A good link with the value chain is essential to achieve good business results and stay competitive. One of the points of friction between companies and suppliers is given by the management of invoices to be paid: poorly prepared or lost documents, deficient controls over payments made, invoices that are processed late and are rejected close to the date of payment. payment…
Applying RPA (Robotic Process Automation) to invoice processing completely eliminates all of that hassle.
It is one of the areas where there is the greatest experience worldwide in terms of automation and processes entirely based on data, with which there is usually no risk in the implementation while, on the contrary, the benefits are immediately apparent. .
One of the great advantages of automating the processing of invoices resides in the rapid return of value, which in turn provides an additional benefit that is rarely evaluated: automating the processing of one area immediately energizes the other sectors of the company with which that interacts
Can invoice management be automated?
Invoice management is a process that can be automated from end to end: this means that human intervention is minimal and efficiency in results is optimal.
Nothing is left to chance in supplier payment management . The monitoring of those that are received is streamlined (today, they mostly arrive in digital format, or are easily digitized, but the large volume that still persists on paper constitutes a real pain for the business), their processing or the extraction of the key data such as the amount or the name of the supplier (specifically, this aspect implies an integration with machine learning tools).
They are also compared against the purchase orders and the arrival of the goods or the provision of the requested services to confirm that the data is correct, detect and eliminate duplications or distribute all the relevant data to the banking, accounting and tax reconciliation systems. The circuit continues until the payment is made to settle the document or generate the return of internal expenses.
The systems can automatically detect when an invoice is close to its due date and take the necessary actions: send a push notification to the finance area or directly activate the payment in the management systems.
Benefits of automating bill payment
The benefits of automating the management of payment to suppliers range from a reduction in the expense of processing invoices to the virtual elimination of errors due to cross-checking with other systems or databases, going through a greater focus on the part of the historical managers of the area in value-added tasks for the organization: personalized treatment with suppliers, negotiation of better conditions based on good payment behavior, improvements in value chain processes or detection of supply alternatives.
With the right alerts, you can capitalize on early payment discounts imposed by some providers and avoid late fees imposed by others. Even when there are no prizes or penalties, payment on time guarantees a good relationship, a decrease in claims by the supplier (which in turn implies the use of some human resource to attend to it) and, of course, also deliveries on time .
In times when we talk about customer experience and satisfaction, RPA applied to supplier payment management not only improves management, generates savings and increases productivity, but also -and perhaps more importantly- brings experience and supply chain satisfaction.
