When was the last time you calculated just how much your company spends on your accounts payable processing? If you were to take into consideration time spent on invoice reconciliation and management, along with any late fees or interest charged to delayed payments, the total is probably enough to make you a little squeamish. Especially since many of those costs are avoidable with automation.
Finding the right AP solution
But not all solutions are created equal. When looking for the right system, you have to look beyond automation to improve the accounts payable process and scale for growth. Your AP solution must not simply help you shuffle “paper” faster, but actually improve your underlying processes for best-practice results.
And best-practice also means mobility. Your employees must be able to access vendor invoices, data, and reporting anywhere at anytime. With the ability to review and approve invoices on-demand and on-the-go, the flow of business is not interrupted and productivity is maximized. In addition, automation of the invoice lifecycle increases the speed with which vendors are paid, eliminating late fees and bothersome payment calls.
The proof is in the research
Our team at SAP Concur was curious about how small and midsize businesses are working through AP challenges, so we commissioned AMI-Partners to find out.
In conversations with 420 companies across five countries, AMI discovered that automating invoicing gives you a precise picture of how money is flowing through your organization. Automation is a simple way to become more efficient, lower expenses, and lift employee satisfaction. Some key benefits of an automated invoice process include:
- Savings of more than $34,000 annually, or $1,100 for every 100 invoices processed
- A 16% reduction in time spent on invoice management
- 54% of companies report automation results in improved analytics
- 46% of companies found that increased employee satisfaction was a key benefit of automated invoicing
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the value businesses will receive from automated invoicing software like Concur Invoice. Businesses are enjoying benefits like better data visibility, improved compliance, scalability, and time and cost savings to name a few. Automation also saves headaches come audit time, as one AP manager at a large technology solution provider pointed out:
“When preparing for an audit, you have the peace of mind and comfort level that you’ll find the documents that you need and not have to worry that there is a handful that are not filed or misfiled.”
The time to implement an automated invoicing solution is now. In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, firms that don’t take steps to update their invoicing processes will miss out on opportunities for growth and will struggle to compete.
Visit our website to learn more about Concur Invoice, and take our quiz to see if your accounts payable process is putting your business at risk.
