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OPINION
Creating streamlined business
processes should be a priority for
all business leaders – regardless
of industry sector or size of
business. After all, what company
director isn’t focused on the
goals of reducing costs, creating
efficiencies and increasing
competitiveness?
Optimising business processes
leads companies on the right path
to achieve these ambitious goals.
According to a recent report by IDC
1
,
the dominant trend last year and
in the next 12 months is to work
out how to streamline back-office
processes in particular. This shows
that businesses are starting to wake
up to the significant opportunities
that lie here to drive competitive
advantage and keep down costs.
Out of all the back-office processes
to automate, there can be no doubt
about which one to prioritise. To my
mind, automating invoice processing
is a no brainer – for any size of
organisation. After all, this is the
process that directly impacts payment
cycles and cash flow.
With Automated Invoice
Processing (AIP), paper invoices are
scanned and loaded into the software
solution, along with electronically
delivered invoices, such as email
attachments. The system extracts the
data, validates the information on
the invoice and sorts documents into
electronic ‘queues’ according to the
next required step, such as approval
by a certain person in the business.
Business process management
(BPM) software allows certain rules
to be set up in order to implement an
efficient approval, payment and query
resolution process.
Effective automated invoice
processing doesn’t stop there, as
there may still be layers of approval
requiring human intervention that
can lead to invoices being paid late
or in some cases being mislaid to the
Faster processing
To help organisations increase the productivity of
accounts payable departments and reduce invoice
processing costs, ABBYY has introduced ABBYY
FlexiCapture for Invoices.
The turnkey solution enables the capture of invoices
at the start of a process and centralised extraction and
validation of data. It supports straight-through processing
for PO-based invoices and automatically identifies
invoices requiring approval.
ABBYY FlexiCapture for Invoices is a standalone
module that can integrate with organisations’ existing AP
and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
Key features include:
n
Multi-Channel Processing.
Invoices can be captured
with scanners and mobile devices, as well as by fax
and email, as they enter the organisation.
n
Automatic Supplier and Buyer Identification.
Captured invoices are automatically classified into the
appropriate supplier and purchasing business unit.
n
Data Extraction and Purchase Order Matching.
Data needed for invoice approval and payment is
found on the invoice automatically. Line items on
the invoice are matched against line items in the
corresponding purchase order.
n
Touchless Processing.
Validated invoices can be
sent for approval immediately. If they have been
successfully matched against a PO and approval is not
required, the invoice can be sent straight to payment.
detriment of supplier relationships.
The solution is AIP technology,
which can check if an invoice
matches (or very nearly matches)
the purchase requisition of works
order and send it straight through
to the accounting or ERP solution
for payment. This means that only
invoices with recognisable errors
or problems will require clerical or
managerial attention.
At the other end of the process,
the archiving of documents
in a centralised system helps
businesses improve traceability.
This is becoming an important
consideration in regulated vertical
sectors, but is actually beneficial to
all organisations. It means that if a
supplier phones up to find out about
the status of an invoice, authorised
personnel can quickly and easily find
it on the system. Gone are the days of
having to sift through piles of paper
to locate a specific invoice. That
concept belongs to a bygone era.
ABBYY recently surveyed
Accounting and Finance
professionals and asked them what
benefits they thought AIP offered
their business. Around two thirds of
respondents identified both financial
(65%) and operational (67%)
benefits, highlighting how automation
can address tangible and intangible
goals.
When asked to identify AIP’s top
operational benefit, faster processing
(19%), improved accuracy (18%) and
reduced burden on management
time (19%) all received a similar
number of votes, demonstrating the
diverse benefits it can bring to an
organisation.
In financial terms, savings from
improved business processes came
out on top, with 23% of respondents
selecting it as the main financial
benefit. One in 10 (11%) singled out
savings from headcount reduction,
highlighting how easy it is to produce
a business case for investment.
In many countries, finance
departments are deploying automation
in response to a European directive
to control and reduce payment cycle
times between companies. It might
not be too long before a similar
mandate is introduced in the UK,
starting with public sector authorities.
Compliance or no compliance,
it’s clear that the operational and
financial benefits on offer mean AIP
should feature on all businesses’ IT
spend lists for 2015. It’s time to take
the finance department out of the
dinosaur age and into the digital era.
With 86% of invoices still received on paper or as PDF documents,
Chris Haden argues that it’s time to take finance departments out of the
dinosaur age and into the digital era.
Don’t be a dinosaur
Chris Haden is managing director
of Formscan. An ABBYY partner,
Formscan is a leading supplier
of solutions to improve the
management and processing of
business documents.
Chris Haden:
invoice processing
is a no brainer
1 Business Workflow Automation By Vertical, Company
Size, MPDS/BPS, Print Volume Reduction – Past and
Next 12 Months (IDC #247483)
