Digital transformation is critical for all aspects of your business – including accounts payable processes.

Upgrading and enhancing a few processes without doing the same for others leads to bottlenecks in productivity. All of your processes and functions must be operating on the same level to prevent any hindrance to your teams’ productivity. Unfortunately, accounts payable processes are often forgotten about when it comes to digital transformation. This is a major mistake that many organizations make because suppliers and invoices naturally connect to almost every business function.

According to SmartInsights, already 66% of companies are planning to digitally transform. There are multiple reasons for digital transformation, but they all come down to a combination of five primary objectives.

What are the challenges to optimal accounts payable processes?

1. The majority of the incoming invoices are still paper-based resulting in high cost.
2. Too many exceptions – This pulls your team away from other key tasks and makes it difficult to break out of a manual processing mindset.
3. Poorly-managed AP process cause a lack of compliance
4. Ad-hoc methods foster  a lack of control
5. Inefficient and unpredictable processes result in missed early payment discounts

There are many ways to achieve this through digital transformation, from optimizing workflows to automating day-to-day processes. However, it’s all too common for companies to completely ignore the possibilities that a robust solution offers to your teams managing an increasing number of invoicing tasks.

For example, a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solution for invoice capture can automate the manual steps during the beginning data entry process, which is already a step in the right direction for many companies. However, this is just the first step – more robust systems integrate this step into a fully automated set of validations and business rules that companies leverage to digitally transform the process even further. 

OpenText’s Intelligent Capture Solution doesn’t just automate the first steps of data capture, it ingests the entire document enabling it to match the document’s data with an intelligent database. This effectively lets it match any information captured from the document to accounts, goods receipts, supplier data, and more already managed within your financial systems.

Furthermore, when paired with a Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) solution, you can gain a complete end-to-end view and more control over your invoice lifecycle, allowing you to see the invoice status throughout the process and achieve continuous improvement through powerful analytics.

This is only the start of the digital revolution for invoice capture capabilities. Let’s take a look at some of the additional benefits of digitally transforming your accounts payable processes.

5 Reasons to digitally transform invoice capturing

Enable remote working

The workforces of every organization are becoming remote. According to Upwork, 41.8% of the American workforce continues to work remotely. Although an estimated 26.7% will still be working from home through 2021, 36.2 million Americans (22% of the workforce) will be working remotely by 2025. The same applies to your employees who work with invoicing. Digitally transforming your invoice capturing department will enable your employees to work remotely.

Go paperless

According to research by Harvey Spencer Associates, 80% of B2B transactions are still paper-based. Going paperless can save a company thousands of dollars in used paper, prevent loss or the use of outdated documents, protect critical information, and allow your teams to work from anywhere. Digitizing your invoice capture capabilities can offer these advantages for your finance department, creating an efficient, safe and convenient work experience for your suppliers and your employees.

Reduce to cost to capture invoice data

According to Business Insider, enterprises using digital payable platform solutions can see 81% lower processing costs and 73% faster processing cycle times. This means that you can accomplish more with your team than if you relied upon manual processes. Ultimately, your company can save on human resources and errors by digitally transforming your accounts payable process.

Ability to better handle invoice complexity

As your organization expands, you will have to deal with various kinds of invoices from an array of vendors and countries. Many of these vendors will have their own formats and standards, including different languages and currencies. . With a digitally transformed invoice capture process, you will be able to recognize a wider variety of invoices for faster processing much quicker than ever before.

Reduced costs through a simplified, single solution

Many companies look for point solutions to solve specific needs in Accounts Payable processes, using RPA for ingestion, content platforms for their documentation needs, and a separate ERP system for financials.   Unfortunately, despite this, 62% of invoice information is manually entered into financial systems according to BearingPoint, and documents manually filed. By digitizing invoicing with an end-to-end solution, companies can integrate robust invoice capture and content management capabilities directly with financial and procurement systems like SAP, ingesting invoice data and documents to streamline their processing.

A Solution for Invoice Automation

Automating the capture of documents such as invoices can revolutionize the operations of a business for the better. One such solution that can optimize the productivity and efficiency of this process is Intelligent Capture for SAP Solutions (IC4S).

Intelligent Capture for SAP Solutions automates the digitization of a broad array of incoming SAP-related documents. The solution combines machine learning with an invoice knowledge base, enabling a more agile approach to document capture.

Here are some of the features of Intelligent Capture for SAP:

• A single capture solution for all business processes. 
• Machine learning in conjunction with RPA removes and processes errors automatically.
• When coupled with SAP Vendor Invoice Management by OpenText, it provides an industry-leading, end-to-end account payable automation solution that processes any incoming SAP document whether for VIM or Business Center.  
• Removes multiple licenses, upgrade paths, and support structures.

Your partner to better innovations

Digital transformation is difficult, yet businesses try to do it all themselves. That’s why over 70% of attempted digital transformations fail. If you want to succeed in your digital transformation efforts, whether it’s implementing automation or adopting a new content management system, you need a professional with years of experience to guide you.

When it comes to using and installing OpenText solutions for your business, there is no better implementation partner than Qellus. Qellus has decades of experience with OpenText capture solutions and invoice management solutions, including the latest versions.  We have helped customers select the best choice for their business scenario, from ICC to BCC, and also to the latest IC4S.

If you are looking to understand what Intelligent Capture can do for your Accounts Payable team, get in touch to have a member of our team contact you or visit our Automated Invoice Processes page.