Trace a DSO Spike With Five Whys
Diagnose a DSO increase by tracing collections symptoms to process causes.
Collector pressure Billing-readiness control Symptom Cause chain Process fix DSO spike DSO rose by 13 days, but the overdue notes point to rejected invoices rather than unwilling customers. If you fix the wrong layer, DSO improves for one week and then drifts again. Root cause Five Whys applied to receivables Ask why repeatedly until the team reaches a process cause it can change. Stop when the next action prevents recurrence, not when blame feels satisfying. Push harder Treats the symptom as collector effort. Collections effort focuses on the true bottleneck. Do not ask collectors to compensate for upstream defects forever.…
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