RANKING OF A SET OF ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE STRATEGIES IN A MEXICAN REGIONAL COMPANY BASED ON A MULTICRITERIA APPROACH

ABSTRACT Account receivable can help companies expand sales and reduce inventory; however, bad debt in account receivable is not uncommon, and it dramatically occupies company funds. Therefore, the study on the problems existing in managing the account receivable of a company is necessary. For this reason, the selection of a final accounts receivable strategy needs to consider at least two factors of importance: decision-maker preferences and fuzzy preference information in the decision criteria. In this paper, a multicriteria approach for ranking a set of accounts receivable strategies in a company is proposed, and the case of a Mexican regional company is presented. The proposed model considers all the above factors. The approach uses the ELECTRE III method to obtain a recommendation per the decision maker’s preferences. The results showed that the most preferred alternative is visiting an account receivable executive at home and agreement calls. Insights gained from this applied research had practical implications for the decision- maker, including a better understanding of the problem and its value, reflected in a credit management department setup.