Customer Experience and Collections: Rethinking the Role of Accounts Receivable

This IDC Market Perspective examines a structural gap in how organizations use the data their AR teams already generate. Collections is often where customer risk becomes visible first. Payment timing slips, disputes pick up, and responsiveness drops. These signals rarely travel beyond finance in time to inform sales, customer success, or credit decisions. Drawing on IDC's 2026 SaaS and Agent Path Survey (n = 130 AR respondents), the document outlines why organizations miss these signals, what it costs them when they do, and what the leaders are doing differently. The takeaway is not better collections execution; it is treating collections as an early signal layer for customer health and connecting this signal to the rest of the business while there is still time to act."Most organizations already have the signal. The difference between the leaders and everyone else is whether they use it while it still matters." - Kevin Permenter, senior research director, Financial Applications at IDC