Every finance team tracks Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), but far fewer understand what is actually causing it. And the financial impact of delayed collections can be significant.
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That gap comes at a significant cost. According to The Hackett Group’s 2025 U.S. Working Capital Survey, the 1,000 largest U.S. public companies have $1.7 trillion tied up in excess working capital, equivalent to 11% of their annual revenue. Accounts receivable alone represents a $600 billion opportunity, with an 18-day difference in DSO between top-performing and average organizations. The report also found that DSO has worsened for two consecutive years. Supporting this trend, Atradius reports that 43% of B2B credit sales in North America are overdue.
The difference isn’t simply about collecting payments faster. High-performing organizations have better visibility into their orders, invoices, customers, and collections across systems. Others spend time reconciling disconnected information before they can act. As a result, cash remains tied up for longer, not because it cannot be collected, but because fragmented systems slow the process.
Why DSO is Difficult to Improve
Every finance team tracks Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), but understanding why it changes is much harder.
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That’s because the information needed to explain DSO is spread across multiple systems. Invoice details are stored in the ERP, contract terms may be in the CRM or a document repository, proof of delivery is tracked in the logistics system, payment disputes are managed through service tickets or emails, credit approvals sit with the finance team, and payment confirmations come from banking systems.
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Each system contains part of the information, but none provides the complete picture.
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So when a CFO asks, “Why did DSO increase by four days this quarter?”, finding the answer often becomes a manual exercise. Finance teams extract data from multiple systems, match customer records with different identifiers, reconcile inconsistencies, and prepare reports that are often outdated by the time they are complete. According to Ledge’s 2025 Month-End Close Benchmark Report, 50% of finance teams still take six or more business days to close their books, with reconciling data across multiple systems being one of the biggest challenges.
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The issue isn’t that finance teams are inefficient. The problem is that the information they need is fragmented across disconnected systems.
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As a result, improving DSO becomes more than a finance challenge. It becomes an enterprise information challenge. Every quarter, organizations build another integration, another report, or another spreadsheet to answer the same question. Yet the underlying fragmentation remains.
What Needs to Change
This pattern isn’t unique to the finance department.
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The same challenge appears across procurement, supply chain, customer service, manufacturing, and operations. Every function depends on information spread across multiple systems, with each system holding only part of the story.
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Traditional integration projects help systems exchange data, but they don’t necessarily create a shared understanding of the business. Data warehouses centralize information for reporting, while master data initiatives standardize key records. Yet business users and AI applications still need to connect the relationships between customers, orders, invoices, suppliers, shipments, and payments before they can answer complex business questions.
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To reduce the Enterprise Fragmentation Tax, organizations need more than connected systems. They need a shared business understanding that brings information together and preserves the relationships between business entities.
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This is where an Enterprise Intelligence layer can make a difference. Rather than creating another system to store or report on data, it provides a common business context across existing systems, allowing AI and business users to understand how different parts of the enterprise relate to one another.
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UniVerse by Trinamix is the Enterprise AI that actually knows your business. It connects existing enterprise systems and transforms fragmented data into one governed business model that can power AI, analytics, decision intelligence, and enterprise workflows. This allows organizations to build on their existing technology investments while giving AI and business users a consistent understanding of the business.
How UniVerse by Trinamix helps
For finance teams, this shared business context can be particularly valuable in understanding what is actually driving DSO. Improving DSO starts with understanding why payments are delayed. That requires a complete view of the Order-to-Cash process, bringing together information that typically lives across ERP, CRM, logistics, customer service, banking, and finance systems.
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UniVerse by Trinamix connects these existing systems and creates a shared view of key business objects such as customers, orders, invoices, shipments, payments, and disputes. Instead of manually reconciling information from multiple applications, finance teams can trace the entire lifecycle of an invoice, from order creation and delivery to payment collection, in one place. This makes it easier to identify the true cause of delayed payments, whether it is a disputed invoice, missing proof of delivery, incorrect payment terms, a credit hold, or an operational issue.
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With this shared business context, finance teams can move from reactive reporting to proactive collections. Rather than spending days explaining why DSO increased, they can identify risks earlier, prioritize overdue accounts based on root cause, and take corrective action before delays affect cash flow. The result is faster collections, better working capital visibility, and more informed decision-making across the Order-to-Cash process.
Use case: DSO you can actually explain
UniVerse by Trinamix helps finance teams understand and improve DSO by providing a connected view of the entire Order-to-Cash process. It enables organizations to:
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- Connect data across ERP, CRM, logistics, finance, and customer service systems to create a unified view of customers, orders, invoices, shipments, payments, and disputes.
- Trace the complete lifecycle of an invoice to identify the root cause of delayed payments, whether it is a shipment delay, invoice dispute, credit hold, missing proof of delivery, or payment behavior.
- Ask business questions in natural language, such as “Why are these invoices overdue?” or “Show me the complete health of this customer,” and receive answers grounded in connected business data rather than isolated reports.
- Gain a 360-degree customer view by bringing together revenue, receivables, payment history, aging, service risks, and account concentration in a single place.
- Prioritize collection efforts by identifying high-risk accounts, highlighting overdue invoices, and recommending the next best action based on business context.
Take immediate action by generating collection emails, triggering approval workflows, or updating operational systems directly from the platform, helping finance teams resolve issues faster instead of simply reporting them.
Final thoughts
Finance teams don’t struggle because they lack data. They struggle because the information they need is spread across different systems, with no single view connecting it all.
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UniVerse by Trinamix brings this information together into one shared business view. Instead of manually piecing together customers, orders, invoices, shipments, payments, and disputes, finance teams can understand the complete story behind every receivable.
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Organizations that achieve lower DSO aren’t simply collecting payments more aggressively. They’re able to quickly understand why payments are delayed and take the right action before those delays impact cash flow.
References:
- The Hackett Group. 2025 U.S. Working Capital Survey: https://www.thehackettgroup.com/2025-working-capital-survey-payables-rebound-receivables-inventory-lag/ – the $1.7 trillion excess working capital, 11% of aggregate revenue, $600 billion accounts receivable opportunity, 18-day DSO gap, and second consecutive year of DSO deterioration.
- Payment Practices Barometer: B2B Payment Practices Trends in North America 2025. 2025. https://group.atradius.com/knowledge-and-research/reports/b2b-payment-practices-trends-in-north-america-2025 – the 43% overdue B2B credit sales figure.
- Ledge, reported by CFO.com. Month-End Close Benchmarks 2025. 2025. https://www.ledge.co/content/month-end-close-benchmarks-for-2025?_sp=2ff1ef23-7454-4640-97d7-495c9fb167fe.1784812487446 – 50% of finance teams take six or more business days to close, and the finding that reconciling fragmented data across three to five systems is the main bottleneck.
