• Aberdeen Group's E-Payables Benchmark Series: A/P Strategies for Success (2008)

  Accounts Payable is coming of age. Though paper persists as the format of choice for 80% of all invoices, and manual checks are used for 60% of all payments, Aberdeen research over the past two years has seen strong indications that broader change for the function is underway. And while Best-in-Class enterprises have begun to realize the impact of their A/P transformations, significant work remains for the majority as the average A/P department continues to lack automation, executive focus, and general alignment with the enterprise.

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• Aberdeen Group's E-Payables Benchmark Report: Advancing Accounts Payable Automation (2007)

  The typical accounts payable (“A/P”) department, with its heavy reliance on paper and manual effort, sits in stark contrast to today’s business environment that is relentless in its pursuit of process efficiencies and cost reductions. And, with business relationships becoming increasingly complex, the lack of visibility into spend/invoice data, exacerbated by a voluminous paper trail, serves as a true Achilles’ heel to those enterprises that proclaim operational excellence within either their finance or source-to-settle processes. Clear and compelling cost savings are achieved by A/P departments that invest in automation. Managers report that improved cash flow visibility and stronger supplier relations is enabling their transformation. They also leverage data visibility to drive performance improvement across the enterprise. Invoice data is used to improve leverage in contract negotiations with suppliers, to ensure proper receipt of volume discounts and rebates, to reduce payment errors and overcharges, and to provide the basis for making working capital decisions.

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• Aberdeen Group's latest on E-Payables Solution Selection: Your 2007-2008 Guide to A/P Transformation (2007)

  Manual, paper-based Accounts Payable (A/P) departments are eroding the bottom-line of large and mid-market enterprises by an order of millions of dollars each year. While A/P automation offers compelling transaction cost savings and other strategic benefits, only one-third of all enterprises have any significant level of automation in place.

  This report should be used as a guidebook for effective assessment of accounts payable strategies and solution providers. It includes a framework to help enterprises assess their competence, scope solution requirements, and select the best-fit solution.

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By leveraging invoice automation, organizations can realize significant value in the form of reduced processing costs, improved visibility into expenditures, enhanced cash flow management and increased productivity. But despite its potential value, many organizations have yet to fully embrace invoice automation primarily due to confusion around the choices of technology. Also adding to the confusion is the significant number of automation technologies and service providers in the market today and a perceived complexity of both the technological and process design issues.

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This Buyer’s Guide by Phil Searle, Founder and MD, Chazey Partners Limited provides guidance to organizations considering investing in AP technology, both in terms of some of the critical considerations around the entire initiative, as well as providing some recommended key questions that should be asked to assess potential vendors.

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The finance executive's classic dilemma is choosing between seemingly opposing goals: reduce costs or strengthen internal controls. In today's highly-charged environment, both goals are important but strengthening the control environment has typically required sacrificing efficiency and reducing costs has frequently resulted in weakening controls. This white paper explores how technology such as business process automation and imaging software tightly integrated with ERP systems, can optimize financial processes to achieve both goals while improving service levels, reducing errors, preventing fraud, and maximizing the use of cash.

This white paper explores how automated controls can mitigate financial errors and misstatements. Accounting transactions are recorded and classified accurately and in a timely fashion. Leveraging your ERP investment through the tight integration of imaging, workflow and business process automation technologies facilitates financial control objectives through:

• Enforcement of corporate policies & procedures
• Properly maintained transaction-level backup
• Early and end-to-end visibility into financial transactions
• A robust and accountable approval framework
• Segregation of conflicting duties at the transaction level
• Complete end-to-end audit trails
• Support for internal and external audits
• A reduction in processing and accounting errors

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The typical U.S. organization loses 6% of its annual revenue to fraud. This white paper uses a series of real-world tales of fraud - some novel, some notorious - to illustrate how business process automation & imaging software provides improved internal controls, particularly where the unstructured world of paper meets the structured world of the ERP transaction record.

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When evaluating financial process automation solutions it is important to distinguish between the attributes of a custom-built solution and a Best-of-Breed (BoB) application. Each has distinct cost and risk profiles due to fundamentally different implementation and support structures. An analysis of your unique needs and requirements as well as the various dimensions of each vendor’s offering will determine your rightful place on the custom to Best-of-Breed continuum.

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Electronic-invoicing (also known as e-Invoicing, EIPP or electronic invoice presentment and payment) has captured the interest of prospective buyers at companies and institutions around the world because of its well documented reputation of achieving the lowest cost Accounts Payable (AP) transaction processing. There are many definitions and capabilities of e-Invoicing, including the creation and receipt of an electronic invoice; the transformation of a paper invoice into an electronic invoice; the automated entry and validation of its data by a financial accounting (ERP) system; workflows to resolve purchase order discrepancies, manage non-purchase order invoices, payment approval and electronic payments.

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This Must-Have Metrics Guide by Jonathan Casher, President of Casher Associates addresses why you need metrics, presents a framework to develop them and recommends ten key metrics that every Accounts Payable organization should consider.

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• Imaging and Workflow Adoption
  Benchmarking Survey Report (2009)

  Accounts payable (AP) departments have been prompted to seek new and innovative means to automate traditionally paper-based and labor-intensive processes, owing to the economic downturn and new and stringent regulatory regimes. Research indicates that Imaging & Workflow Automation (IWA) solutions that streamline the invoice receipt-to-pay cycle and address these new requirements for efficiency and control have matured and become mainstream technology. In this report, the analysts at PayStream Advisors have attempted to profile the use of invoice imaging and automated workflow solutions at US based enterprises. The analysis is based on survey results and more than seven years of research findings.

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• Imaging and Workflow Automation

  This whitepaper is designed for AP Managers, Controllers, Treasurers, and Financial Managers who are interested in the following; exploring Imaging and Workflow Automation for the reduction of paper- and people-based processes in the accounts payable areas of companies, understanding the business case for expanded use of imaging and workflow automation, and taking the next step towards IWA adoption.

  Download a copy of the Paystream Advisors – Imaging and Workflow Automation white paper.

Enabling the Purchase-to-Pay Process Through Imaging and Workflow Automation

Companies are investing a lot of time and money in the enablement of their purchase-to-pay processes through the implementation of imaging and workflow solutions and the receipt of electronic invoices through supplier portals and electronic invoice providers. Driving this electronic enablement blitz is the substantial potential costs savings. According to Hackett Group benchmark information, the cost for an electronic invoice is only 18% of that of a paper invoice.

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An independent 3rd party, the Gantry Group, conducted an objective study of the key ROI value drivers and areas of cost savings realized through the deployment of 170 MarkView. This white paper details the economic impact actually experienced by 9 customers who implemented the 170 MarkView for Accounts Payable solution. The results demonstrate an average payback of 7.5 months and a three year ROI of greater than 300%.

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How much can optimizing the Accounts Payable process save your organization? Learn how your organization can realize the benefits that our customers have achieved.

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The Accounts Payable (AP) function has many key partners including business units, purchasing, vendors, employees, accounting, auditors, the CFO, and Controller. Satisfying the demands of all these stakeholders can be a daunting task. The constant inquiries, disputes, requests for information and correction of errors can grind AP productivity to a halt. But what if these stakeholders could perform AP-related tasks on their own? This is the concept of self-service. Self-service can be a powerful tool that reduces costs and improves service levels through shorter cycle times without compromising internal controls. At the same time, self-service minimizes errors by virtually eliminating the re-entry of invoice data, the most common source of data and payment errors.

This paper will examine how self-service can be leveraged throughout the AP processing lifecycle from invoice document submission/capture, to streamlining and managing the workflow processes, to managing AP resources, to inquiry and audit.

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With the ongoing financial, credit, and economic crises, corporations continue to be under relentless pressure to reduce Finance operating costs and maximize cash flow while also improving service levels and strengthening internal controls. For many, these seemingly opposing demands have been the major catalyst behind the transformation of Finance operations from decentralized divisional staffing models with disparate processes and systems to a global model. In this new order, core financial operations such as Accounts Payable (AP) are centralized in one or more shared service center (SSC) locations with a single set of streamlined processes and a single technology solution to serve a region or even an entire corporation.

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Finance organizations are charged with reducing costs, improving performance, achieving regulatory compliance, increasing visibility and enabling the corporation's strategic initiatives - all at the same time. The fundamental issue is not whether a company should strive for these goals but how well they can be accomplished. A strategically engineered transformation of processes that achieves these goals - cutting operational costs and minimizing financial risks - obviously requires serious consideration. This white paper examines, in detail, the relevant issues and benefits of AP transformation, as well as recent industry-wide research and best practices around such initiatives.

Download a copy of the Top 10 Reasons to Automate your AP Processes white paper

Download the Top 10 Reasons to Automate your AP Processes briefs.

Invoice processing accounts for a significant share of purchase-to-pay process costs. Ideally, businesses would receive all invoices electronically. However, for a majority of companies, most invoices will still be generated and received on paper for the foreseeable future. The processing of paper-based invoices can be vastly improved through the use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. This has greatly matured in recent years and no longer suffers difficulties with limited character recognition (for printed texts). Today, what makes the difference between a good and a weak implementation is the ability to correctly interpret the information in the invoice automatically, leading to full automation of invoice verification.

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