Financial and Enterprise Applications that Integrate Document Imaging, leverage your existing ERP system and streamline business processes.

Buyer's Guide: Technology Solutions in Support of Accounts Payable Business Process Automation

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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Custom-Built Solutions or Best-of-Breed Applications?

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.

Download a copy of the Best of Breed white paper.

Paystream Advisors – 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.

Aberdeen Group's E-Payables Benchmark Report: Advancing Accounts Payable Automation

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.

Download a complimentary copy from 170 Systems.

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

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.

Download a copy of your 2007-2008 Guide to A/P Transformation white paper.

Electronic Invoicing

By receiving invoices electronically from suppliers, companies can eliminate all of the paper associated with those transactions, reduce cycle times, take advantage of innovative payment terms, and significantly lower costs. But while the benefits are terribly compelling, many companies are still uncertain of the best e-invoicing approach and implementation strategy for their business. This white paper examines the benefits of e-invoicing, how companies can make it an integral part of their comprehensive AP solution, how to incorporate e-invoicing into existing AP processes and how to successfully recruit and enable suppliers.

Download a copy of the Electronic Invoicing white paper.

Embracing the Seven Pillars of Strong Internal Controls
A Case Study White Paper

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

Download a copy of the Strengthening Internal Controls white paper.

Procure-to-Pay:
Read more on the Hackett Group’s analysis of best practices in Procure-to-Pay.

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.

Download a copy of this best practices analysis now.

ROI Profile Report
170 MarkView: Study of ROI Impact on Accounts Payable
The Gantry Group

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%.

Download an executive summary of the ROI study now.

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

Self-Service Liberates AP

"If you want something done right, do it yourself," is the perfectionist’s mantra. Applying this principle to the AP processing chain may seem like an off-the-wall idea, but in fact self-service can be a powerful tool that drives ROI by reducing the number of employee and vendor inquiries and disputes, dramatically increasing productivity and morale. Self-service access to the AP transaction cycle reduces invoice processing cycle times and virtually eliminates the re-entry of invoice data, which leads to fewer data entry and payment errors.

Download a copy of this Self-Service white paper.

Strategic Considerations for Designing Successful Financial Processes for Shared Service Centers and/or Outsourcing

Corporations continue to be under relentless pressure to reduce Finance costs and strengthen 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 new highly efficient and 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. For other organizations that aren’t able to transform their own operations or that have a pressing need for immediate access to new capabilities, Outsourcing is a viable alternative that simultaneously delivers dramatic improvements while achieving cost-reduction goals.

Download a copy of this Shared Service Centers white paper.

The Consequential Risk Of Weak Internal Controls:
Fraud & Accounting Irregularities
A Case Study White Paper

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.

Download a copy of the Fraud Case Study white paper.

The Top 10 Reasons to Automate your AP Processes

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.