3 Tips for Dealing With an Increasing Accounts Payable Invoice Volume

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Are your Accounts Payable queues overflowing with invoices? You’re not alone. Many businesses have trouble keeping up with high invoice volume, and this problem is only compounded when that volume starts to increase. This article discusses five tips for dealing with an increasing Accounts Payable invoice volume. Don’t let high invoice volume overwhelm your team!

Tip #1: Automate, Automate, Automate

Are you looking for a shortcut to improving Accounts Payable? Accounts Payable Automation is one of the most popular solutions for helping companies handle large increasing invoice volume. Form a strategy for moving your AP department towards full automation. If you can achieve a straight-through processing (STP) rate of 70 percent or more, you can drive down processing costs and future-proof AP against increasing invoice volume.

Tip #2: Tap Into Enhanced Business Intelligence

With the right solutions provider, your Accounts Payable department can be the benefactor of many emerging technologies. From workflow analytics to artificial intelligence and more, these technologies aim to make your business smarter and extend the use of your AP Automation solution. The data you generate on a daily basis has tremendous value. You need a clear picture of your AP data for working capital and spend management.

Tip #3: Optimize Your Payment Strategy

When you make timely payments, you actually help your organization save money. Are you missing out on early payment discounts? Are you processing duplicate payments accidentally? By optimizing your payment strategy, you can fortify relationships with vendors and suppliers while guarding your bottom line.

Increasing Accounts Payable Invoice Volume? We Can Help!

Your business is growing but scaling is a challenge. What should you do? We’ve helped hundreds of customers streamline and automate the payables process to keep costs low and help them scale their operations to meet the demands of business expansion.

To learn more about how IntelliChief helps organizations deal with increasing Accounts Payable invoice volume, contact us today.

How to Get Control of Your Supply Chain Documents

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The more products you buy and sell, the more supply chain documents you have to manage. There are manifests and cargo logs for outbound documents as well as receiving documents for inbound shipments — and that only begins to scratch the surface. It never stops, which is why many organizations seek a paperless solution to manage logistical documents.

What to Look for in a Supply Chain Document Management Solution

Controlling your supply chain documents requires a concerted effort between your Document Management solution and your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Supply Chain Management (SCM) system. By taking an integrated approach, you can utilize a solution that automatically captures your documentation whether scanned, faxed, emailed, or otherwise. Everything from bills of lading and carrier liability contracts to customs forms and shipping acknowledgments is automatically imported and saved in a digital archive. From one central platform, you can instantly retrieve everything you need to know about any particular order.

This paperless approach to supply chain logistics lets you:

  • Assemble complete records for every shipment, with all related documents stored together in your system
  • Provide different employees (and departments) with simultaneous access to your records, from computers and mobile devices
  • Gain immediate visibility into the logistics of each shipment
  • Create custom portals for your trade partners to access information as needed, so they’re not constantly reaching out to you for updates

Most importantly? It lets you instantly validate the accuracy of your supply chain documents with the vendor or customer information that’s stored in your ERP or SCM. Nobody has to waste their time reviewing the data and manually typing it in. And when it comes to workflows? Those are started automatically as well, with intelligent software quickly routing each project through to completion.

What to Expect When You Manage Your Supply Chain Documents Electronically

Our supply chain information management system removes the barriers – and the costs – of paper-based document distribution. This means faster, more efficient deliveries – and in turn, better customer relationships. It also means faster, more accurate processing of the documents that come into your organization from your vendors (and a perfect opportunity to end late payment fees.)

Logistics is fast-paced. You need to have access to your documents at a moments’ notice. Not only are missing records costly to track down, but they can bring operations to a halt – and your business just can’t afford that.

Control Your Supply Chain Documents With IntelliChief

If you’re ready for a better, paperless solution, IntelliChief can help. Our document capture and routing technologies can keep your information moving through workflows that automatically verify the accuracy of every shipment. We’ve worked with both local and global enterprises, and offer solutions that can benefit any type of supply chain.

To learn more about our supply chain document management solutions, contact us today.

Is Automating Accounts Payable Processes Worth the Effort?

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According to the Institute of Finance & Management, 61% of top global companies have implemented Accounts Payable (AP) automation. But this movement hasn’t come without challenges. The main issue? Money. When a CFO looks at potential expenditures, they need to know how each one will impact their bottom line. And it’s not just the immediate impact on cash flow.

There are long-term risks (and rewards) to consider. Without the right profile, even the most promising project won’t get funding, which leads to a central question:

Is automating Accounts Payable processes worth the effort?

The ROI of AP Automation

For organizations asking this question, there is good news — AP Automation has an incredibly high ROI that scales with size. In other words, the larger the organization, the more they stand to save. SMEs and large enterprises can save tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with AP Automation.

Reduce or Eliminate the Need for Manual Invoice Processing

One of the most notable and obvious benefits of AP Automation is that it allows your business to phase out tedious, time-consuming, and manual tasks. In a traditional back-office setting, Accounts Payable is a very manual process. How long does it take for one of your processors to perform a two- or three-way match? Just think, someone has to find the documents, check them line by line to make sure they’re accurate, and approve the invoices for final payment. This is often a disconnected process that AP professionals must repeat hundreds of times per month.

In an automated environment, these tasks can be completed without human intervention, resulting in fewer errors and faster invoice processing.

Work Smarter by Automating Accounts Payable Processes

By taking the manual effort out of this business process, automation makes it much faster. Time is money, so just imagine how you can reallocate and defer resources when hours aren’t wasted on manual AP processing. When you spend these hours on other important tasks, the impact on your payable department can be significant.

Those savings also start accumulating from the moment your AP Automation solution is implemented. Every electronically processed vendor transaction saves you upwards of $10,  and that’s without taking into account an increase in employee productivity. Because their time and talents will be better utilized, they’ll be less likely to leave for more challenging roles, and you won’t have to invest resources in hiring and training their replacements.

Automating Custom AP Practices

AP professionals follow business processes designed to help them overcome the challenges they encounter on a day-to-day basis. Software that can’t be configured to your specifications can’t provide the same ROI as a solution that can be completely tailored to the user’s needs.

For instance, our AP Automation software is designed to provide the highest possible return on investment. Our Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform, which features robust Document Management, AP Automation, and an array of other products and capabilities, can help your organization by:

  • Capturing documents from all inbound formats, including paper, emails and attachments, and native electronic files of any type.
  • Indexing the data as soon as it’s received and using it to populate user-specific, designated fields within your ERP.
  • Integrating with any and all ERP technologies, helping companies extend the software investments that they’ve already made.
  • Automating key workflows to complete them before the deadline.

Here’s a sobering statistic:

More than 75 percent of payment-based supplier discounts go unclaimed by purchasers because they can’t process their invoices quickly enough to take advantage.

With fully configurable workflows, you can protect, standardize, and streamline your organization’s particular business processes. Only now, they will be faster, and you will have more accurate, real-time visibility into the status of every project and transaction. You will also be less likely to overlook a potential discount — and late fees will be a thing of the past.

Find Out How You Can Reduce Workflow Costs by More Than 70 Percent

Many studies suggest that the ongoing cost savings of Accounts Payable Automation can top 70 percent when compared to manual AP processes. At IntelliChief, we’re proud to say that our customers typically achieve a full return on their investment within a single year.

In conclusion, and to answer our titular question, is automating Accounts Payable processes worth the effort? You tell us.

Do want to see more examples of the benefits of automating Accounts Payable? Contact us today to speak to an expert.

Regulatory Compliance Tips for Your Company Documentation

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Regulatory compliance takes major effort — and that effort often spans an entire organization.

Everyone in your company, from your CEO to  Accounts Payable Director, IT Director, and every employee under their management, is responsible for doing their part to maintain compliance. Of course, we trust that our hard-working employees are satisfying their end of this unspoken contract, but how do we verify this?

Regulatory Compliance Is Easier for Companies That Go Paperless

When it comes to records, companies have to control who is able to view, edit, or delete them. They also need to keep a comprehensive paper trail of every single access point or revision. This allows companies to passively maintain a robust record of recordkeeping-related actions while implementing layers of failsafes to ensure that all documents are available as required by policy, regulation, and law.

The more documents that flow through an organization, the harder it is to account for the complete security of each and every record contained in your file.

One way to make this easier? Taking key business processes paperless.

When you’re able to manage your documents electronically, regulatory compliance and risk management becomes much easier because access control is a built-in feature. It’s one of the easiest, most hands-off risk mitigation strategies that you can adopt.

Compliance Tips for Keeping Up With Document Retention Regulations

SOX, HIPAA, SEC Rule 17…every industry is responsible for maintaining compliance with numerous document retention regulations, and as time passes, these regulations are only getting more comprehensive — and specific. There are riches to be made in the pursuit of businesses that fail to comply, which, inversely, means companies can save money by safeguarding their operations from noncompliance.

Follow these compliance tips to protect your business:

Examine Your Company Documentation

Go through the documents that you currently have stored, whether on-site in a filing cabinet or off-site through a professional service. Decide what you need to keep and what is old enough to be destroyed. Pay close attention to document volume and the types of documentation your organization is tasked with storing securely. You want to develop a profile of your company documentation that will help you create a highly practical retention strategy.

Develop a Retention Strategy

Think about the documents that are continuing to flow into your organization. You need to develop a strategy for collecting, categorizing, and protecting them. When your company documentation falls into the wrong hands, it opens the door for potential violations.

Do you have an effective strategy for dealing with documentation from Accounts Payable, Customer Service Human Resources, Sales/Order Processing, and other departments?

Whether your company deals with large volumes of contracts, invoices, or employment applications, it’s important to identify the proper retention policies that your company is responsible for satisfying.

Leverage Enterprise Content Management

If you currently use (or plan to use) an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system, see if there are settings that will let you automate burn policies to destroy documents once they’re no longer needed. Not only will you no longer have to worry about deleting files manually but you will also benefit from less “digital clutter.” Another popular option made possible with an ECM is maintaining a back-up server to retain copies of deleted documents in a separate repository.

Map Out and Secure Your Recordkeeping Workflows

You’ve developed a retention strategy, now it’s time to apply it to the way you process documents.

Start by mapping out your workflows so that you can identify potential weaknesses, such as employees manually handling sensitive documents when they don’t need to. Furthermore, you should make certain that financial and transactional data is only sent to the people who absolutely need to see it.

Configure your workflows based on your specific business processes to ensure that your company documentation can only be managed by approved users. You can build additional security protocols into your workflows, too.

Integrate With Your Other Systems of Record

Do you want to experience best-in-class content management? Integrate your core systems of record (ERP, CRM, HCM, HRIS, etc.) with your ECM system to facilitate the flow of information throughout your organization. When connected, these systems can update your data automatically in real-time. At the same time, they can keep your business-critical data safe by implementing permission-based rules to ensure that company documentation is accessible to members across your organization.

Support Digital Audit Trails

Do you find yourself getting lost along the audit trail? If your policies are ever called into question, you may need to show detailed information about who has handled your company’s records. You need to be able to understand the who, what, when, where, and why of every piece of company documentation. An automated digital audit trail can help you maintain such a record without any additional work.

Get More Regulatory Compliance Tips From Our Experts

When it comes to regulatory compliance, it’s crucial to develop a plan before problems arise. Even a short delay can end up costing your organization thousands. Being proactive is better than losing hours (and reputation) to after-the-fact incident management.

If you’re ready to refine your internal policies, contact IntelliChief. We can help you implement a document security and lifecycle management plan that’s aligned with your industry’s unique regulations.

3 Technologies That Yield Significant HR Cost Savings

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Maintaining efficiency in Human Resources can be costly, but it doesn’t have to be. Many of those repetitive, time-consuming HR-related tasks that your team loathes can be automated to give your experts more time to focus on hiring and growth. After all, those are the most valuable functions of Human Resources. Organizations that are serious about increasing HR cost savings often turn to technology to help them get there.

This article explores three technologies that yield significant HR cost savings for businesses that want to become more resourceful in Human Resources, including:

  • Document Management Software (DMS)
  • HR Automation
  • Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Why Implement HR Cost Reduction Strategies?

Many organizations assume that Human Resources is functioning at a high level. They see new employees being onboarded, receive updated employee handbooks every year, and get quick responses to their questions about insurance and 401(k)s. Across your organization, HR is viewed as a constant because “things seem to be getting done.” Little do they know, within the HR department, trouble has been brewing for a long time.

Oftentimes, it’s not until an HR-related catastrophe arises that we consider implementing HR cost reduction strategies. This isn’t an effective approach to HR management because these “catastrophes” are almost always the result of underlying issues with your HR workflow. If you can prevent inefficiencies on the micro-level, you can assuredly avoid issues on the macro-level.

Here’s an example:

Your HR department has to create and maintain a file for each employee, 1099 contractor, and vendor that you work with, which involves a massive amount of paper-based and electronic files. Your team is likely spending hours printing out applications and benefits forms, signing and dating them, and filing them away —  time that they could be spending on more value-driven tasks.

More time is wasted once the time comes to retrieve a document or form because they must search through file cabinets to locate what they’re looking for. In Human Resources, every minute spent performing work manually — whether reviewing, approving, revising, or filing — is time wasted. Why? Because there are several technologies that can perform this work on their behalf.

1. Document Management Drives HR Cost Savings

One of the fastest ways to unlock measurable HR costs savings is by eliminating paper. Paper is expensive and it doesn’t “play nice” with solutions focused on boosting efficiency. In a document-centric department like Human Resources, paper serves as a constant reminder that there is still work to be done to achieve higher levels of productivity. Document Management Software digitizes HR documentation to eliminate paperwork altogether. It also allows your HR department to search, review, modify, and retrieve HR documents from a desktop or mobile device.

2. HR Automation Eliminates Time-Consuming, Manual Tasks

Once all of your HR documents are digitized and your organization has removed paper from the equation, you can begin to automate time-consuming manual tasks with HR Automation. Automation prefers to work with structured data, but most of the documentation entering your organization contains unstructured data. Therefore, HR Automation requires the assistance of some form of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Software that can not only create digital replicas of documents but also identify, index, and archive the data located on these documents. Therefore, the best way to seize the greatest HR cost savings is by utilizing technology that combines the capabilities of Document Management Software and HR Automation: Enterprise Content Management.

3. ECM Merges Document Management and Automation Capabilities

With Document Management and HR Automation, your organization can achieve major HR cost savings by automating key activities, keeping all of your employee files organized and accessible, and ensuring the security of all your confidential data. With Enterprise Content Management, you can use all of the capabilities of Document Management and HR Automation while also expanding your solution to other departments.

With ECM, your organization can achieve significant cost savings with a single, integrated platform. Here’s how:

  • Automatically capture information from your paper-based forms
  • Save time by eliminating manual data entry for your HR managers
  • Maintain a long-term archive without the expense of paper, ink, toner, envelopes, and secure storage structures
  • Consolidate all of your employee data into a single, secure platform
  • Provide immediate access to any requested record through a simple keyword search
  • Ensure business continuity in the event of an unexpected disaster or business disruption
  • Reliably delete records once they are no longer needed, simplifying the off-boarding process
  • Automate key workflows, such as benefits administration and PTO approvals, based on your unique business rules

Extend the ROI of Your Existing HR Management System

ECM Software also integrates with your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Human Resource Management (HRM) software. When a new file is received, it is instantly updated in your other databases. All of your systems are seamlessly connected, eliminating frustrating information silos and supporting enterprise collaboration. If your organization is interested in learning how to leverage its existing technology as part of its HR cost reduction strategy, an ECM provider can help you envision how other businesses just like yours are using ECM to gain a competitive advantage.

To see what sort of savings you can achieve in your own HR department, contact us today. Or, request a custom demo of our human resources automation software, and see how you can transform your workflows to fit in today’s fast-paced environment.

Is a Paperless Accounts Payable System Right For Your Business?

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Accounts Payable is often viewed as a cost center, and it’s not because AP controls the money leaving your organization. You can’t overlook the cost of doing business (and the cost of doing business inefficiently), either. If your AP department is unable to process vendor payments in a  timely manner or mismanages your cash flow due to a lack of communication, it may be time to consider whether a paperless Accounts payable system is right for your business.

With a paperless Accounts Payable system, your organization can improve the quality of all AP functions. If your Accounts Payable process is very manual and your invoice volume is high, going paperless is the best way to get control of your AP department. But how can you be certain that your company is a good candidate for a paperless Accounts Payable system? And how can you justify your investment?

This article explores the topic of compatibility by weighing the benefits of a paperless Accounts Payable system against the risks.

When It Comes to Your Accounts Payable System, Be the Exception, Not the Rule

Accounts Payable is a department mired in tradition. Invoices are received by fax, mail, or email to be keyed into your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and matched against the corresponding Purchase Order (PO). In a vacuum, this process is relatively straightforward, but more often than not, seemingly small issues arise that derail your AP processors. Duplicate payments, missed early payment discounts, varying units of measure, currency conversions…the list goes on and on.

In a paper-based AP department, your team is responsible for manually identifying and working out these issues to ensure that your bottom line is protected. Don’t be afraid to break from tradition to seize control of your Accounts Payable department. When it comes to your Accounts Payable system, it’s better to be the exception as opposed to the rule. While your competitors spend time manually processing invoices, your team can automate this process from start to finish to boost processing speed and accuracy while also lowering your average cost to file.

Before You Choose a Paperless Solution, Consider This…

Before you select a paperless solution for Accounts Payable, it’s important to take a step back and form a plan for carrying out your due diligence. Allocate a reasonable amount of time to investigating potential solutions. Google is a great place to start as it serves search results according to intent. Be specific with your search queries and there’s a good chance you’ll discover a handful of options from the beginning — but don’t stop there. Research competitors, request demos, and ask for price comparison quotes. There are many types of paperless Accounts Payable systems, and finding the best match for your organization is going to take time. Before you choose a paperless solution, consider the following:

  • Is the solution capable of helping your organization achieve its long-term plans?
  • Is the solution capable of addressing your requirements or will it require further development?
  • Is the solution affordable? (Remember to factor in potential ROI)
  • Does the solution integrate with our existing technology and accounting software?
  • Can the base solution be reconfigured to assist in other departments or business units?

The Benefits of Going Paperless in Accounts Payable

Let’s take a look at the real-world impact of moving to a paperless Accounts Payable system.

Transparency in Accounts Payable

How do you define transparency in Accounts Payable? Essentially, a transparent Accounts Payable system gives you the tools to monitor the progress of every invoice that enters your organization, giving you direct insight into valuable information, including:

  • When an invoice was received
  • Which processor received it
  • How long it took that processor to move it to the next stage of the AP workflow
  • How long it took to process from start to finish
  • Whether any special actions must be taken to satisfy the transaction
  • Where bottlenecks are forming and why

Invoice Processing Efficiency

Increased efficiency is one of the most highly lauded benefits of a paperless Accounts Payable system. Your organization knows that if it can get faster, it can save money and keep vendors happy, but getting there can be a seemingly insurmountable challenge with a reliable AP solution. With a paperless Accounts Payable system in place, scanning and uploading an invoice for routing is a breeze. Many companies are able to reduce their invoice processing cycle by days or even weeks by simply taking paper out of the equation. Your AP department’s productivity can be further increased by implementing Accounts Payable Automation to eliminate the manual work altogether. Here are some of the ways companies boost invoice processing efficiency by going paperless:

  • Search and retrieve invoices electronically from a desktop or mobile device
  • Annotate documents before routing to keep the next processor informed
  • Guide processors with automated natural language prompts
  • No more lost, misfiled, or destroyed documents
  • Reduce labor costs
  • Eliminate record storage
  • Ensure that only permitted processors access certain documents

Superior Audit Controls

Another significant benefit of a paperless Accounts Payable system is superior audit controls. In a recent Forbes Council Post, Katherine Jackson, Vice President of Bayer Properties, explains:

“Signature limits were automated, ensuring every invoice submitted met with company approval guidelines. The system-generated audit trail provided comprehensive information for audit testing. There was never again a problem with lost AP records because someone had misfiled an invoice. The electronic records in the Accounts Payable system pulled over via an API into the accounting software for processing, ensuring there were no keying errors on the data being added to the accounting records. Month-end reporting improved our accrual process to ensure monthly expenses were captured correctly.”

In summary, they were able to establish a system where every document was accounted for at all times, leading to easier compliance with important regulations like SOX and HIPPA.

Smooth Scaling

As your company grows, it will need to continue to bring new employees into the fold to handle increased invoice volume. This can make sustainable growth a big challenge. Calculating how you will scale your company to keep up with business is a real concern for many successful businesses. However, the added efficiency of a paperless system means you can continue to scale your company with only nominal AP-related cost increases — this is doubly true when AP Automation is introduced.

We Can Help You Determine Whether a Paperless Accounts Payable System Is Right For Your Business

Choosing to implement a paperless Accounts Payable system is one way to help your business gain a competitive advantage, but it doesn’t come without some risks. There is an inherent financial risk when making any business-related purchase, and a paperless system isn’t an outlier in this regard. To avoid the potential risks of selecting the wrong solution, talk to an expert that can help you determine whether a paperless Accounts Payable system is right for your business. Take this knowledge and apply it to other solutions. Ask all the questions you need to settle on a shortlist and be transparent with your selected vendors to ensure that your solution can address the problems you set out to solve in the first place.

To learn more about the benefits of a paperless Accounts Payable system, contact IntelliChief today.

How Does a Content Management System Work?

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Your organization’s content is the linchpin of its success. This content, comprised of invoices, sales orders, onboarding forms, employee files, interdepartmental correspondence, and more, is the fuel that drives your business forward. Without a reliable way to manage this content, such as a content management system (CMS) or Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system, information cannot be passed from user to user in an efficient manner. But how does a content management system work? And why is it so important for SMEs and large enterprises?

How Content Management Works in Favor of Your Business

When information stops flowing through an organization, operations come to a grinding halt and your ability to generate revenue is compromised. On a normal day, you probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how content flows through your organization, but every task you perform is integral to this process.

Due to the collaborative nature of many business processes (i.e., Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Human Resources, Customer Service, etc.) breakdowns in your content management cycle are rarely isolated incidences. One small hiccup can lead to late payments, process bottlenecks, and dissatisfied customers and business partners. Effective content management helps you mitigate, or altogether eliminate, deficiencies in your content management cycle.

How does a content management system achieve this goal? Below, we explore the process flow and features that can be utilized to your advantage when implementing a best-in-class ECM system to help you manage your content.

Information Is Captured From All Forms of Content

For SMEs and large enterprises, the stream of information flooding into your organization at all times can be very difficult to maintain, organize, and process. Sometimes, this content is structured, which simplifies the process of handling it. However, a large volume of this information is unstructured or requires some form of manual processing to become structured. One of the most important concepts of content management is the structuring of unstructured information. In terms of accelerating business processes, structured data has far more utility than unstructured data.

Capture technology is an integral component of ECM. By utilizing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to capture information from all forms of content, your organization can begin to add structure to its information at scale. Not every piece of OCR software is up to the task. Consider the differences between basic OCR software and an enterprise-class solution:

  • Basic OCR: “Scans” a paper document and creates a digital replica that can be stored and retrieved electronically.
  • Advanced or Enterprise OCR: “Reads” paper and electronic documents and identifies key information, and tags/archives it accordingly.

More advanced forms of OCR are preferred by SMEs and large enterprises because they utilize other advanced technologies, such as machine learning, to capture and process content intelligently. The value of this added intelligence will be made clear in the next section.

Content Is Tagged, Indexed, and Archived

Once an organization’s content has been digitized, it still needs to be tagged with metadata so that users can search for and retrieve the information they are looking for. With basic OCR, this information must be keyed in manually. However, with an advanced, enterprise-class OCR component, this step can be handled automatically by your ECM system, saving your business time and money.

Advanced OCR can recognize what type of content it is capturing as well as the specific datapoints found on the content. For example, if you receive an invoice in the mail for x number of widgets, OCR software can not only create a digital replica but also tag the invoice based on any number of identifying criteria, index the information accordingly, and archive the invoice in a secure digital repository.

But that’s not all. It can also recognize the process that needs to be carried out to satisfy the invoice request.

Content Is Processed Through Workflows

Once the process has been identified (i.e., an invoice is received so the AP workflow must be carried out), you can start managing your content through digital workflows that follow your unique business rules. Workflows can be customized to fit your exact processes. Continuing with the invoice processing example, you can set permissions based on the value of an invoice, the vendor that sent the invoice, or the time at which the invoice was received. These are a few common examples but you can tailor your workflows as needed to account for all the nuances in your process — no matter how specific.

Depending on the complexity of your content management system, your organization may also be able to automate workflows, greatly reducing the amount of time it takes to process an invoice from start to finish. Another important benefit of workflows is they help protect your company against duplicate payments, missed early payment discounts, and other potential filing and processing errors. In summary, the ability to capture content, tag it, index it, store it, and process it through workflows are all fundamental to an advanced, enterprise-class content management system.

Automated Retention Policies Are Executed

So far, we’ve covered three of the key features that help answer the central question:

How does a content management system work?

However, the capabilities of your chosen content management or ECM system must also account for documents that need to be terminated in addition to those that must be preserved for a certain period of time. Otherwise, your business could find itself in hot water when the time comes to provide evidence of regulatory compliance. Content management systems (typically ECM), can also automate retention policies to ensure that your organization is prepared for an audit at the drop of a hat. This makes dealing with HIPPA, SOX, and other regulations a breeze — even if your company deals with hundreds of thousands of documents a year (or more).

Managing Your Enterprise Content With ECM

When an organization manages its content with ECM, it helps them to eliminate paper dependence, streamline and standardize business processes, reduce risk, boost productivity to all-time highs, serve better customer experiences, and provide superior transparency over all connected business operations. Whether you deploy ECM in Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Human Resources, Customer Service, or any other department that processes large volumes of information, your organization will experience a multitude of benefits only possible with a comprehensive content management plan backed by a best-in-class ECM system.

Is your organization searching for a solution to its content-related woes? The experts at IntelliChief can help. Contact us today to learn about our industry-leading ECM solutions and unrivaled approach to business process automation.

 

The 7 Components of ECM

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You’ve decided that your organization needs to make a change to get faster, more competitive, and less resource hungry — and you want to start by eliminating paper. But where to start?

For many businesses, the answer is Enterprise Content Management (ECM). But what is Enterprise Content Management? And what do the various components of ECM mean for your organization?

The 5 Components of ECM According to AIIM

No, that subheading isn’t a typo. Before we breaking into all seven ECM components, we should reference the list put out by the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM).  They define ECM as a ” formalized means of organizing and storing an establishment’s documents, and other content, that relate to the establishment’s processes.”

Following this definition, they have divided ECM into five components, including:

  1. Capture
  2. Manage
  3. Store
  4. Preserve
  5. Deliver

We briefly explore these components of Enterprise Content Management below:

1. Capture

Capture is the process of using OCR Software to convert information from paper documents into an electronic format. Capture is key to turning unstructured data into structured data and creating metadata for search and retrieval. It includes:

  • Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
  • Intelligent Character Recognition(ICR)
  • Optical Mark Recognition (OMR)
  • Barcode Recognition

2. Manage

The “manage” component refers to the management of every captured document throughout every stage of its lifecycle. Managing your electronic content means automating retention policies, digital collaboration, Document Management, Business Process Management (BPM), and more.

3. Store

Securely storing your information is essential if you want to protect your customers, employees, partners, and, of course, your business. With ECM, all digitized documents are stored in a secure digital repository that can only be accessed by permitted users.

4. Preserve

Preservation of your information builds on the “store” component. Reliable ong-term storage is essential for regulatory compliance and to ensure that you have everything accounted for whenever the need arises.

5. Deliver

According to AIIM, delivery (output management) is the final component of ECM and is composed of three groups:

  • Transformation Technologies
  • Security Technologies
  • Distribution

The 7 Components of Enterprise Content Management According to IntelliChief

AIIM’s breakdown of ECM does a great job of covering the fundamental requirements of a true ECM system; however, it fails to account for two very important factors. In fact, these two factors are arguably the most important things to consider when shopping for a best-in-class ECM solution. These factors also bookend AIIM’s list, rendering them absolutely essential. Below, we’ll explain why as we detail our list of the seven components of Enterprise Content Management as advised by our experience implementing ECM for hundreds of companies across the United States and beyond. They include:

  1. Integrate
  2. Capture
  3. Manage
  4. Store
  5. Preserve
  6. Deliver
  7. Automate

6. Integrate

Simply put, you cannot adopt an ECM system without a seamless integration with your core technologies. It’s just not going to happen. This is an essential component of ECM that cannot be overlooked. Whether you utilize Oracle, JD Edwards, Infor, SAP, Microsoft, or another system of record entirely, your ECM solution needs to act as a connector between these systems to ensure that business processes can be completed to satisfaction and information can be shared across departments or business units when required. It’s also essential for our seventh and final component of ECM.

7. Automate

Automation is arguably the biggest value add when it comes to leveraging an ECM platform for your company. Tedious, time-consuming tasks such as document filing, invoice processing, sales order processing, and more can be automated from start to finish with best-in-class ECM. In our experience implementing ECM For hundreds of customers, the ability to automate Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Order Processing, and other important business functions were commonly the main incentives for implementing ECM. Of course, the Content Management side of ECM is essential, but the cost savings made possible through automation are unheralded.

To learn more about how Enterprise Content Management transforms businesses by giving them superior control of information, documentation, and business processes, contact IntelliChief today.

 

Document Management vs. Content Management: Which Is Right For Your Business?

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Large, complex organizations use many systems of record to maintain and manage information. As new documentation enters a company, it must be processed in an efficient manner to ensure that business is fluid and revenue is trending upwards.  Invoices, sales orders, employee files, bills of lading…the work of processing documents is never done. Fortunately, there are software-based solutions to help make this workload more manageable. For most companies, it comes down to document management vs. content management, but what exactly are the differences between these two solutions? And which one is right for your business?

Document Management

Document Management leverages electronic documents to streamline workflows. Whereas paper documents must be manually reviewed, transferred, and filed, electronic documents can be dealt with from a desktop or mobile device. It utilizes a secure, digital repository to ensure that all documents are available to permitted users at all times. It’s more secure, it speeds up processing, and it helps simplify the process of bringing new users into the fold. It can be used to manage all paper and electronic documents, including emails, faxes, and more. The secret to Document Management is the process of tagging and indexing documents, which ensures they can be retrieved instantly to be edited, escalated, or otherwise.

Effective Document Management is predicated on a number of factors, including:

  • The ability to retain documents electronically
  • The ability to view the history of how a document has been handled
  • The ability to add notations to documents
  • The ability to recover lost documents
  • The ability to search and retrieve documents
  • The ability to issue natural language prompts instructing the user on what to do next

Before we move to the other side of the Document Management vs. Content Management debate, it’s important to note that Document Management Software (DMS) must integrate with your core Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and any other systems of record that you utilize to ensure your business can eliminate information silos across the enterprise.

Content Management

Content Management, or Enterprise Content Management (ECM), takes all of the features of Document Management and adds additional processing capabilities through the use of workflows, automation, and machine learning.

In plain terms, Document Management falls under the umbrella of Content Management. Therefore, the Document Management vs. Content Management (DMS vs. ECM) debate is an easy one to settle if you focus on your organizational goals. Do you want to simply go paperless? Document Management will help you get there. However, if you want to go paperless and automate business-critical processes like Procure-to-Pay (P2P) and Order-to-Cash (O2C), you will need the added capabilities only found in an ECM system.

Enterprise Content Management vs. Document Management System: Settling the Debate

Whether you choose to invest in Document Management or Content Management, you will be providing your organization with a valuable tool to help it achieve an operational boost. Your team will thank you because their jobs will get easier and less manual. Your customers will thank you because you will be able to deliver excellent experiences that show them you care. And your organization will thank you because you will be increasing your bottom line and giving your business the stimulus to grow and flourish.

Are you still unsure about your organization’s content management system vs. document management system decision? Our experts are happy to help. Contact IntelliChief today and let us know about your project. We’ll guide you towards your ideal solution and answer any questions you might have.

10 Questions To Ask To Ensure A Successful Accounts Payable Automation Partnership

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The decision to partner with a software provider for Accounts Payable Automation can be a complicated one. Your organization is looking to solve problems in Accounts Payable, but conveying those issues to a vendor can be difficult. It can feel like your ideas are too abstract to explain in concrete terms or you lack the necessary knowledge to start your search on the right path. Not to mention, the wrong choice can turn your investment into more of a gamble than you might care to admit.

If your accounting department has plateaued in terms of productivity, partnering with a vendor that can offer best-in-class AP Automation can help you turn a common cost center into a source of savings — both in terms of productivity and your bottom line. The trouble is, with so many vendors offering so many different products, it can be difficult to trust that the one you’re being pitched is the best fit for your organization’s specific needs.

This article discusses 10 vital questions to reference when vetting Accounts Payable Automation solution providers, including:

  1. What Are Some Unexpected Invoice Processing Issues Our Organization Has Faced?
  2. What Do You Know About Our Business and Industry?
  3. Does the Accounts Payable Automation Solution Integrate With Our Current Technology?
  4. How Do Plan to Address Our Specific Needs and Communicate Results?
  5. Will We Have to Change the Way We Process Invoices?
  6. Does Your Solution Put Style Over Substance?
  7. How Does Your Strategic Approach Align With Our ROI Goals?
  8. Will We Be Included in the Implementation Process?
  9. Can We Speak to One of Your Customers About Their Results?
  10. How Will You Demonstrate a Successful Accounts Payable Automation Project?

These questions will help you gauge the possible benefits and drawbacks of any AP Automation partnership. By the time you’re done browsing these 15 important questions, you will have all of the information you need to perform your due diligence when shopping AP Automation solutions.

1. What Are Some Unexpected Invoice Processing Issues Our Organization Has Faced?

This is the big one. The productivity of your Accounts Payable department is entirely dependent on your team’s ability to swiftly process invoices as they arrive. When an invoice can be matched to its corresponding purchase order, the biggest slowdown is typically the manual data entry required to key that information into your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

Unfortunately, for larger companies with dozens or even hundreds of vendors, it’s far easier for Accounts Payable to become inundated with exceptions that require one of your end-users to manually verify information that extends beyond what is indicated on the PO. For example:

  • How do you handle a duplicate invoice?
  • How do you ensure that you’re taking advantage of as many early payment discounts as possible?
  • What steps must be taken to resolve a pricing discrepancy?
  • How do you verify that items on the invoice match the PO when they have different units of measure?
  • How do you account for special charges that are added after an invoice is received?

In a manual AP department, these questions are often left unanswered; after all, simply managing the volume of invoices entering your organization can be a tall order in itself. Or worse, each of your end-users has developed their own strategy for dealing with these exceptions, resulting in a lack of process standardization across the enterprise. Your chosen Accounts Payable Automation solution should have enough advanced features to automate AP beyond simply verifying that an invoice matches a PO. Detail these specific challenges to any vendor your organization is engaging with and verify that their solution can in fact handle these specific circumstances. Don’t be shy. Request a demo to see for yourself.

2. What Do You Know About Our Business and Industry?

Accounts Payable Automation is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Automation runs the gamut from point solutions for small businesses dealing with one specific AP problem to Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems that employ a variety of technologies to digitally transform Accounts Payable into a fully automated, 100 percent paperless department. But the size and scope of your operations aren’t the only things to consider when vetting AP Automation solutions. You want to find a vendor that has already deployed AP Automation for other companies in your industry. These vendors will have a particularly fine-tuned sense of what you need to accomplish as well as the steps to get you there.

Familiarity with industry norms, standards, and regulations is becoming increasingly important as regulatory compliance continues to push businesses to improve information security. Whether your company deals with SOX, HIPPA, or some other regulatory body, a vendor that knows your industry will understand your pain points and actively work to meet your requirements.

3. Does the Accounts Payable Automation Solution Integrate With Our Current Technology?

Integration is the crux of successful Accounts Payable Automation implementations. AP Automation isn’t just a piece of software you upload to your computer. It must be integrated with your existing technology, such as your ERP system or any other system of record you utilize to run your business. It needs to be able to access and affect this information; otherwise, your solution will be hamstrung from the beginning.

In the last section, we mentioned that familiarity with your business and industry is important to ensure a successful AP Automation partnership; however, integration with your core technologies is equally as important (if not more so). You don’t want an inexperienced company mucking up your ERP or trying to replicate their success with one ERP by following the same procedures they always do with a system they aren’t accustomed to. Look for a vendor who is certified to work with your current ERP or can provide evidence of past project successes to show you exactly how your AP Automation project will be approached. Integration is key to getting the most bang for your buck. If you want “real” automation that doesn’t get stumped on simple exceptions, you need seamless integration that can provide real-time updates to your ERP tables.

4. How Do Plan to Address Our Specific Needs and Communicate Results?

Do you want to ensure that your Accounts Payable Automation project is successful? When speaking with vendors, detail your specific needs and requirements but don’t forget to follow up with them to see how they plan to address these concerns. Furthermore, remain steadfast in your pursuit of measurable results. You can’t track what you can’t measure, and any AP Automation solution worth its salt will be able to provide you with data to verify that you’re meeting important KPIs, such as:

  • The overall cost per invoice processed
  • Number of invoices processed straight-through (touchless) per day versus manually processed invoices
  • The average percent of invoice exceptions
  • Average time per invoice processed
  • Reduction in received not vouchered invoices

You’ll only be selling your organization short by solely looking for a reduction in costs. Accounts Payable Automation can help you achieve so much more — as long as your vendor works with you to establish a plan from the beginning. Any vendor simply looking to sell you a product is not going to help you utilize AP Automation to the fullest extent possible.

5. Will We Have to Change the Way We Process Invoices?

Let’s face it, there are going to be some changes to your process flow when implementing AP Automation; however, these changes should only serve to benefit your team and help make their jobs easier. Understandably, businesses are reticent to alter workflows that have served them reliably for years, but keep in mind that reliability doesn’t equate to cheap or fast. Therefore, when asking this question; don’t be afraid to be told that, yes, you will have to change the way you process invoices. The important thing is to ask “how” your workflows will be changed. There’s a very good chance that you will like what you hear.

Now, here’s what you should look out for. If a company doesn’t offer a tool for designing, editing, revising, fixing, or eliminating workflows in accordance with your business needs, it’s probably not going to be a long-term, viable solution. You only want to eliminate steps in your process that hinder your bottom line, such as:

  • Manual data entry
  • Searching for files in a filing cabinet
  • Printing, scanning, copying, etc.
  • Manually verifying invoice matches
  • Manually performing 2-, 3-, and 4-way matches

There’s no point in fixing what isn’t broken, but many vendors are limited by the solution they are selling. This is another reason why a strategic partner is far more valuable than a standalone product; a strategic partner will align their technology with your existing processes to help your project launch quickly and efficiently while limiting the learning curve for your team.

6. Does Your Solution Put Style Over Substance?

When it comes to AP Automation, no amount of surface sheen can overcome a solution with limited capabilities. During your due diligence, it’s important to focus on function over form. Clean interfaces, bright buttons, and attractive analytics dashboards are superficial if they don’t serve your overall automation goals — or exist solely to masquerade a lack of functionality. This isn’t a question you should pose directly to a vendor, but it’s one that should be considered internally (at all times) as you perform your due diligence. When digging for the truth about the functional capabilities of an AP Automation solution, “can” questions are important, for example:

  • Can your solution automate invoices with multiple lines or pages?
  • Can your solution resolve exceptions automatically by scanning multiple database tables and performing complex functions?
  • Can your solution integrate with all of my core technologies to boost overall performance?
  • Can your solution solve my company’s specific problems?
  • Can you prove that your solution does all that you claim? Or does it simply “look” like it’s up to the job.

With so many AP Automation solutions available on the market today, it has become imperative for businesses to focus on function. Allowing yourself to be led astray by a solution that looks great and claims to have all the bells and whistles you need could result in major disappointment if your requirements aren’t actually met by the time your solution is deployed.

Another thing worth your consideration is how you plan to utilize your solution in other departments. When you purchase AP Automation, you’re really purchasing automation software and the implementation know-how to automate AP-related processes. Why is this important? Well, for example, by reverse engineering automation in Accounts Payable, you can apply a similar solution to Accounts Receivable. By further tweaking your automation rules, you can automate other departments, too. And don’t forget, all of this can be achieved with a single vendor and solution to keep your tech stack clean, integrated, and free of errors.

7. How Does Your Strategic Approach Align With Our ROI Goals?

There are countless vendors to choose from, all of which are vying for your valued partnership. When it comes to Accounts Payable Automation, one of the greatest differentiators is the strategy being proposed to help you meet your ROI goals. As you perform your due diligence, you may find that some vendors are eager to throw around jargon while providing scant evidence of a cohesive, strategic plan. If you find yourself in this position, it’s a good idea to take a step back and re-evaluate whether that particular vendor is the right fit. In most cases, the vendor that speaks plainly and is straightforward when detailing their strategic plan is the vendor you want to select.

Remember, your company is seeking a solution that will help them cut costs, save time, reallocate resources, and improve business for everyone — not a solution that relies on confusing technobabble to circumvent your real concerns.

8. Will We Be Included in the Implementation Process?

You might believe that signing an AP Automation partner means your portion of the work is done, but that’s far from reality. Your AP Automation vendor needs to be your strategic partner. They need to work directly with leaders from Accounting, IT, and the C-Level to ensure that every nook and cranny of your business processes are explored thoroughly, mapped accurately, and tested to perfection. This is only possible by working together throughout the implementation process. This doesn’t just give you an opportunity to oversee the implementation, it gives you time to connect with your vendor’s representatives, ask questions, and keep the ball rolling in the right direction.

There will be hiccups; every AP Automation project is confronted with unexpected challenges, but together, these challenges can be overcome. Don’t be shy. Press every vendor about your role in the implementation process. The more involved they allow you to be, the more assurance you have that your implementation is headed for success. To avoid potential concerns, ask vendors how they are going to manage communication and collaboration and what degree of your involvement they expect to have.

9. Can We Speak to One of Your Customers About Their Results?

As we mentioned previously, any vendor that has worked with a company with a similar profile to yours will be more likely to meet your goals and requirements. It might feel like a bit of an overreach, but if they are willing to connect you with one of their existing customers, you should take advantage of the opportunity.  Don’t be afraid to ask. This might not be a common practice for every vendor, but it is certainly a common practice for vendors that strongly believe in their products and services.

Typically, other companies that have experienced AP Automation success will be eager to share their stories and assist their vendor. Why? Because these customers understand the value of a strategic partnership that extends beyond a simple software sale. The software industry is rife with snake oil salesmen. Sometimes, it’s better to speak directly to a customer to see how a vendor succeeded — or how they failed.

10. How Will You Demonstrate a Successful Accounts Payable Automation Project?

You’ve purchased and implemented a solution, but after 90 days, you’re not saving time or money. In fact, your AP team is more confused than ever. They can’t find what they’re looking for. Database searches yield zero results. Invoices continue to pour in but you’ve changed your workflow to align with a system that only causes you more trouble. At this point, your only question is:

What went wrong?

To avoid a crisis like the one described above, it’s important to establish clearly defined milestones to show evidence of the progress being made. By the time your solution hits “go-live,” you should already have all the data you need to justify your decision to automate Accounts Payable. Ask your vendor if they will use real data or models during the implementation phase, and don’t be afraid to set strict 30/60/90 day milestones to ensure that your system is getting faster and more accurate. If your chosen vendor can’t provide evidence of ROI before you go-live, they might not be the right vendor for you.

Successful Accounts Payable Automation Starts With a Strategic Partnership

Are you ready to automate Accounts Payable to cut costs, save time, improve visibility, preserve supplier relationships, and increase your bottom line? You can’t do it alone, but you can transform your business by aligning your organization with the right strategic partner for Accounts Payable Automation.

Together, you and your strategic partner will build a business case for AP Automation that will “wow” leadership, provide clear evidence of ROI, and present a comprehensive plan that accounts for every minute detail of your business processes. If you can find a solution that can be expanded to other departments, like Accounts Receivable, Human Resources, Customer Service, and more, you can squeeze even more value out of your solution without muddying your technology with various point solutions. You might even find that your best friend on the job is your strategic partner.

To learn more about IntelliChief and our successful Accounts Payable Automation projects over the last 10+ years, contact us today.

How to Achieve a 50 Percent Reduction in Invoice Processing Costs

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Did you know that, on average, companies that utilize Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software in their AP department report a 50 percent reduction in invoice processing costs? Furthermore, by leveraging their ECM platform’s AP Automation capabilities, many achieve straight-through processing (STP) rates of 75 percent or more when processing PO-based invoices.

These savings boil down to two major factors:

  1. Capturing invoices and indexing them in your ERP system faster and more efficiently
  2. Eliminating manual data entry and other time-consuming tasks with intelligent automation

1. Capturing Invoices With OCR Ensures Nothing Goes Missing

When you get an invoice, it has to make its way to your ERP. That could mean taking time out of an invoice processor’s day just to type in every individual line or information.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, an ECM staple, makes the latter scenario possible. It actively collects all paper-based and electronic files and documentation and syncs it with your ERP. Designed specifically for organizations that are looking to automate the Accounts Payable process, organizations can cut down on manual invoice matching, voucher creation, and ERP data keying with the right solution. Here’s how it works:

Invoices received as paper documents, email attachments, fax, or otherwise are scanned or imported directly into an OCR interface. This software creates a digital replica of the document and routes its information to an archive.  Information is extracted from the header, body, and footer of each document.

This information is then verified by a combination of AI and machine learning and validated by utilizing automated database lookups, defined business rules, calculations, and defined confidence thresholds. The vendor information associated with each invoice is automatically identified, along with other critical information from line items and unstructured fields. IntelliChief Capture Enterprise, an industry-leading OCR software solution, even works on multiple-page invoices and batch invoices.

2. Eliminating Manual Data Entry Drives Significant Cost Savings

As a central component of our highly sophisticated AP Automation solution, Capture Enterprise has built-in invoice validation features, allowing it to process two- and three-way matches without user input through highly configurable workflows.

Invoices that fail validations, fall below confidence thresholds, or fail the invoice matching process can be reviewed and resolved immediately. Or, they can be routed through workflow for exception handling. Non-PO based invoices can be easily routed for GL coding and approval.

After all invoice types have been fully matched, approved, coded, or resolved, the data extracted and validated via Capture Enterprise for AP invoices will be delivered for ERP voucher creation.

Do You Want to Achieve a 50 Percent Reduction in Invoice Processing Costs? We Can Help

IntelliChief can help you substantially reduce invoice cycle times. Organizations with IntelliChief are better positioned to take advantage of early payment vendor discounts or negotiate more favorable terms with their suppliers. IntelliChief also eliminates common invoice processing errors like duplicate invoices, and it can help your organization avoid wasting money on finding or reproducing lost or damaged documents.

Ready to achieve these benefits for yourself? Contact IntelliChief to get started.

Improving Your Accounts Payable Audit Procedures With Automation

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Accounts Payable audits. Even if you’re prepared for them, you still dread them. There are always more Accounts Payable audit procedures than you plan for, and they tend to be incredibly costly, too.

Even though you can’t avoid them, you can automate the prep work, making it so that your Accounts Payable team no longer has to stop what they’re doing to find a random, years-old document that your auditor requests. It also means that your hourly payments aren’t wasted on time spent rummaging through filing cabinets in an attempt to locate a specific document or invoice.

Reduce The Amount of Time Your Employees Spend Sourcing Your On- or Off-Site Records

Accounts Payable Automation not only automates invoice processing but also your AP audit preparation. Everything you need to prove compliance is readily available. Your processors no longer need to log the auditor’s request and search for documents manually. To streamline things even further, you can extend access to your auditors so they can access your archive through a dedicated on-site workstation, further decreasing the time required to complete an audit.

You have complete visibility into your inbound and outbound payments and a paper trail of who authorized what. It’s a complete record that maintains itself and provides more detail than what is present on the document itself.

Keep Your AP Audits On Schedule and Under Budget

As a component of an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system, your AP Automation solution should be able to provide real-time access to your documents across each of your individual systems. Everything in your archive is organized from the get-go, and searchable by any logged metadata. Say goodbye to the unnecessary overages that you used to incur as you waited (and waited) for your audits to be completed. This technology also makes it easier and more cost-effective to implement a more rigorous internal audit schedule. It’s so easy, in fact, that you could achieve daily AP audits if necessary.

Streamlined Audit Reporting

Of course, audits don’t end after the information-gathering stage. Whether you use internal or independent audits, you still need to report on their findings. Accounts Payable Automation software makes it easy for you to share key data sets with your management, advisers, financiers, and investors.

An ECM-based AP Automation solution will allow you to deliver reports with custom dashboards, or you can use the self-service reporting tool to let each stakeholder access what they want to see. Some solutions, such as IntelliChief, require no coding knowledge, instead, relying on intuitive drag-and-drop simplicity that lets users visualize each audit’s results within seconds. Once reports are complete, they can be scheduled, shared, and archived in the user’s choice of electronic file format.

Improve Your Accounts Payable Audit Procedures With IntelliChief

We pioneered the Accounts Payable Automation movement, which is why we’re proud to offer the most fully featured and complete AP Automation solution on the market. Our industry-leading straight-through processing rates combined with our resiliency as a strategic partner has helped us serve the needs of hundreds of customers across the United States and beyond. Improving your Accounts Payable audit procedures is easy with IntelliChief!

For more information on automating your AP audits, contact IntelliChief today. We’ll show you how to save your valuable resources for other, more important projects.

Everything You Need to Know About JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools Release 9.2.5

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JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.2.5

On November 4, 2020, Oracle announced the release of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 9.2.5., focusing on digital transformation, user experience, system automation, security, and open platforms. As an Oracle Gold Partner, IntelliChief is proud to offer full support and seamless integration capabilities with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and our industry-leading Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform to help businesses maximize productivity by going paperless and automating business-critical processes. Below, our experts have outlined all the essential information you need to know about this update.

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools to Accelerate Digital Transformation

What is digital transformation? It’s much more than a catchphrase. It’s a set of technologies, concepts, and process modifications that help businesses identify and streamline slow, inundated departments. The Oracle JD Edwards team is highly focused on developing their ERP to help businesses become more viable in an increasingly digital world. Depending on your company’s outlook and interests, your approach to digital transformation will differ from your competitors’. Ultimately, by embracing digital transformation, your organization is entering the digital economy with the tools it needs to succeed. Oracle states that digital transformation “transforms how you use your EnterpriseOne system and enhances its value to your business.” But what does this look like?

  • Comprehensive integration capabilities with third-party systems
  • Accurate data supported by real-time updates from all connected technologies and applications
  • Support for seamless office-remote workflows via Mobile Content Management
  • Define objective success criteria with the Assertion Framework for Orchestrations
  • Enhanced configuration between EnterpriseOne servers and Application Interface Services (AIS) servers
  • Upload multiple content types, including EnterpriseOne media objects and files, to REST-enabled content management systems
  • Superior choice and control of system resources by leveraging configurable AIS session initialization
  • Improvements to user experience by extending the EnterpriseOne user session to externally hosted web applications, allowing for the efficient use of shared data and resources
  • Optimizations to streamline the retrieval of large data sets through Orchestrator

User Experience Improvements for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.2.5

According to Oracle, “User experience enables you to optimize the EnterpriseOne user interface and align it with your user community and their business processes—without the technical development needed for and the future debt associated with traditional application customizations.”

User experience is centered around personalization and delivering positive experiences every time an ERP user engages with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.2.5. That means lightning-fast access to forms and data, streamlined collaboration with team members, and keeping interfaces clean and uncluttered. The updated EnterpriseOne centers around three key features, including:

  • Form extensibility improvements
  • Enhanced search criteria and actions for enterprise search
  • Improvements to application-level help, such as direct access to the JDE resource library from the drop-down menu in EnterpriseOne

System Automation Updates

Automating business processes in JD Edwards EnterpriseOne can be a challenging endeavor. It is no secret that manual tasks like data entry can create significant delays in your business processes. Automation is the go-to solution for this problem, but not all JD Edwards users are equipped with the necessary tools to leverage “true” automation capabilities that account for a broad range of situations and circumstances. For example, when part numbers don’t match on a PO, a third-party cross-reference table can help verify an invoice match to automate processing when the transaction would be flagged otherwise. Although an ECM solution featuring workflow automation capabilities is arguably the most effective way to unlock “straight-through processing” (no human intervention at all), the Oracle team has made some mild improvements to enhance native automation capabilities in EnterpriseOne, including:

  • Virtual batch queues
  • Removing the local database requirement to streamline Object Management Workbench (OMW) tasks and Save/Restore operations
  • Automated troubleshooting for kernel failures
  • Web-enabled OMW and Web-based package build and deployment

Enhancing Security

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.2.5 is focused on boosting security by eliminating vulnerabilities related to EnterpriseOne deployments. One simple addition that should have a massive impact out of the gate is support for longer and more complex database passwords as well as automated Transport Layer Security (TLS) configuration between the Server Manager console and its agents. They have also updated some of the verbiage dealing with the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), which facilitates secure communication between various JDE applications by supporting message encryption, data integrity, and authentication.

An Open Platform for Your JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools

The Oracle JD Edwards development team continues to push the “open platform” concept to ensure customers have direct control over the underlying computing architecture of EnterpriseOne, giving them the ability to adapt to evolving industry needs and requirements and utilize the technology that best suits their unique business needs. From hardware to operating systems to databases, middleware, and browsers, JD Edwards is keen to provide a stable platform that embraces innovation. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.2.5 features support for 64-bit JD Edwards and UNIX platforms and numerous platform certifications, including:

  • Oracle Database 19c: IBM AIX on POWER Systems (64-bit JD Edwards), HP-UX Itanium (64-bit JD Edwards), Oracle Solaris on SPARC (64-bit JD Edwards), and local database for deployment server
  • Oracle Linux 8
  • Oracle SOA Suite 12.2.1.4
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2019 support for deployment server and Development Client
  • Microsoft Edge Chromium Browser 85
  • IBM i 7.4 on POWER Systems
  • IBM MQ Version 9.1
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
  • Mozilla Firefox 78 ESR
  • Google Chrome 85

Additionally, EnterpriseOne 9.2.5 withdraws support for:

  • Oracle Enterprise Manager 12.1
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2014
  • Microsoft Edge Browser 42 and 44
  • Apple iOS 11

Optimize Your JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP With IntelliChief

IntelliChief is an Oracle Gold Partner with formal integrations for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Our customers leverage IntelliChief to reduce manual data entry, embrace end-to-end automation, and help their JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP get smarter over time. To see IntelliChief in action for JD Edwards, visit our Resource Library.

Are you interested in learning more about how your organization can get the most out its JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP? Contact IntelliChief today to learn more about our award-winning approach to Enterprise Content Management and Workflow Automation for JD Edwards.

What Is Digital Procurement?

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According to Accenture, “the procurement organization has been largely left behind in the digital revolution.” While this may be true in some respects, it doesn’t necessarily indicate that digital procurement can’t be achieved through the use of existing technologies such as Enterprise Content Management (ECM), which consolidates several core business technologies to provide real-time insights, superior process control, and streamlined decision making throughout the procurement process.

The Basics of Digital Procurement

The purpose of digital procurement is to automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks that are detrimental to efficiency and burden your organization with unnecessary costs.  By equipping procurement professionals in your organization with the tools they need to improve daily operations and perform their job at the highest level, you can reinvent the way you approach interactions with suppliers and third parties by supporting an integrated platform that brings all stakeholders to the table for direct collaboration.

It’s no secret that error-prone business processes can derail procurement and cause friction between your organization and the suppliers it depends on. Digital procurement is designed to mitigate these challenges by streamlining the procurement process and insulating it against human error.

The Benefits of Digital Procurement

When considering whether digital procurement is right for your organization, it’s important to consider how it will impact your organization from both a cost and efficiency standpoint. By digitizing procurement, you are effectively equipping your team with the tools to work faster and smarter — not harder. But what makes digital procurement such a game-changer for SMEs and large enterprises?

Hello Data, Goodbye Uncertainty

It’s easy to lose sight of the fine minutiae of your procurement process, but the only way to see the “bigger picture” is by collecting actionable data to help you understand how you can improve procurement. In a highly manual procurement department, it’s impossible to track data on what was purchased, at what price, when, and for what reason. These insights are made available with digital procurement, allowing for more informed decision making.

Equipped With the Tools for Success

For many companies, digital procurement is only one aspect of digital transformation that they plan to pursue. From Accounts Payable Automation to Mobile Content Management and Records Retention, the ECM technologies that help you digitize procurement are also effective across other business units and processes. In other words, ECM-based digital procurement equips your organization with the tools to succeed wherever efficiency is a concern.

Superior Spend Management

Digital procurement paves the way for procurement automation, which means a more structured procurement process that suffers from fewer instances of off-contract or non-catalog spending. Purchasers are no longer required to go looking elsewhere for materials from unvetted suppliers you haven’t established rapport with. This means less tail spend and a greater focus on boosting the spend being managed directly by your procurement team.

Industry-Leading Cost Savings

Digital procurement connects your organization with its suppliers in more ways than ever before. Of course, cost savings are a primary driver for any process digitization or automation project, but it’s important to underscore this benefit so your organization understands how these savings are being achieved. For example, by consolidating procurement operations to a single platform, it becomes much easier to compare prices. Similarly, users can examine pricing trends to identify when a purchase price seems higher than it should be.

One Platform, Unlimited Possibilities

It’s impossible to understate the value of a single-platform solution. You don’t want your procurement team to constantly navigate from one window to the next to complete purchases. If they can make decisions from one screen without getting lost in extraneous information, it will improve transparency across your entire supply chain. Fairmarkit recommends “sharing data with your suppliers” as this can give you “insight into next-tier suppliers and upstream value chains.”

Anticipate Risk

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that even the most prepared organizations can’t predict the future. Business interruptions come in all shapes and sizes, including:

  • Widespread health-related events
  • Geopolitical risks
  • Climate change
  • Economic uncertainty
  • Human error
  • And more

By digitizing your supply chain, you are taking the first steps to insulate one of your most business-critical processes against factors you can’t control.

Is Procurement Digitization Right for Your Company?

Procurement digitization plays an important role in your company’s digital transformation, but it’s only one small step in the grand scheme of things — if automation is a goal for the future of your company. Ideally, companies that invest in digital procurement will expand their solution to encompass the entire P2P cycle. With an end-to-end solution automating every step of the P2P process, your company can save time and money by identifying and eliminating process deficiencies that hurt businesses.

To learn more about procurement digitization and Accounts Payable Automation, contact IntelliChief today.

Digitizing the Supply Chain

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In the world of logistics, ports and firms that have been reluctant to invest in digitizing their supply chain have found themselves at a decided disadvantage as they tussle with clunky, time-consuming processes that increase clearance times and decrease revenue collection.

The logistics industry is large and complex. It is highly dependent on cooperation and shared knowledge to stay ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, the detrimental effect of poor communication and cooperation between companies has been magnified under the lens of the ongoing pandemic. Early adopters of the latest logistics technology, like Enterprise Content Management, have effectively digitized the supply chain to insulate their operations against external disruptions; however, this only describes as a small portion of the overall logistics industry.

The Basics of Supply Chain Digitization

Digitizing the supply chain can be accomplished with the use of several cutting-edge technologies, including:

  • OCR Software to capture, index, and archive incoming logistics documents, such as bills of lading, manifests, delivery receipts, etc.
  • Workflow Software to streamline tasks by permitting parallel processing, updating your team with real-time notifications, and eliminating the risk of lost or misplaced documents.
  • Workflow Automation to automate the capture and workflow stages of your business process, cutting costs by as much as 70 percent or more.
  • Artificial Intelligence to help your solution get smarter over time.

By leveraging the expansive capabilities of Enterprise Content Management, digitizing your supply chain can be accomplished with a single, integrated platform that works seamlessly with your ERP or SCM. In other words, a single application to capture, digitize, and automate document-driven logistics operations.

Why Are Logistics Companies Digitizing the Supply Chain?

In the midst of the pandemic, it has become much harder to process, register, and transport goods from one place to another. To compound this issue, the deteriorating health conditions across the world have resulted in widespread staffing shortages. Logistics leaders were forced to pivot to account for these sudden changes. Some common procedures had to be adjusted to keep business flowing, including:

  • Releasing goods in advance of the final declaration
  • Performing post-release checks
  • Deferring payments and taxes
  • Waiving or reducing payments and taxes

While these were viewed as short-term measures by the industry at large, it has now become apparent that some of the procedures are here to stay — and technology will play a key role in securing their legitimacy for the future. For example, simply managing the sheer amount of data produced by goods and services as they cross borders is much easier with a digitized supply chain.

The Benefits of Supply Chain Digitization

Digitizing the supply chain is a no-brainer in the world of logistics. There are countless ways your organization can benefit from the digitization of supply chain management, including:

Accelerate Outbound Turnaround

Are you looking for a way to improve customer and vendor relationships? It’s no secret that your ability to complete deliveries on time while meeting your contractual obligations is essential to maintaining a stable of positive professional relationships.

Improve Document Security

It’s virtually impossible to lose track of a document once it has been saved in your ECM’s digital repository. More importantly, it’s impossible for the wrong user to gain access to a document if they lack the proper permissions. Therefore, while ECM allows for on-demand recall of any document (as well as any related documents), it also safeguards your organization by strictly controlling who can access various documents. These settings can be fine-tuned to meet the specific requirements of your organization, going so far as to implement security protocols on a user-to-user basis, helping you account for specialties, relationships, and more.

Increase Accuracy, Remove the Element of Randomness

ECM supports digitized supply chain management by operating as a connector between all of your business system’s databases, including your primary system of record, a secondary system of record, and various applications. Every document that is captured by the ECM’s OCR Software component is automatically indexed and verified. Users are alerted when a discrepancy arises that warrants a manual review. Not only does this increase accuracy but it also removes the element of randomness that hinders organizations tasked with processing large volumes of documentation. Furthermore, it all but eliminates the need for manual data entry as the majority of documents can be processed with no human intervention at all.

Decrease the Cost of Document Distribution

Another significant benefit of supply chain digitization is that it eliminates the need for mailing physical documents thereby decreasing the cost of document distribution. If shipping costs and other related costs are a problem, look no further than ECM to help streamline the flow of documents in and out of your organization.

Lightning-Fast Notifications for Streamlined Approvals

With automated workflows, everyone in your supply chain is notified as soon as a document is available for approval, effectively cutting out the “busy work” of back-office logistics. You will be shocked at how streamlined document-based processes become once ECM has been implemented in your back office.

Append Documents With Ease

It’s not uncommon to require amendments, updates, and approvals to be added to original documents without compromising the original document. The Document Management capabilities of ECM give your team the power to enter notes either in a pre-set field or in a digital post-it note placement adjacent to flagged information. Although this system allows users to compile helpful information on a document, the original data doesn’t change. That said, this helpful information can be added and tracked by ECM users throughout your logistics workflow.

Reduce Clearance Times and Improve Revenue Collection With Supply Chain Digitization

Technologies such as ECM that utilize AI to modernize logistics have become the gold standard for industry leaders. The automated, digitized supply chain can understand and implement rules-based logic to make decisions instantly without any delay. It can capably handle any volume of incoming documentation without fail, efficiently digitizing your documents and letting AI handle the rest. By taking an integrated approach to ECM for logistics, you can reduce clearance times and improve revenue collection to help your organization gain a distinct competitive advantage.

To learn more about digitizing your supply chain, contact IntelliChief today.

 

How an IntelliChief Customer Leveraged AP Automation to Grow Their Enterprise

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When you think about corporate growth, you may not think about the role of Accounts Payable. But AP can have more of an impact than you realize as you try to grow your enterprise.

The larger a company becomes, the more products it needs to create. And the more products it needs to create, the more supplies it needs to purchase.

As more and more transactions occur, Accounts Payable needs to grow in order to keep up the pace. Each employee can only process a certain number of invoices per day; eventually, more employees must be onboarded to keep up with rising volume.

A larger AP department does come at a higher cost, but there’s more than one way to expand your AP invoice processing capabilities  —streamlining operations with Accounts Payable Automation.

Here’s how one IntelliChief customer leveraged AP Automation to grow their enterprise:

They Selected Software That Integrated With Their ERP

In a bid to manage and automate AP documentation while also supporting future software expansion, this customer sought an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform that would help them achieve their content management and AP Automation goals. After surveying the ECM marketplace, the company selected IntelliChief ECM and AP Automation.

One of the driving factors for this selection was IntelliChief’s ability to integrate seamlessly with their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Extensive experience automating AP workflows was another key differentiator this customer couldn’t overlook. Best of all, IntelliChief was ready, willing, and able to improve their Accounts Payable department right away — and provide measurable results to back up their work.

This customer’s Director of Accounting noted that:

“IntelliChief has saved us considerable resource time and cost over our previous manual processes way of running our business, both in the AP department and in all others throughout the company utilizing the ECM system.”

With IntelliChief, they were able to continue their trend of consistent annual revenue growth and personnel expansion while meeting their business plan’s commitment to strategically increase their market share. By making sound investments in employees, facilities, and technologies, they were able to achieve meaningful success. The Director of Accounting continued:

“Automating our workflow with IntelliChief has provided us the ability to map our goals and targets, with visibility to processing status of daily tasks. This has provided us a phenomenal advantage with reviews and approvals, and with our cash flow management.”

They Transitioned From Manual Processes to Accounts Payable Automation

With a 34 percent increase in personnel over a five year period, this IntelliChief customer aimed to minimize the challenges of scaling AP by phasing out manual processes in favor of automated document management and accounting workflows. This reduced the cost and time commitment of their invoice volume, which averaged 500 transactions processed per day.

This particular customer was tasked with managing manufacturing and distribution facilities in both the US and Europe. They also held regional offices across the globe. In order to stay connected, they needed a solution that could give everyone access to all of their financial records with streamlined search/retrieve capabilities. IntelliChief, which specializes in AP Automation, helped them eliminate tedious, manual processes so employees could focus on invoice exceptions.

They Stopped Worrying About the Physical Challenges of Paper Records

Once the mandatory storage window has closed, the files are off to recycling. Meanwhile, a digital copy is kept in the IntelliChief archive. As you can see below, eliminating paper had a significant impact:

“We have paper storage both in-office and off-site in our warehouses. Freeing the space is allowing valuable square footage to be utilized more profitably.”

There was also the matter of audits. Working within a highly regulated industry, the company had to plan for regular audits — both internal and external.

They saw this as an opportunity to reduce the time and cost of these activities by establishing an auditing workstation on-site where auditors could search and retrieve documentation from the archive. This system eliminated the need to physically source documents from a file cabinet or warehouse in some corner of the world.

“Single point access had been an immense help with both Financial and Regulatory Affairs audits. The added convenience and time savings, both with auditors and our staff , is greatly reduced.”

In addition to audits, their Regulatory Affairs department utilized IntelliChief as a secure digital repository for all product and procedure information related to their governing Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations.

They Automated Production, Quality Assurance, and Distribution

After verifying the benefits of IntelliChief Accounts Payable Automation, interdepartmental expansion was the company’s next move. Here’s how they expanded their solution:

  • Automation in Production: IntelliChief helped employees collectively assemble all project documentation in a single system for real-time visibility and cross-departmental workflows.
  • Document Management for Quality Control: IntelliChief simplified the process of managing work order documents by digitizing them for easy retrieval via IntelliChief’s search functions.
  • OCR Software for Distribution: IntelliChief’s industry-leading Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software allowed them to capture shipping and receiving documentation at each logistics point. From there, that same documentation is automatically routed to AP for matching and payment, or Customer Service for collection and archival.

All of these expansions were ultimately productive and conducive to their ROI goals. Here’s what they had to say:

“The Production and Quality Control groups together have benefitted from tandem use of IntelliChief; it continually helped with project organization and oversight. Maintaining all project records together in a single repository, with automated workflow among those involved with each project, has simplified communications and enhanced delivery times notably.”

This Customer Can Now Grow on Its Own Terms. Can Yours?

This customer joined hundreds of others who leverage IntelliChief’s robust content management and process automation capabilities to streamline workflows, automate tedious tasks, and eliminate paper. They no longer face problems of scale, because IntelliChief can handle increasing invoice volume without interrupting your business process or making you pause to onboard new assets.

Want to see how you can do the same? Contact IntelliChief today to speak to an expert.

 

Protected: AP Automation Demo for Seaman Corporation

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Protected: AP Automation Demo for Lantheus

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