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…

In today’s world, almost anything can be done electronically: banking, buying clothing, and even ordering take out! It seems like everyone is doing everything that they can electronically.

It makes me wonder then why many large companies with enormous staff, divisions, and revenue still choose to use paper invoicing? All that paper is labor intensive and inefficient; it only slows down the organization’s business-to-business accounts payable payments.

Human beings are creatures of habit. It often takes some persuading, question and answer sessions, opinions from family, friends, colleagues and a little bit of research for a human to make a decision that can affect them or the work they do.

People in some innovative companies have accepted change and use change as a competitive advantage. Technologies like discount management and supply chain finance have created lower DPOs, DSOs and lower unit costs for these companies by automating the payment exchange process, related documents and…

Company: Orange County Public Schools

Implementation: PayStream’s Payment Process Analysis™

Industry: Education

Company size: 12th largest of 16,000 school districts in the United States

“Exceptions like missing GR’s are killing our productivity.” — AP Department

The problem

• Explosive growth in student population
• Entirely manual document management system
• Approval process inconsistent with current leading practices
• Limited visibility with current ERP deployment
• Missing available discounts
• Invoicing process costs 60% above industry average
• Poor communication between departments
• Poorly trained AP staff

The solution

• Conduct an automation assessment of accounts payable process
• Document metrics with PayStream’s methodology and benchmarking data
• Introduce document imaging technology to the system
• Exploit PayStream’s library of best practices across the industries
• Expand electronic payment options (P-Card, EFT & EDI)
• Apply workflow to enhance approval process and communication
• Specialize AP tasks and training

The benefits

• Scalable AP department to accommodate explosive growth
• Imaged documents only mouse-clicks away from all departments
• Invoicing costs in line with industry average
• Reduce exception handling commitment by 50%
• Efficient approval process from workflow
• Productivity gains from AP training and specialization
• Improve financials from

…

Latest to join the e-invoicing startups to be funded by Venture Capitalists is TBiConnect run by Simon Fox. Both OB10 and Burns e-Commerce top the VC funding tables for attracting the most cash to date. Among other funded companies include Accountis from North Wales, but they still require a significant funding round to enable an European expansion. For some reason, I do not see Accountis conquering the world similar to OB10, so their best hopes remain within the Europe, capitalising their key customer, DHL. UK companies looking for VC funding include United Data, which is yet to launch its e-invoicing solution. United Data’s Founder and I go back a long way, and I hope Mark Morahan will finally launch his much anticipated e-invoicing hub this year with a realistic business model than the last time (conquer UK before the world!).

I have known Simon Fox of TBiConnect for well over…

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…

First of all, let me wish readership of PaystreamVoices a happy and prosperous 2008.

The European e-invoicing market continues to remain fragmented and small but potential market size remains significantly high. Unfortunately, not much has changed since the early 2000’s except for the increasing number of vendors entering the market place, as reported by Bruno. This is obviously a positive side of a maturing market and has led to minor improvements in the overall market share. However, the optimistic predictions of analysts continued to be missed, year after year. We are still addressing the fundamental problem of replacing paper based solutions with electronic systems. We also seems to have forgotten that our key competitor is none other than paper.

Whilst much has been spoken of supply chain finance, dynamic discounting and the second p (payment) of EIPP, none of these solutions are going to achieve traction until the fundamental problems are…

Supply Chain Finance and Payables Discount Management (SCF/DM) initiatives need a framework to ensure that programs are approached on a strategic basis that bridges both the Supply Chain and Finance organizations. PayStream’s analysts are working on such a framework to help enterprises implement an “integrated” Supply Chain Program, and have created the Eight Building Blocks of SCF/DM framework to get our clients started. Just as a map helps you understand the context of your journey (the roads you need to navigate and alternative routes), so the SCF/DM framework helps enterprises make decisions about the best route and objectives for their situation.

To build on this theme, PayStream will host an educational conference “Supply Chain Finance - Discount Management Summit” in June 2008 to bring together supply chain and finance executives to explore the future opportunities in working capital. The theme of this year’s SCF conference is Uncovering Working Capital…

I am pleased to announce that the White Paper for PayStream’s upcoming Imaging and Workflow Report is now available in our Research Library. This whitepaper presents an overview of IWA technologies, makes a case for adopting IWA solutions, and also presents a preview of what will be available in the full report. The full IWA Technology Insight Report will detail accounts payable automation, with particular attention to the exciting new IWA technologies available to AP, such as “straight-through processing,” enterprise content management, advanced analytics, on-line Vendor Portals, and Invoice Receipt and Capture.

Read the Press Release here.

The upcoming report will be the third go-around PayStream has had in providing our research on the IWA market to those looking to automate their workplaces and transform them into paperless environments. As such, PayStream has a lot of experience with this technology, and I am privileged to be drawing on that…

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….

Every Supply Chain executive can tell you that sourcing strategy, category depth of expertise, negotiation prowess, and procurement execution are the critical components of a highly effective supply management initiative. If everyone knows the basics, why do we still see such an amazing opportunity in eProcurement? It’s all about visibility (or lack thereof) of procurment processes.

Lack of access to spend metrics and controlled processes has been a big block for many Source to Settlle process improvement efforts. The opportunity for the supply chain organization is enormous — combined with payables automation, it’s very enticing. Moreover, spend data is also vital for other business strategies, such as budgeting and planning, inventory control, and product development.

Data visibility is critical for identifying hard-dollar savings opportunities and developing sourcing, budgeting, planning, and product strategies. Most importantly, it is critical because with it, overall Spend Visibility will provide an important foundation for advanced strategic working…