Accounts Payable Automation

Challenges:

Non-standard documents – Time-consuming to sort and send invoices through an approval process due to the fact that they arrive in all manner of ways: pdfs attached to emails or paper documents through the post, and often combined with other document types. Asking suppliers to change their process is pointless; even if they are willing to do so, they may lack the finances or the technical skill to upgrade their software tools.
OCR technology works but is not enough – In practice, OCR-enabled platforms used to process invoices achieve a small rate of automation, around 30% from scanning to ERP posting. Reasons are multiple – missing information on invoices, scanning failures, PO matching errors, paper print quality, etc.
Errors and exceptions – There are usually lots of errors and exceptions and, most of the time, correcting them involves phone calls, tens of emails, and arguing with suppliers. Often invoices don’t have an associated PO and the approval process is usually manual, with an employee taking the paper invoice to their supervisor’s desk with a post-it attached.

Business implications:

High costs and time-consuming activities for supplier invoices processing;
Lack of visibility and control, too many errors and delayed approvals;
High audit risks, potential fraud and fines for non-compliance with industry regulations;
Late-payment penalties and lost leverage in negotiations with suppliers.

Value Proposition

Increased productivity through automation and digitization of accounts payable business processes:

Fully automated data extraction and no more manual keying to ingest and manage huge volumes of documents and make them available on demand to potentially thousands of users simultaneously;
Boost productivity and revenue while mitigating bottlenecks;
Enhance vendor relations with better access to current and accurate vendor information
Improve cash flow by streamlining workflows, initiating reminders and shortening the payment cycle
Ensure regulatory compliance and avoid fraud with well-managed business processes and workflows using preconfigured rules, roles and actions, enhanced security, powerful retention capabilities to store documents in a tamper-proof format and full-audit trail;
Ensure accurate, on-time financial reporting with instant access to AP information
View, access, share, and collaborate on documents across your organization or with external stakeholders.

Enhanced operational and cost efficiency:

Easy configuration removes any project or technology barriers and allows for the automatic capture of additional document types, regardless of volume;
Accelerate order-to-pay operations across the enterprise through integration with existing ERP;
Increase ROI, more opportunities to capture early-payment discounts through faster cycle times and eliminate late fees;
Faster resolution of supplier inquiries with ready access to invoice and payment status;
Better and faster business decisions leveraging a more accurate AP visibility.

How it looks?

Solution Benefits

Optimized and simplified process of receiving, managing, monitoring and routing invoices, quotations, order confirmations, delivery notes, sales orders, remittance advices and related documentation across all departments;
Eliminate error-prone manual paper handling and data entry to increase accuracy and minimize the risk and cost of litigation due to incorrect entry of data from financial documents;
Intelligent data enrichment and core business processes automation based on business rules and roles freeing up the workforce for more valuable activities while reducing the cost per transaction;
Eliminating time-consuming responses to invoice and payment status queries leveraging a simple but powerful integrated self-service user interface for accounts payable team to quickly access business information contained in financial documents, throughout their full lifecycle;
Automate back-office processes (managing invoices, approving payments, calculating penalties, managing changes in the contracts, etc.) and other processes that have a direct impact on cash flow and profitability;
Easy to access, share and collaborate on account payable documents across your organization or with external stakeholders;

Gain additional efficiencies and cost savings through integration with other applications and systems;
Decreases accounts payable invoice cycle times and eliminates late fees to achieve significant savings, better supplier relationships and greater discounts
Eliminates research, manual keying, problem querying and manual routing, and detects duplicate invoices as early in the process as possible
Enhanced compliance with internal and external financial reporting regulations and fraud prevention through carefully enforced business processes and full audit trail;
Faster time-to-value leveraging an extensive set of predefined workflows with robust and extensible baseline functionality, shortening implementation time and reducing deployment costs
Create and operate a self-service system for company employees and ensure swift and automated processes for approval and distribution of accounts payable procedures;
Better and faster business decisions using built-in reports and data models to turn insights into action • Faster resolution of disputes with instant access to data and online collaboration;
Gain leverage in negotiations with suppliers;
Identify opportunities to optimize electronic payment usage and streamline accounts payable operations.