvements in cash performance

Through a combination of standardized processes, executive sponsorship and continuous monitoring, Tesca has achieved a very significant reduction in Group overdue receivables, while sustainably improving Accounts Receivable management and overall cash performance.

Today, My DSO Manager enables teams to:

• Monitor overdue receivables in real time across all manufacturing sites.
• Coordinate collection efforts between Finance and Sales.
• Document every customer interaction.
• Escalate payment issues earlier.
• Identify recurring disputes more quickly.
• Strengthen cash forecasting through improved visibility.

Cash collection becomes everyone's responsibility

One of the most significant outcomes of the project has been the emergence of a genuine cash culture. Collections are no longer viewed as the responsibility of a single Credit or Finance team. Commercial teams, plant finance managers, Group Finance and executive management now work from the same information and share common objectives.

Because many customers purchase from multiple Tesca manufacturing sites, commercial teams also play a critical role in coordinating customer relationships across entities.

The platform has also uncovered differences in customer payment behavior that had previously gone unnoticed. Many customers work with several Tesca entities, and their payment patterns can vary significantly from one production site to another. By consolidating information across the Group internationally, Tesca's teams now have a comprehensive view of each customer relationship. This enables them to coordinate actions across sites, share best practices and implement a more consistent collection strategy for major international accounts.

The result is a collaborative approach to collections, where overdue receivables are addressed collectively rather than independently by each location.

"Cash has become a mindset across the entire company. It's no longer just the responsibility of Credit Management."

Jean-Marc Thore - Group Treasury Manager - Tesca

A platform designed by Credit Management professionals

One of the aspects most appreciated by Tesca's teams has been the practical design of the solution. Its intuitive interface, configurable workflows and customer collaboration capabilities have simplified routine collection activities while improving documentation and communication.

Rather than reflecting an IT perspective, users felt the platform was built around the day-to-day realities of professional Credit Management.

"My DSO Manager wasn't designed only by IT people. It was designed by credit managers who understand the reality of the job."

Jean-Marc Thore - Group Treasury Manager - Tesca

The quality of customer support has also been highlighted as an important differentiator. Beyond the solution itself, Tesca's teams particularly value the availability of the project managers and the responsiveness of the support team, both throughout the deployment and in their day-to-day use of the platform.

"The support team is always available whenever we need assistance. Beyond the software itself, what really makes the difference is the quality of the guidance we receive and the team's understanding of our environment."

Jean-Marc Thore - Group Treasury Manager - Tesca

Continuous improvement across the Group

Tesca continues to strengthen the use of My DSO Manager across all its international operations and entities. While many manufacturing sites have fully embedded the platform into their daily routines, the Group is continuing to drive user adoption, reinforce best practices and encourage greater use of advanced functionalities.

"The sites that embraced the platform quickly are also the ones with the strongest Credit Management performance."

Aurélie Fillon - Group CFO - Tesca

This continuous improvement approach is driven as much by evolving processes as by ongoing user support. For Tesca, technology is a powerful performance enabler, but long-term success ultimately depends on team engagement and a shared governance framework.

The objective is no longer simply to improve collections. It is to establish consistent Credit Management excellence across every entity while ensuring that cash remains a shared responsibility throughout the business.

Redefining cash governance in a complex industrial environment

Tesca's experience reflects a broader shift taking place across many international industrial groups today.

Improving cash performance is no longer simply about accelerating collections. It requires robust governance, consolidated visibility over Accounts Receivable and the involvement of teams across the organization around a shared objective.

By combining a dedicated Credit Management platform with a strong cash culture driven by management, Tesca has transformed the way it manages Accounts Receivable. What was once a decentralized process has become a strategic lever for managing cash, controlling risk and improving operational performance.

This transformation demonstrates that, within international multi-site organizations, technology creates value only when supported by harmonized processes, strong governance and shared accountability.

Tesca's journey reflects a principle increasingly embraced by high-performing Credit Management organizations: when everyone has access to the same information, works according to the same standards and pursues the same objectives, Accounts Receivable becomes a genuine driver of value creation for the business.