Overview
Best Practices

On the Path to World-Class Operations

Best practice financial business processes deliver measurable, sustainable benefits over time, improving business performance. They are an operational imperative for organizations whose goals include achieving world-class finance operations, characterized by the highest levels of service delivered by the most cost-effective operations. Best practice Finance solutions share the following attributes:

  • Support for each organization's unique environment and requirements (they are not applied in a universal, "cookie cutter" fashion)
  • Distillation of lengthy, complex, multi-step processes into the fewest number of steps
  • Consistent handling of all document types (paper, fax, electronic) via a standard process
  • Automation of streamlined processes
  • Inclusion of all key participants from line-of-business managers to suppliers in the process and
  • Automatic association of all relevant information involved with each ERP transaction

170 MarkView Financial Suite: Delivering Best Practices to Manage and Optimize Financial Processes

With over 16 years experience with Global 2000 organizations, 170 Systems delivers proven, best practice solutions for Accounts Payable, Expense Management, Procurement, Accounts Receivable, Asset Management, Project Re-Billing, Human Resources and General Ledger. The 170 MarkView® Financial Suite is an unmatched solution that leverages imaging, workflow, electronic receipt and delivery of transactions and unparalleled ERP system integration to ensure the cost-effective and timely processing of all transactions via a consistent process. The result is that Finance organizations can:

  • Reduce operating costs, maximize cash from operations. Our customers achieve dramatically lower cost-per-transaction with the 170 MarkView Financial Suite. Workflows provide automatic routing of each transaction and its associated information to the appropriate individual for review, coding, and approval.
  • Maximize productivity, improve speed and efficiency. With more efficient processes in place, the transactional flow is improved, freeing Finance Department staff for analysis, planning, and forecasting. Transaction cycle times are reduced through automation and the online association of all relevant information.
  • Improve service levels and visibility. The extension of self-service capabilities to all participants in transactions (lines of business and suppliers), enables those involved in the process to answer many of their own questions and reduces inquiries to Finance.
  • Strengthen internal controls. Best practices minimize the number of key controls, automate the key controls to enforce adherence, capture a complete audit trail of each step in the process, and provide fingertip, self-service access to auditors. The automation of internal controls guarantees segregation of duties for each transaction.

Imaging: Best Practices Require Eliminating Paper

The elimination of paper through imaging technology is a best practice for optimizing financial processes. Finance operations struggle to manage the receipt and processing of paper-based transaction information, including purchase orders, invoices, expense receipts, asset records, handwritten journal entries, and annotations to lockbox receipts.

The 170 MarkView Financial Suite's imaging and unique ERP integration ensure that the ERP system remains the system of record for all of the information associated with a financial transaction and that only a single record is managed for each transaction. 170 MarkView for Accounts Payable's best practice workflow facilitates centralized scanning of all documents, queuing them for invoice entry, and creating a permanent association between the imaged documents and a single ERP transaction record. Other approaches are custom developed assemblies of workflows, document access, and document storage in separate, cross-indexed systems, increasing the cost, complexity, and opportunity for errors.

Electronic Transactions: Best Practices Dictate Consistent Processes

System-to-system transaction processing is increasingly prevalent for the payment and receipt of funds. Electronic transactions, including EDI, XML, electronic bill presentment, and electronic invoicing (e-Invoicing or EIPP) are rapidly displacing paper-based transactions, with organizations scrambling to implement the software and processes to manage them, and to recruit and enable suppliers to utilize them. Most commonly, the processes applied to these transactions are different from those applied to paper-based transactions. This creates inefficiencies; specialists must manage the different transaction types, and line-of-business users must use different tools to review and approve transactions.

The 170 MarkView Financial Suite delivers a comprehensive solution for electronic transactions while providing a single, consistent process for each function - a process that is independent of the source or format of the transaction as it arrives or leaves the enterprise. E-Invoices, for example, are received online, appropriate data is extracted and pre-populated in the ERP transaction fields, and the e-Invoice, in its original format, is rendered and attached to the transaction record. Routing for coding and approval is identical for both electronic and paper invoices, ensuring maximum visibility, ease of access, the strongest internal controls, and the most efficient processing.

Workflow: Best Practices Remove Unnecessary Steps

Transactions and their associated information have multiple points of entry, numerous people to whom they are routed for review and approval, and many points of final authorization and completion. Even the most streamlined processes in the Global 2000 enterprise must allow for exception processing and, when fully mapped and documented, are sophisticated and complex.

170 MarkView's best practice workflows eliminate unnecessary steps and optimize the transactional flow of information throughout the enterprise so that existing business processes that may have required ten, twenty or more steps can often be reduced to fewer than five. 170 MarkView Financial Suite's best practice workflows ensure the delivery of a fully documented process, automation of key controls, and absolute adherence to the process. Any potential violation is either blocked or routed for executive or senior audit review. 170 MarkView Insight delivers the highest visibility into the process through online, real-time business activity monitoring and reporting that provides finance management with the greatest intelligence about the status and results of transaction processing activity.

Strengthening Internal Controls: Best Practice Without Prohibitive Costs

Finance is challenged to meet seemingly opposing goals: reduce costs, strengthen internal controls, and improve service levels. Strengthening the internal control environment has typically required increasing costs or reducing service levels while cost reduction has frequently resulted in weakening controls and reducing service levels.

The 170 MarkView Financial Suite optimizes financial processes to achieve all three goals: controls are strengthened through process optimization which reduces the number of controls and automates key controls; potential controls violations are blocked or routed for executive or senior audit review; and auditors have self-service fingertip access so that audit time and costs are dramatically reduced.

Self-Service: Best Practice for the Lines of Business, Auditors and Suppliers

Extending visibility directly to the line-of-business staff, auditors and suppliers is a "win-win" for Finance organizations. The benefits include increased service levels to line-of-business managers, auditors and suppliers, lower costs to process each transaction, increased accuracy and reduced cycle times.

The 170 MarkView Financial Suite, with 170 MarkView Express and advanced ERP system integration, gives organizations the ability to deploy intuitive, accessible self-service solutions that meet the needs of the many end-users involved in the business process. Using a Web browser, a natural tool for non-ERP users, information from the ERP system is integrated with the original imaged document and is made available to the right person at the right time in the business process. Payment status, cost center coding, approvals, links to other related documents such as purchase orders and receipts, and a complete process history are among the pieces of information presented: the end user can simply focus on his or her task and advance the transaction through its process.

Developing best practices for Finance requires careful thought, consideration and investment. The cost of that investment is quickly repaid by the improvement in process and operational efficiency and operating cost savings.

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