We’ve all seen the credit card company ad that begins with customers dancing their way through the checkout line, only to be interrupted by the curmudgeon (or tennis geek) who insists on paying with outmoded paper payment. Everything screeches to a halt as the customers wait impatiently for a payment to process.

Similarly, companies are investing substantial resources in complex financial accounting software. Everything is going smoothly. International transactions occur at the rate of thousands per second. Companies interacting with each other in real-time across continents, and in board rooms across the country, companies talk passionately about their automated and improved efficiency.

But in the backroom, away from the view of the public, companies are mired in paper. Documents such as invoices, checks, credit applications, purchase orders, correspondence and even credit card numbers are sitting in file folder in desks, file cabinets or in storage.

In spite of…

I received NAPP’s (National Association of Purchasing & Payables) newsletter the other day. There are always one or two articles that catch my interest, but the one in the current issue really jumped out at me. It was titled “Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch” by Mark Trowbridge (and originally appeared in a different publication). What a fantastic headline!

The article was well done and very supply-chain focused, but it struck me that the topic can just as easily be applied to Accounts Payable — particularly with regard to invoice automation. Invoice automation strategies can be designed with the best of intentions, but if you have a culture resistant to change, your investment in invoice automation will not pay off.

But a resistant culture isn’t the end of the world. It just means you’ll need to put some extra thought and energy into ensuring adoption. I believe there are at least 4…

Here are some highlights from a press release we at Metafile recently put together to show that, although the advantages of document management, workflow and einvoicing are evident every day, if you are now dealing with paper-based year-end duties, your holidays are not near as jolly as they should be.

Metafile, a content management firm dedicated to providing streamlined financial innovations, is helping firms avoid the mad scramble of a year end spent locating and gathering all documents necessary to adequately close out their books.

The lack of workflow automation solutions, in most instances, will equate into a significant loss of Days Working Capital (DWC) for all too many firms (and a significant loss of holiday cheer for many AP Managers!).

“The mad dash stemming from closing out the books at year end is a symptom of something much greater,” states Jim Mandt, Metafile’s VP of Technical Support….

When we started Transcepta, my co-founder Ray Parsons and I talked alot about the “name-space problem” and how much it has set back our attempts around the world to move to paperless B2B eCommerce. This problem goes something like this:

• The accounting system of a buyer has a purchase order, ready to send to one of their suppliers. Unless they have pre-established EDI relationships with that supplier, they probably mail or fax the PO. Larger buyers almost always have the ability to send the PO to the supplier in electronic form (i.e. XML), but if they did, the supplier couldn’t read it. Why? You guessed it: the namespace problem. The buyer orders part number AD7823, but the supplier knows it as something else. Note that name-space problems aren’t just for part numbers; they also apply to simple fields like company name, address, PO number etc.
• Now the supplier receives this PO,

…

“If you can’t measure if, you can’t manage it.” This statement seems to have been around forever, but it still rings as true as ever. Six Sigma and other similar continuous-improvement methodologies have been applied successfully to process-oriented business functions, such as manufacturing. And that success has led to Six Sigma projects in other areas of business, including Purchasing and AP.

The foundation of Six Sigma, of course, is data. Data for measuring cycle times, defects (or in AP, discrepancies), and more. Even if your organization hasn’t embraced a formal methodology for continuous improvement, data remains the key to unlocking greater efficiency and lower costs in Purchasing and AP.

Do you have a consistent set of key metrics used to measure performance in Purchasing and AP? Do you compare these metrics against standard industry benchmarks? No? Don’t worry — outside of the Fortune 500, Purchasing & AP departments are highly inconsistent in…

As you can imagine, I get to know quite a number of start up and early stage EIPP (and related) vendors, both here and across the pond. At the same time, I have also attracted a number of potential investors and acquirers seeking startup and early stage EIPP vendors.

While you may think that only start up and early stage companies require funding, I am aware of mature companies who have been in discussions with investment community in order to seek funding for growth. In these cases, funding is generally needed for geographical expansion. It is much easier for mature companies to raise funding than startups or early stage companies. While this is the general acceptance, courting potential investors for 8 to 12 months without closing the deal quickly, do put a significant strain on the business.

Given that EIPP is a…

Buyers searching for a way to eliminate the hassle of inbound paper A/P invoices have a few options to choose from. EDI has existed for years. E-Invoicing networks grabbed the spotlight in the late 1990s. Finally a resurgence of OCR has taken place. The reality is all of these offerings continue to leave Buyers wanting. The main challenge – slow Vendor adoption. For those looking to compliment an existing solution that has only removed a portion of the inbound paper or for those looking at an electronic invoicing project for the first time, our upcoming Nov. 14^th webcast should help you understand your options.

To register visit: http://www.gotomeeting.com/register/750845266

Have you noticed that the U.S. is a nation of contradictions? This country came up with electricity, the silicon chip, the personal computer, Amazon.com, the iPod, Google, and reality TV (OK, so that’s a bad example). We have very active capital markets. We launch businesses and have active venture capital to fund them. We have entrepreneurs everywhere.

And yet when it comes to financial transactions, we are in the dark ages. Take, for example, the use of debit cards. They are just starting to be prominent in the U.S. But I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Europe, and the dominance of debit cards and “smart cards” that keep account details on the card and ensure authentication - they’re everywhere! In fact, they were everywhere 5 years ago.

For B2B transactions, well, the situation is even worse than with B2C transactions. …

Although I initially intended my first post to be a thought leading, insightful remark about electronic invoicing, the marketing guy in me couldn’t help but make a company announcement instead. I am pleased to report that last month the Transcepta Electronic Invoicing Community reached over 12,500 companies! Achieving this milestone in such a short time is further evidence that Transcepta is changing the landscape of electronic invocing. Customers finally can participate in sending and receiving invoices electronically without expensive, hassle ridden OCR, EDI, and eInvoicing networks. As the Community grows so does the value of the Community’s hosted, many to many architecture. For more information: Transcepta