The Breakdown of Internal and External Communication via Web Invoicng, Front-End Imaging

Over the years, Web invoicing solutions have emerged to facilitate external exchange of transaction-related information and funds between buyers and suppliers. On the other hand, front-end imaging and workflow solutions have evolved to meet organizations’ internal needs around invoice receipt and management. But Web invoicing and front-end imaging solutions both have the same ultimate goal – eliminate paper from transactions. They simply have evolved from different starting points.

However, as the Internet expands into all corners of business communication, the distinction between internal and external breaks down. This is already affecting the AP automation landscape with imaging vendors offering vendor portals, explicitly designed to facilitate buyer-supplier collaboration and enabling suppliers to submit electronic invoices. On the other hand, Web invoicing solution providers have begun offering paper documents to electronic data conversion services, either directly or through their partners.

Our research indicates that industry consolidation nothwithstanding, both types of solutions will flourish for years to come, but cross-pollination is bound to occur. Ultimately, accounts payable departments will benefit from this convergence as AP automation solutions incorporate better options for invoice receipt, approval processing, and discrepancy resolution that provide both internal control and external collaboration.

About Sushmitha Koka

Sushmitha (Sush) Koka is the Research Director at PayStream Advisors, Inc. In addition to managing PayStream’s overall technology research effort, Sush leads client engagements and participates in technology strategy projects. Sush’s areas of focus include document and data management, electronic billing and payment, accounts payable, receivables and collections, and business process automation. She has extensively researched and written reports in the above areas and her work has also been published in a number of trade publications including Supply & Demand Chain Executive, GTNews and DOCUMENT Magazine.
This entry was posted in B2B Credit and Collections, Voices and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>