Driving Up Usage Levels for Electronic Supplier Payments
Introduction A variety of electronic payment options for suppliers have been around for a number of years now, but a significant percentage of vendor payments are still made by paper check. This is especially true in North America, which tends … Continue reading
Improving Accounts Payable Processing Efficiency Through OCR Technology
Introduction Even though Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology has been readily available for several decades now, a significant number of the major companies in the world do not currently utilize it. With the recent advances in this technology, which have … Continue reading
Mandating Electronic Payments to Suppliers
Introduction Since the 1980s, when considering improvements to the Accounts Payable process, companies around the world successfully deployed solutions that evaluate Accounts Payable as one component of the Procure-to-Pay process. This yielded improved efficiencies between functional areas, and often eliminated … Continue reading
Pushing Supplier Portal Use for Non-EDI Invoices
Introduction For Accounts Payable departments which are processing thousands of transactions every day, while it’s helpful that a high percentage of transactions are automated using ERS (Evaluated Receipts Settlement, where no invoice is required to generate payment), EDI (where invoice … Continue reading
Different Approaches to Global Process Owner Design in Purchase-to-Pay
Introduction Utilizing an organizational design that includes the role of global process owner for an end-to-end process area, such as Purchase-to-Pay, is considered a best practice by many companies. However, the manner in which global process ownership is configured and … Continue reading
Enhancing the Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) User Experience
Introduction At major corporations across the globe, the Purchase-to-Pay process can be very complex; involving thousands of suppliers and employees who represent many different departments within the company. While the shift to an end-to-end process design has helped to break … Continue reading
Using a Help Desk to Improve AP Customer Support
Introduction Segmenting Accounts Payable work activities to identify those that would be best supported by a call center or help desk has been a design element for the majority of Shared Services organizations, with resulting benefits including improved visibility to … Continue reading
Utility Invoice Processing – PO Requirements and Outsourcing
Energy costs are one of the largest expense categories a company has, which makes it a priority to understand and manage utility-related data. Yes, if the lights were out last month at one of your company locations, you probably need … Continue reading
Implementing a Cloud-Based Purchase-to-Pay Solution to Streamline Operations
With several innovative cloud-based software solutions designed specifically for the Purchase-to-Pay process area now available, companies have the opportunity to leverage advanced functionality without a large IT investment or a complex implementation project. Such providers as Ariba, Coupa, and Taulia … Continue reading
Why Manual Checks in Local Offices is Still a Bad Idea
The pervasive use of local manual checks for everything from employee recognition awards to urgent vendor payments has been the nemesis of Accounts Payable organizations for decades. Difficult to control and manage, and costly to administer, the hope was that … Continue reading