Where's Your Payables Pain?
Posted by Francis Hart on Thu, Mar 04, 2010
It's been my experience in working with our clients and prospects that there is a recurring and common theme in discussions regarding AP and invoice processing activities .... Pain. More specifically, it's how can an AP operation refine their workflow through automation? "There has to be a better way" is a common refrain. Well, as pain relief we are helping to alleviate it, to streamline it and to help prevent it from coming back.
When we are asked to help automate the AP and workflow process, we advise by asking clients to identify their "pain points" or more commonly, "where does it hurt?" The responses are overwhelming ... and it usually leads into a self-diagnosis of specific areas where problems and inefficiencies continue to plague an AP workflow operation.
To continue the "triage" theme, we help clients to identify their pain points, to think in terms of their major areas of workflow and invoice processing ... these are common themes:
Inbound Vendor Invoices by snail mail, fax and e-mail; we know cold and flu season is upon us but it seems the pain always starts here ...
Data Entry; we know our mothers always told us to eat slowly but sometimes, we have so many invoices to consume and not enough time or resources to help with the volume ... indigestion, etc, the most painful of all ...
Approvals and Routing; we know that if we are waiting on others and we don't get our invoices paid on time, we miss out on early payment incentives ... yes, you guessed it, more pain ...
Payment and Inquiries on Payment; it seems that this pain comes back to visit us? The when and where is it pain ....
Archiving, Reporting & Document Management; How do we make sure that this pain doesn't come back? Do we have to dig through cabinets for audit reports?
Guess what ... We have been able to identify causes. For example, are increasing volumes of monthly invoices starting to overwhelm your AP data entry staff?
Have you calculated the cost of "pain" per invoice for each physically handled piece of paper? Are your approvers, project managers, budgetary advisors and distant office locations holding up the approval process? We have a cure ... workflow automation, improves processes and web based technology would be a step towards better AP workflow health. It can also help with vendors inquiring on approval and payments.
After all that is said and done, we have been successful in determining our clients sources of pain. We have advised on a path to better health and we can safely say, the "patient" is well on their way to full "pain" relief.