Like most organizations, you’ve probably automated your supplier reconciliation process to a certain extent. But your accounts payable processes are still likely to be labor-intensive, from coding and manual data entry to reconciling invoices with bills of lading.
How much cost and time could you save if you automated your accounts payable tasks even further (and differentiated yourself from competitors in the process)? What else could you spend your time on?
Where you’re losing time (and money)
Imagine you can take invoice reconciliation to a whole new level by automatically matching details from the bill of lading to the supplier invoice. Rather than manually cross-referencing or calling around when there are discrepancies, your software does it for you and only alerts you when there is a difference between the bill of lading and the invoice. No more human intervention to pay invoices, no need for middleware and no need for managing two cross-reference sets.
Processing by hand is costly in more ways than one. The time it takes the accounts payable team to do manual tasks could be spent on other areas or on more strategic tasks. If you’re not automating your accounts payable activities to their fullest potential, you’re losing time (and money) in several ways.
Speed of tasks
A “displaced cost” is what you could be accomplishing if you weren’t doing manual tasks. And when it comes to automated processes versus manual processes, the difference in time to complete a task can be enormous. For example, it may take your organization three hours a day to reconcile invoices manually, complete the verification and interact where discrepancies are detected. An automated solution could complete these tasks in 30 minutes. That frees up two and a half hours—nearly a quarter of an entire work day—for your staff to do other tasks (such as backfill on collections to dealers who have fallen behind in payments).
Overtime
You risk burning out valuable employees when you overwhelm them with monotonous, manual tasks. By making your business more efficient and automating your operation to the fullest, employees can work on more creative and strategic challenges that have a real impact on operations.
More productivity without more head count
With redirected costs and hours saved through automation, you can increase productivity without increasing head count. Redeploy your team on new projects that drive growth or address a challenge, such as seeking new ways to better manage cash flow or provide even better customer service. Rather than focusing on manual tasks, your team is more engaged and challenged on higher-level initiatives.
Control your time
Automating your accounts payable processes does more than save you significant costs. It frees up teams to focus on delivering even better customer service, seeking out more efficiencies, and focusing on higher-level objectives that will have a greater impact on your organization.
This post is sponsored by DTN