4 Key Reasons to Implement an ECM Solution for AP Automation

If you have found yourself reading this article, it likely means that you are either:

    a) Looking to implement an AP automation solution into your Accounts Payable department

    b) Suffer from critical business issues in your AP department that are costing you and your organization time and money

    c) Have already implemented an ECM solution into another department and are looking to expand into your AP department as well

    d) Looking for pictures of apes, forgot to type the “e” and wound up here instead

Why Automate Your Accounts Payable Workflow?

Manual data entry and paper-based AP processes generally mean you are likely struggling with extended processing times, and slow exception and non-PO approvals.  An excessive amount of time is probably spent finding and filing documentation that validates business transactions to your ERP core.  Redundant data entry into multiple systems is inefficient, frustrating, and prone to input errors.  Your high cost of printing and storing print lists to adhere to legal requirements is costing your business money that could be better spent elsewhere and you more than likely have a dedicated staff that is required to manually capture and index supporting documents.  Predicted as the department most utilized as entry into ECM, AP Automation was voted by our staff as being one of the key departments that can benefit from an ECM solution in 2014, and here are four reasons why.

1. Increase visibility.  ECM allows you to provide access to important documents regardless of physical location.  At any point in your business process, your solution should be able to automatically link documents to existing ERP transactions—or even auto-create links upon document capture.  This would mean that even in decentralized operations, workers won’t have to search in multiple locations for information.  Everything would be at their fingertips—right from your ERP screens—shrinking cycle times without adding training costs.
2. Reduce costs.  AP automation provides a decrease in labor costs due to fewer employees needing to enter and manage data.  Outside of labor savings, most companies see a large increase in Early Payment Discounts, and a large decrease in print cost, paper-based file storage, and employees needed to manage those physical documents.
3. Reduce errors.  Find a solution that allows you to electronically capture content, such as that in invoices, and then automatically share invoice information with your ERP.  This will eliminate manual errors and speed up your business processes.
4. Improve efficiency.  If you are currently prone to slow approvals for payment decisions because of missing documentation, decentralized operational delays, or document routing errors to those needed to approve the transactions, then AP automation will be able to bring you much happiness.  Missing documentation is virtually eliminated as your central repository holds each and every document that should be coming through your department.  Additionally, using workflow automation would allow your company to set up business logic and rules to route documents and exceptions, and automate approvals to the correct employee/supervisor.

For more information on Naviant’s Accounts Payable solutions, please check out one of our case studies, view the OnBase difference in AP solutions, or contact us and one of our AP solution experts will get back to you shortly.

Full Disclosure: Naviant Inc. is a business process management provider to executives and organizations requiring innovative and complete solutions to critical process and document flow challenges.  We are a leading, certified solutions integrator and support provider for best-in-class enterprise content management solutions and technologies.