9 Things To Know When Planning Your B2B Payment Processing Strategy
Winding down Q2
3 min read
Chris Cosgrove
:
May 28, 2013 1:26:00 PM
Were pretty sure this is not a question that Luke Skywalker posed to Yoda in the Dagoba swamps, but based on our experience it is largely subjective based upon your current technology investments and infrastructure and also the strategic direction youd like to take your back office organization. How so? Well, scanning is definitely an additional step in the process of moving a transactional document like an AP invoice for those who are managing entirely manual processes. (Meaning, if youre not really willing to give an AP automation initiative the old college try, youre probably better off leaving it in the manual state you dont want a Frankenstein hybrid of old and new parts, but rather, take the time to invest in a fully functional automation solution). From an outsiders perspective it may seem unmeritorious because it adds additional labor effort and processing time, but the mitigating factor is that a quality scanned image can be largely converted to data via an Advanced OCR based capture process, making the scanning a necessary step to true process acceleration. Without the OCR, scanning is largely done just to get rid of paper filing, but little gets done to improve the process. While, thats still a step in the right direction to living the paper-free back office dream, most companies would like to have their cake and eat it too by having the paper-free back office and without necessitating data entry or scanning.
So coming back to the strategic direction, a thought to consider is where is your company at in terms of establishing a Shared Services environment. Most Enterprise level organizations have led the way in creating efficient, centralized processing and customer service centers that are focused to non-core areas like Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Information Technology and many others. In keeping with this type of approach these types of companies largely have investment dollars to fund the requisite hardware and infrastructure that is required to handle high volume transaction processing. But many micro, small, and mid-size companies lack the human resources and financial capital needed to transform these types of processes.
These are just a few ways to improve invoice processing in your organization and is by no means exhaustive. Another alternative, as mentioned above is a full Business Process Outsourcing approach, though this is typically done by only the largest organizations, and with the understanding of ceding certain process contrls
To learn more about Accounts Payable software vs e-Invoicing and other Accounts Payable best practices check out our eBook below!
Although we may be inclined to say that our accounts payable automation solution is the best on the market, the reality is that the needs of each...
That's what Plato said anyways....but, we tend to agree, however that most airline...