RCI Group gains 10 days in customer reminder processing with LeanPay

Based in the French Caribbean (Guadeloupe and Martinique), RCI stands for “Radio Caraïbes International”. The group includes several local radio stations (RCI, NRJ Antilles, Bel Radio), a radio advertising agency (Régie Caraïbes) and a digital agency (ADWEB).

We spoke with Claire Delaere, Customer Service Manager, about her daily use of LeanPay and the impact it has had on receivables management since its rollout in June 2024.

Before LeanPay

Manual reminder tracking across 11 separate files

Manual update of received payments with the accounting team

10 days needed to process reminders

No visibility for sales reps on reminder actions taken

With LeanPay

Centralised reminders on a single interface

Automatic matching of payments with invoices

Reminders triggered as soon as a due date is exceeded

Sales teams with access to the full reminder history for their customers

One person chasing invoices for 11 sales reps

RCI’s advertising agencies cover Guadeloupe and Martinique, with both private and public customers. Customers have 30 days to pay invoices.

Claire Delaere manages all reminders for both Régie Caraïbes and ADWEB. That means following up on about 1 000 customers spread across the 11 sales reps. Before LeanPay, everything was tracked in Excel:

“Each sales rep had her own spreadsheet with all her receivables. I tracked reminders by writing ‘reminder 1 done, reminder 2 done, etc.’ […] But within a week, I couldn’t chase all the customers from the 11 sales reps, so it took two weeks to get through them all."

Payment tracking was manual as well. “I exported Excel data from our billing tool once a month. Then, the accountant sent me the bank’s payment records, and when it was paid, I ticked it off.”

Reminders took a huge amount of time. Each email was written manually, and invoices had to be retrieved from the billing software and attached one by one.

"Receivables have to be managed daily. When I started handling Guadeloupe, then Martinique and finally ADWEB, we quickly needed a solution to relieve me," explains Claire Delaere.

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Centralising and automating customer receivables reminders with LeanPay

After a first test with ADWEB, the group decided to add Régie Caraïbes as a second entity. Today, Claire Delaere works on two separate accounts, both synchronised in real time via Sage 100 integration.

RCI’s reminder process in LeanPay is structured around two plans:

• A main scenario covering most customers: seven reminder steps by email, with a phone call at step 3. An automatic pre-due notification is also sent 10 days before an invoice falls due.
• A specific scenario for public customers: two reminder steps, by email only.

Using LeanPay makes Claire Delaere’s daily work much easier. Reminder tracking is now far more structured, as it is organised by reminder level rather than by sales representative.

"I do all my level 1 and 2 reminders and I’m done. Then I handle level 3 and 4 separately. This saves me a lot of time," says Claire Delaere.

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Reminder processing time reduced by 10 days

For Claire Delaere, the main benefit of LeanPay is time savings and responsiveness. "When I managed reminders without LeanPay, it took me a week to process invoices for five sales reps. There was always a 10-day gap between the first and last invoices. Now, all reminders are handled on time."

This also frees up time to focus on more complex cases. "Now I have more time for level 3 reminders and beyond. I can call customers and tailor my approach."

In the advertising sector, late payments remain common despite reminders. But Claire Delaere has seen improvement: "The key is to be consistent with reminders. With LeanPay, we’ve educated some customers who now pay on time."

Claire Delaere is also very satisfied with the LeanPay team’s availability and responsiveness in addressing her needs within the product. “Ninon [LeanPay’s Customer Success Manager] quickly understood our organisation and always finds solutions to our challenges. I don’t want to change provider!"

The next step is to involve the entire sales team in the reminder process, using comments and action history on customer records. Claire Delaere explains:

"Since LeanPay is connected to Sage, it’s brilliant for the team. Sales reps no longer need to call me to check if a payment has been received or if a deposit is due. They can access everything directly in their customer record."