How an IntelliChief Customer Leveraged AP Automation to Grow Their Enterprise
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.