Lost Billable Hours, Late Invoices: How Corient Recovered $8.6M in Revenue for a Global Outsourcing Leader

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Highlights

• Timekeeping errors stayed unresolved until month-end, so worked hours never reached client invoices.
• Operations managers lost 15–20 hours a week to manual validation, and bills took 18–20 days to go out.
• Corient set up a dedicated Revenue Assurance team to validate time data daily against client contracts.
• The client recovered $8.60 million in billable revenue from 2021 to 2023, with bills now out in 5–8 days.

Introduction

In an outsourcing business, time is the product. Every hour an agent works on a client campaign should appear on that client’s invoice, at the rate agreed in the contract.
A leading global outsourcing company, running more than 8,000 FTEs across 31 campaigns and 43 locations, knew its billing was not capturing all of that time. Timekeeping errors piled up during the month, deadlines forced invoices out before they were fixed, and the unbilled hours were simply lost.
The company came to Corient to close that gap. What began as a pilot for its top clients grew into a centralised Revenue Assurance function that protects revenue every single month.

The Initial Problem: What Went Wrong?

• Billing was prepared by Operations using separate time tracking and shift scheduling tools.
• Any mismatch between punch times and scheduled shifts fell into an error code.
• Errors waited until month-end and, in the rush to bill, most went uncorrected.
• Late corrections delayed invoices beyond the timelines agreed with clients.
• Operations spent 15–20 hours weekly on this work while revenue kept leaking.

Corient’s First Solution: The Fix

Corient moved time validation out of Operations and into a specialised team, starting with a pilot:

Hired a skilled team to run a pilot for the client's top clients.
Mapped the existing billing process and recommended the process changes needed.
Agreed a fixed schedule to reconcile the time tracking and scheduling tools.
Introduced daily reporting on pending and resolved errors.

The New Problem: A Surprise Roadblock

Scaling to the client’s Top 20 and critical campaigns brought new challenges:

• Each campaign had its own contract terms, billable hour caps, and invoicing rules.
• Time data was spread across scheduling, login tracking, and Power BI systems.
• Invoices were prepared by Operations, Finance, or Client Services, depending on the campaign.
• The team needed tools, system access, and agreed work windows for every campaign.
• Every error had to close before the billing cut-off.

Corient’s Second Solution: Fixing the New Problem

Corient built a centralized, 10-person Revenue Assurance team embedded in the monthly billing cycle. The team:

• Pulls time data from the Power BI dashboard every day and flags each timekeeping error by type.
• Confirms corrections with team leads by email and raises tickets for anything still unresolved.
• Validates maximum and overtime hours, plus any other checks required before invoicing.
• Reconciles billable hours against client data and each contract’s terms.
• Reports weekly on maximum versus actual billable hours, so gaps surface early.
• Supports month-end timecard close and compares actual invoices against estimates for Client Services.
On-time invoices, with maximum revenue billed.

The Final Outcome: A Success Story

Beyond the fix, Long-term benefits delivered:

Key Takeaways: Why This Matters for Businesses

• In time-based billing, every uncorrected timekeeping error is revenue a business has earned but will never invoice or collect.
• Leaving corrections until month-end guarantees that deadline pressure beats accuracy, and the unbilled hours quietly disappear.
• Daily validation turns revenue leakage from a month-end surprise into a routine, measurable process that teams can manage.
• Billing checks belong with a specialised team, operations managers should spend their time running campaigns, not chasing timecards.
• A focused pilot on top accounts proves value quickly and builds a clear, data-backed case for a wider rollout.

Outsourcing businesses lose billable hours all the time without noticing, with the right controls, Corient turns timekeeping data into revenue you can actually invoice.

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