blast off in short order, while leaving many laggards agape at how someone could have the nerve to red-line their tachometer and leave them in the dust. Accounts Payable automation is similar in this aspect, though in a strictly digital way.
Getting Your Accounts Payable process up to speed!
One of the key tenets of any successful Accounts Payable automation initiative is the outright necessity of having a flexible invoice onramp. What do I mean?
they could be going into limbo (worst case), or they could be getting keyed in by staff (slow, costly, and error prone), either way there is room for improvement.
So how do you craft your Accounts Payable process to perform like that European engineered thoroughbred above?
) documents to digital format as a service.
Create a dedicated inbound Accounts Payable email account expressly for the purpose of giving your vendors a consistent plan of action for electronic invoice submission. If you have invoices going to multiple AP staff, by going to a centralized, AP invoice receiving address, and feeding that to your processing engine, you can speed up the process, while eliminating individual chokepoints.
Convert faxed invoices to digital and route via point #2. Faxes are soon to be an obsolete technology, though it is amazing the level of entrenchment they have in various vertical fields, and most specifically healthcare. To improve your Accounts Payable automation effort, make sure you have a service capable of converting faxes to Tiff/PDF instead of outputting to paper and auto-forward the inbound traffic to your dedicated AP email inbox for immediate processing.
Improve Vendor Relations through a vendor portal. Including your vendors in the AP process is key, and doing so can greatly help decrease inbound call traffic to your AP staff. By giving your vendors access to their submitted, electronic invoice images, and by providing them visibility to where those invoices are at within your approval process is key to enhancing your vendor relationships. Also, more advanced Vendor Portals in strong Accounts Payable automation suites allow advanced matching mechanisms against open Purchase Order data, greatly increasing auto 2-3 way matching accuracy.
Create a record of EDI transactions. Electronic Data Interchange is the gold-standard of P2P integration the world over. Theres a reason that best in class companies like Walmart rely upon EDI transactions for over 95% of their invoice transactions. However, getting all vendors to adopt EDI is not a reality due to cost and technical resource issues around setting up live EDI connections. Additionally, many companies struggle with the burden of mining out transaction details in a cogent and presentable format, so a good Accounts Payable automation package will enable you to produce an invoice image from an EDI transaction that can be used as a supporting document for that record. Part of a comprehensive, and flexible invoice on ramp is having the technology in place to produce an EDI to invoice template.
For more information on how to improve your Accounts Payable process, and especially your invoice processing costs, check out the eBook below!
we guarantee. So how do you go about getting your vendors to embrace the changes that you create for them when you embrace a wholesale Accounts Payable automation initiative, especially one that integrates a vendor portal approach.
Weve repeatedly seen that certain vendors, and typically smaller organizations, can tend to be a bit more zealous to their approach to checking on transaction details and getting paid fat stacks (for all you Breaking Bad fans yoooooooo!). But seriously, how do you help the problem children get over the hump of new technology adoption.
.good luck getting them back on the bandwagon to use it again. People have a short shelf life for being receptive to trying new technologies, so make sure however you present the system to them, that it doesnt look like the cockpit of an F-16. From our perspective, by the way, the point of a vendor portal is to facilitate faster invoice processing through instantaneous invoice upload, as well as providing a search and retrieval component that is inclusive of the supplier so they can participate in the chain of custody of their invoice and unlike Mick Jagger get some satisfaction!
Show them the way. One step that is often overlooked is going beyond a clean UI. In todays hectic world, make it easier for your vendors to adopt the new way of doing business with you by providing training materials to get the adoption youre looking for. I can hardly think of anything that I purchase at this point in time that doesnt get some serious investigation through blogs or optimally through YouTube. This is really going beyond the status quo to delight your supplier base and make them raving fans of your new fangled approach, but ultimately its a win for both parties. They can self-serve, and you can get them up off your back if theyre hounding your AP staff.
Identify those willing to accept discounts. This has been huge for many of our customers who are actively implementing or trying to increase their adoption of early payment discounts across their supplier base. As a baseline, you can at least identify those who are willing to provide some favorable terms in exchange for faster payment, and certainly one of the tenets of AP software is that it expedites the end to end AP process. Do this by offering up an opt-in option during their registration process and youre good to go! This can then auto trigger either your AP or Procurement staff to follow up on it with the supplier and then lock it down in terms of details.
its that whole S curve thing we learned in Macroeconomics back in the day!
Til then, cut your teeth on other ways to cut your processing costs in our eBook Uncovering the 7 Costs to Process an Invoice and learn how to trim the fat out of your Accounts Payable process!