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LEAD THE CHANGE TO BEST PRACTICE IN ACCOUNTS PAYABLEAutomate, and unlock the potential in your business

While your business has reached new heights, is your Accounts Payable (AP) department still firmly rooted in the paper age?

The evidence is all around you, in error-prone manual processes, time-consuming administration and poor visibility.

It’s time to lead the change. It’s time to turn accounts payable from a cost centre into a growth centre, by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your AP process.

You may not know exactly what your AP invoice is costing you in terms of time. But it’s likely to be more than you think – particularly when you consider the contribution of senior staff and how much their time is worth.

Your AP department may also be experiencing ongoing challenges that impact staff turnover and increase inefficiencies. As a result of this, your AP team is costing your business significant time and money.

Gaining real-time visibility of your AP process is the first step towards minimising the time and number of people it takes to manage and optimise your AP process. It’ll also enable better insight about cash flow, helping to reduce costs where needed.

Having more timely data and information to hand will allow you to meet payment incentives, save the time spent dealing with suppliers, and develop better relationships. You will also avoid suppliers refusing to supply until you pay their invoices, and fewer manual processes and less paper means tighter compliance processes.

Read on to discover how you can deliver a streamlined AP process that speeds up information flow, simplifies complexity, and allows you to benefit from accurate insights that impact critical business decisions.

DISCOVER HOW YOU CAN ACHIEVE:

• EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS

• SIGNIFICANT TIME SAVINGS

• IMPROVED PRODUCTIVITY

• AP PROCESS VISIBILITY AND CONTROL

HOW TO MAKE ACCOUNTS PAYABLE PAY ITS WAY

HAVING AN EFFICIENT, AUTOMATED AP PROCESS WILL REDEFINE YOUR TEAM'S WORKING DAY

INVOICE PROCESSING TIMEBEST IN CLASS INDUSTRY AVERAGE LAGGARD

3.7 8.8 14.3DAYS DAYS DAYS

INVOICE PROCESSING COST BEST IN CLASS INDUSTRY AVERAGE LAGGARD

£2.38 £5.71 £13.88

GET ACCOUNTS PAYABLE UP TO SPEED, AND THE WHOLE BUSINESS MOVES FASTER

Like most business processes, accounts payable exists because of a fundamental need. But that doesn’t mean ‘fix-and-forget’. Accounts payable deserves the same attention and investment as other areas of the business, to ensure that it runs as smoothly as possible.

That means moving away from costly, time consuming paper based processing of incoming invoices to an automated AP process.

The benefits are considerable. You get a faster, clearer view of financials, reduce waste and ramp up efficiency. You can also be confident that financial reports you receive are current, complete, accessible and accurate.

A MANUAL AP SYSTEM IS A BRAKE ON YOUR BUSINESS

Manual, paper-based business processes are inefficient. Research from AIIM shows that on average it takes almost 9 days to process an invoice. This level of inefficiency means that organisations miss out on early payment discounts, incur late payment penalties, and don’t have an accurate view of cash flow.

Manual processes are also error prone – on average 1 in 20 invoices are misclassified as a result of doing things manually. These figures highlight the huge amount of time and money involved in processing what is often seen as a necessary evil within the business – paying suppliers. Reducing the time taken to process invoices, and the cost to do so, can deliver significant benefits to an organisation.

40% of organisations are now receiving more digital invoices than paper ones – but 35% of the invoices that are received electronically are still printed and filed as paper copies.

The combination of manually handling paperwork, printing electronic invoices for paper-based workflows is hampering organisations’ ability to operate efficiently.

If that’s how your AP function operates, it’s slowing growth, and can prove very costly in the long term.

FIX THE FUNDAMENTALS

DECREASE PROCESSING TIME AND COSTS

Capture mail, email or EDI

Deliver to the right people

Review, approve and code

AP AUTOMATION: IT’S ABOUT TIME

Put simply, automation means your AP function can process more invoices in a fraction of the time it usually takes. The industry average is 8.8 days per invoice. With automated processing it’s only 4 hours.

That frees up your finance department to focus on data analysis, rather than data gathering. It also provides you with access to real-time information exactly when you need it – enabling you to make faster, better informed business decisions.

Along the way, automation of the accounts payable process reduces the number of human errors, removes the need to print invoices, offers the business more visibility of the payment schedule and helps to manage cash flow.

Putting invoices that qualify for an early payment discount first will help to reduce late payments. Digital automation automatically recognises invoices from suppliers that offer a discount, then routes them to the relevant person for processing as quickly as possible.

Speed equals cost savings. Time saved processing invoices, using an automated AP solution will help you achieve ROI in months, not years.

REALISE THE BENEFITS OF AUTOMATION

If you need to convince your peers of the benefits of AP Automation, here are some more powerful facts.

AP Automation reduces the risk of being caught out by false or fraudulent supplier claims, by ensuring that every invoice is tracked, matched and approved before payment is made.

AP increases your capacity to process business critical activities faster (53%), reduce error and exception rates (45%), and gain greater visibility into your operational efficiencies (44%) are seen as the greatest values gained from process improvement and automation.

Removing a manual AP process to increase efficiencies and reduce errors are obvious goals when integrating an AP Automation solution. However, many do not realise the scale of the benefits that come with it.

Organisations that have implemented AP Automation show a rapid speeding up of average invoice processing time.

That speed relates directly to reduced cost. The average cost to process a supplier invoice is £7.22. With an automated process, it’s just £1.33.

GO SLOW NO MORE

Eliminate manual invoice entry

Auto-balance and match line items to

purchase orders

Process more invoices in a fraction of the time

1

* Leggett & Platt®, Incorporated

Sources: The Institute of Financial Operations (IFO), Aberdeen Group

3.7 8.8 14.3INVOICE PROCESSING TIME

WITH AUTOMATED PROCESSING

BEST IN CLASS INDUSTRY AVERAGE LAGGARD

DAYS DAYS DAYS

MINUTES

With a regular monthly deadline, it ought to be easy to stay on top of supplier invoice processing. But a manual system means your AP department is always working hard to stay in the same place.

Automating accounts payable processing is an important step in alleviating pressure on an essential department. And it’s increasingly becoming a strategic and operational necessity – with measurable financial benefits.

The benefits of an automated accounts payable department are numerous – including reduced processing payments, fewer errors, and more efficient processes.

But the financial benefits are also clear – from taking advantage of early payment discounts, to streamlining a department which through no fault of its own, has become a bottleneck to growth.

LEAD THE CHANGE TO TRANSFORM YOUR BUSINESS THROUGH AUTOMATION

Automation in any area can seem a huge step. And it’s tempting to concentrate on other, more visible aspects of the business while trusting AP to soldier on.

In fact, with the right help, choosing and implementing an AP Automation solution is straightforward. Konica Minolta’s business analyst team has years of experience in AP invoice management. Our experts will help you address your current challenges by finding an AP Automation solution to your precise needs and budget.

We do this by listening to you, understanding your needs and delivering a solution that will mean you can start seeing a ROI in months rather than years.

CONTACT US TODAY: Hello@konicaminolta.co.uk

+44 (0)1962 670763

MONTH-END: OBSTACLE OR OPPORTUNITY?

Konica Minolta Business Solutions Miles Gray Road Basildon Essex SS14 3AR +44 (0)1962 670763 info@konicaminolta.co.uk www.konicaminolta.co.uk

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