Therefore Webinar: Accounts Payable

okay hello everyone thanks so much for joining us today before we get started we just like to quickly introduce ourselves my name is kono Fusco I'm the media manager here at therefore and I'm joined on this call by my colleague Teresa hi everyone I'm Teresa fedko content marketing editor here at therefore corporation we're really happy to be bringing you this webinar today based on therefore for the accounts payable process okay so before we get started let's just clarify how you can ask questions during the webinar so our event center platform has a Q&A function where you can type the questions directly you can find this by clicking the Q&A button on the top right of your screen and typing a question in the text box below it once your questions been answered the answer will appear right below it and like always we'll try to get to all of your questions during the webinar but we'll also follow up with you by email if we don't get to your question all right I think we're ready to go now so I'll hand over to Teresa all right so before we get started let's go over the agenda for this session to keep our presentation really nice and focused we've split the session into four different parts so you can see here from our subway map we're going to take four stops on the blue line before we reach the proverbial City Center we'll start off by looking at the AP process in general and explain the challenges and problems that are often coming up in this process at the next step we'll see about perfecting the process so in this case we'll examine the opportunities that lie behind in an improved AP process and how to get there then we'll take a break from the slides and show you a real demo of a scenario where you can use therefore for ap recorded straight from our demo server then finally once we reach the end we want to share a case study with you about a customer who's using therefore in the finance department and the success they've had with it so on that note coño can I ask you to give an introduction to the AP process sure I'll start this off so the Accounts Payable process is just the part of the entire operational workflow behind provisioning and usually this process is called procure-to-pay and it starts off with the creation of the purchase order a good or service is requested from a supplier and once this is received it comes along with an invoice this is where the accounts payable part actually starts and in this case we're referring specifically to processing received invoices so this seems like a simple task but it's actually the part of the process that has the potential to cause the most delays and hassles both for the purchaser and the supplier because this is where the money is actually changing hands now the whole purchase to pay operation can be quite expensive but today we want to focus specifically on the invoice processing part which is an area where therefore has great potential to improve the way the whole process is managed so let's now focus our attention and look at the steps involved in the ap process specifically we can see here that we've split this up into six steps that are required for invoice processing some of these could of course be grouped together so for example the receipt of the invoice is practically the same step as the data capture but we've decided to split this so we can visually see what's happening to invoices at each stage of the process so as I said when invoice is received the data has to be captured in some format whether the data is paper-based or electronic and if an invoice has line items that need to be assigned to cost centers it needs to be routed of course to the appropriate party then of course an invoice needs some kind of traceable approval before it can be paid and finally good record-keeping practices and in some cases legal obligations call for you to archive the invoices for a certain period of time so now that we've understood what the steps are and how they fit together let's take a look then at some of the challenges that crop up in this process so here we're looking at a visual representation of a typical workflow for invoice processing now of course each organization will have its own unique differences in how they go about this but this is a pretty good general representation of how the process normally works and in this case we're assuming that this is a completely manual process with only basic elements of electronic data handling so if we start off with the first step where a purchase order is raised and in order is placed at this point we have to file the purchase order since we'll need it later to reconcile with the invoice we already see a potential for error here if we don't have a safe and traceable way of filing these documents they could get lost and result in delays and hassle down the line when actually comes time to pay all right so now let's continue on a parallel path our order has arrived and we've received the proof of delivery and again just like with the purchase order I have to file this for later reconciliation and just like the P o the p OD can be could be misplaced or incorrectly filed or who knows what and that's what's going to cause trouble later on if that happens all right so now at this point we get to the star of our little process here which is our invoice and this will likely arrive in paper form in a more traditional process so now we get to the main part of it which starts off by needing to reconcile the invoice with the original purchase order and the proof of delivery and this is where we can run into a lot of issues with the manual process so as well as we mentioned before if something went wrong when filing the P o and P OD this is going to lead to some serious delays when issue is discovered at this point with a manual process this step is also inherently slow because it requires the investment in time to pull the supporting documents from wherever they're stored even if they were filed directly so after we've reconciled their invoice it may need to be approved in some organizations this may be the case with high value invoices where these should be approved by a manager or higher up this is another step of course that can cause quite a bit of hassle the task may be forgotten by the approver and you may have to chase them up personally if that's the case you have no visibility at this point you don't know did the manager ever even view the document did they approve it and just forget to send it back was it even sent to the wrong person unfortunately there's no easy way to check any of this so at this point once we have gotten the approval assuming we do get it we'll book the invoice and pay it and the last step as I mentioned earlier is to archive the invoice that we have now if you don't have a secure and efficient way of doing this there is a high risk of losing or miss filing documents and this may not be noticeable at first but it could lead to some serious headaches if you ever get audited and failure to comply with certain regulations could land you in hot water and result in fines or other penalties all over something that's actually rather simple and of course we shouldn't forget that physical storage is expensive both in terms of the space it takes up and the auxiliary costs of maintaining a physical archive so now that we've seen some of the low-level details of possible trouble areas in the whole ap process let's see exactly what kind of effects these challenges can have so Theresa would you mind telling us a bit more about that yeah sure thing so according to research from the Aberdeen Group 40% of finance departments polled dated that they need real-time data availability in the AP process which as we saw from our mock-up in the manual process is quite difficult if not impossible to come by 33% of departments experienced challenges and processing high volumes of input invoices with their current staff levels so we really see the need for process automation in this case both to manage everyday processing as well as those seasonal fluctuations like at the end of a reporting period for instance finally 29% of departments have difficulty locating and managing paper-based documents and this tells us that there really is a great need and potential for digitizing these documents and storing them in an easily accessible logical repository in order to avoid avoid the hassles and costs that come with keeping paper documents this is also a good way to avoid the risks inherent to managing paper like poor or expensive security and risk of loss due to disasters or theft now that we've gotten a high-level overview of some of the common challenges in aap let's drill down a little deeper and see the major issues that cause problems at each step of the process and this is important to understand so that we can see how exactly an information management solution can help address the specific needs of each process area ok so as we saw before we've broken down the AAP process into six steps for the first step where you want to receive the invoice simply sorting invoices can become a massive chore if you don't have an automated process in place for this relying on a manual process makes this task very slow and also highly prone to error when we get to the point where we're distributing the invoices then we also run the risk of loss and potentially significant delays it's also difficult to deal with environments that have mixed types of invoices and ap Department for instance might receive invoices in multiple formats that need to be processed in different ways or may receive the invoices at different locations making it very difficult to coordinate in an efficient way before the process is really even gotten started if we move on to the point where we need to capture the data on the invoice we've received we'll start seeing some problems that can crop up there so whenever you have manual data entry you will always have some sort of inaccuracies not only that but the labor-intensive nature of the process means that it's costing a lot more man-hours and that could be better spent on more productive tasks with this sort of process you're also running the risk of some major compliant risks as a lack of control when information is being manually processed can easily result in data breaches the low-tech kind something as simple as documents with confidential account info making its way out of the office in somebody's bag and finally error resolution can become a PDS task due to a lack of visibility and that time that's wasted while you're trying to track down the source of the error if we take a look at cost allocation next we can see that manual cost allocation has many of the same problems as other manual steps the task is very repetitive and thus prone to error and it's something that could very easily be automated in some way so when this inevitably leads to the need for error resolution we've come across another set of issues not only does re-entering the data unnecessarily cost time and money it also has a negative impact on cash flow in the approval step we come across some other problems finding documents in a manual process can quickly become cumbersome as having to manually match invoices purchase orders and proof of delivery requires a lot of overhead in terms of the logistics of pulling all those documents and then returning them to their original storage locations as you can imagine this results in a lot of time wasted now if during this step we discover that there are a lot of mismatched details or discrepancy among the documents that are being compared we'll have to take a hit in productivity by retyping that data once again and again time and resources end up being wasted at this point we may also need to do some sort of manual routine for for authorization so you can see how something as simple as a clerical error can work its way down the line and cause delays to other problems and as we mentioned earlier with the manual process it's really quite difficult to have visibility into this stage of the process we may have lots of pending approvals and not know why they're being held up and we don't know if it's a problem with the numbers the budget or even something as simple as they approve or just being you know out of the office for a few days the lack of visibility at this stage can really grind everything to a halt so let's finish off by looking then at the final two steps in the payment stage a manual ap process is likely to result in issues with payment processing like paying the supplier twice due to the lack of visibility or long delays before the records are updated this same lack of up-to-date information also means that you have no or only outdated information to work with when determining cash flow you could just as likely have the opposite problem though if imperfections in the process cause you to make delayed payments now the effects of this are obvious not only are you unnecessarily paying late fees but you're also missing out on lucrative early payment discounts and of course all these issues affects your relationships with your suppliers if your processes often result in some sort of issue or discrepancy you'll spend a lot of time contacting or fielding questions from your suppliers which not only cost you time but could also jeopardize that future business with those suppliers now once the process is completed and we've archived our documents physical storage becomes an issue so we can't just process our documents and forget about them as we mentioned earlier when we need to do that three-way matching to approve invoices we waste a lot of time and there's a lot of organisational overhead in pulling these documents and making sure they don't get lost somewhere along the way and then refiling them when it comes to storing documents securely unless your office is like Fort Knox you're always running some risks it can get very complicated tedious and expensive to ensure physical documents are secured and trackable data breach or loss can easily result in audit failures and fines associated with it and let's also not forget that you have some very real tangible costs associated with physical storage all that papered storage takes up space which you need to pay for along with the associated infrastructure costs for managing it okay so we've reviewed some of the common problems with the manual ap process but we're not here to preach doom and gloom today instead we want to tell you about how you can perfect this process and the positive effects this will have for your ap process your finance department and your organization as a whole okay so kono do you mind giving us a quick introduction before we start with the demo yes of course so when we talk about perfecting the process we want to see how to make use of an information management solution to eliminate the problems we just saw and maximize our productivity but before we dive into the details of how we're going to do that we want to first give you some context about why we should do it and what the main goals of this initiative are so if we take a look at the opportunity for perfecting aap processes research from the Aberdeen Group has shown that organizations with automated ap can reap quite a few benefits first of all a huge one is a 49% savings in invoice processing costs there's also 63% more of a chance for straight do processing which means that an invoice is processed following all the normal steps without any corrective action or reroute ndu to errors or delays an automated ap solution allows organizations to handle more than four times the amount of invoice volume than before and finally you can benefit by reducing your days payable outstanding by 18% this average comes out to be about five and a half days shorter for organizations with automated ap the results of a management survey show us the main goals of implementing an automated ap solution 42 percent of respondents want as a result of an improved process to capture early payment discounts this one makes a lot of sense because we're talking strictly in terms of well money that can be saved and interesting to see is that 35% want to maintain good supply relationships and 31% are looking to improve this area so we can see that another important element comes into play here and that it's not just about money at any given time but a lot of organizations are also thinking about the positive effects of good supplier relations on the entire process and their financial well-being in the long term we also see that being able to manage large changes in invoice volume like seasonal spikes at the end of the fine here is a top priority for over one-quarter of respondents so then as a follow-up to that I think it's important that we take a look at the various approaches taken by thought leaders to achieve the goals we just talked about so if we take a look at another study by Aberdeen we can see that a big need expressed by more than 50% of those surveyed is the integration of payables with the systems of other departments that they rely on such as procurement and Finance a very close second is the investment in automation of invoice receipt and workflow Express about 46% 39% have taken the approach to centralized invoice management processes and 29% are looking to standardize these processes across different locations or business units so now that we understand the background and context of automating ap processes let's take a look specifically at how therefore helps the AP process so we know by now that we're using this six step process as an example in this case we'll be looking at all of these steps in a demo of their four software which we're going to show you in a few minutes and we've split the demo into four logical parts we've got capture process integrate and archive in order to see all the features of therefore in action and we'll first just quickly explain the background of what we'll be doing in each part before we hop onto our demo server so we can make sure that we're all on the same page so Theresa if it's okay for you can I ask you to cover the theory slide for each demo I'll then take control the demo server and run through the demo steps for each one sure no problem so in that case let me get started with the capture part in the demo we're about to show you we're going to be looking at capturing both paper and electronic documents when we capture paper documents we have the option to use OCR and barcode recognition to pick up data from the document and use that for automatic indexing when we look at capturing electronic documents what we're going to show you is an interesting use of the therefore universal connector which we'll use to get index data from third-party software another option of course would be to capture documents from a watch folder or mailbox and process them with the therefore content connector so kono could you go ahead and switch to the demo server now yep I've got it running already okay so as Teresa said we're going to be taking a look at two ways to get our data into therefore let's first do it the more traditional way by scanning in a paper document and now I don't have a scanner hooked up to this machine so I'm just going to import the document I scanned in previously since it actually works the same way all right so there's my document I can see it has a barcode which we can read data from or alternatively we could have done it with OCR so this document is automatically indexed and let me show you that now you can see that I've gotten all the index data extra need from the document all right so let's save it and this will have started off a workflow now into there for navigator we will take a look at the next step soon but while we're still in the capture phase let me just show you another interesting way to save a document into therefore like we mentioned earlier we're going to do this using an integration with our universal connector and for those of you who are not familiar with it the therefore universal connector is a great little tool for very light sort of light integration scenarios like the one we're about to see and in this case I'm going to show you how we take data from the accounting program saij one and use it to save a document and therefore all right so now that I've logged into our sage 1 portal let's say I want to enter a new invoice into the system so let me first enter the supplier then the dates the invoice number a reference in this case our Pio number and then my line items so okay at this point I have the data I need to enter in here in this case that we want to save the document and therefore to take advantage of all the document management capabilities of the system but we don't want to enter this data twice well that's where the universal connector comes in so I've already got my profile set up and all I have to do when I'm on this page is press the special hot key in this case I chose ctrl alt + f5 but you can set it to whatever combination you want all right so I now know it worked because it's prompting me to give it a document to save so here's the document ok and there we go so it pulled the data that I entered into stage 1 and populated it into my index data dialog so turns out that that was actually super easy so let me just save here and the document is already saved and therefore of course I want to save my data in Sage 1 as well ok so we've gotten our invoice into therefore and now we can begin processing all right so now that we've captured the data we need let's see how we're going to process it well the first thing we need to do is to match those documents and and therefore we'll see how automatic document linking makes this really straightforward then we'll see how we can allocate cost centers and easily manage those approvals by using things like parallel work streams and exceptions then when we get to the approval stage we'll look at some options for either automatic or manual approval which can all be done automatically by the system based on conditions all right so before we begin with this let's take a quick look at our workflow this is basically the process that we showed before just optimized for a digital way of working so we can see here we're at the first step which is to check the invoice this is where we're doing our document matching and we can either approve using this path or if something is wrong we can send it for resolution after that the business logic behind the workflow takes over and intelligently routes the tasks based on any conditions we set so for example we want the invoice routed to different departments for line-item approvals based on cost centers the workflow can do that in parallel sending the invoice to any relevant departments while skipping those that are not affected after it's been approved by everyone we've set a rule that if the invoice is over a certain amount it should need manual approval from management and if the invoice is over this amount the workflow will automatically choose that path the invoice will then either be rejected or approved and then we move on to the final task which is to book and pay the invoice so let's see what this looks like in action if we check our workflow inbox will open up one of the invoices we saved so let's first take a look here at our instructions okay we have a couple things but let's do one thing at a time so first thing is set cost centers all right so let me take a look at my index data and do that first our prints are going to be for the marketing department while the printer is the two departments responsibility all right so that's done let me just check that off and the next thing I need to do is to check the invoice against the P o and P o D okay piece of cake so if you look here you'll see that it has the relevant P o and PL D already linked to the document we had saved these documents prior to starting the demo but they were automatically linked by the P o number once we save the invoice as we did a few minutes ago so that means that we don't have to go looking for these documents I can just view them right here so let's see that's my p OD that looks good and there's my purchase order okay fine that all seems to be in order so that means I can move on with the workflow and say okay this is the match let's send it off to the cost centers good so let's check back with our workflow now alright so we can see that since we had cost centers for marketing and IT the workflow split here and is now awaiting approval let me just do that real quick for them and approve it so we can move on with the workflow all right so let me refresh let's look again we can see that after our cost Center approved their line items the workflow arrived at the final approval stage but bypassed the manual approval since if I guess it must have been below our manual approval threshold so that means that the invoice was automatically approved and now we've reached the final step of where we have to pay and book the invoice so before I show you that we're going to flip back to the presentation to explain how we're going to do this okay so once we've reached the pay stage this is where it is really interesting that therefore being able to support different types of integration scenarios in a scenario where a light integration is needed like for pulling up documents based on data in third-party applications the therefore universal connector works really well by giving you a chance to pull that data from almost any third-party application like QuickBooks Sage quicken or really any program both installed and hosted that lets you read and copy data this is what we'll be focusing on in this part of the demo however therefore also offers connectors 2's AP and Dynamics NAV which allow a really deep level of integration and a truly seamless experience working with both systems although these connectors won't be shown in detail in our demo today we do encourage you to check out our YouTube channel they're for TV for videos showing how these connectors work and the use cases they support in any case' let's take a look at the light integration scenario with the therefore universal connector okay good explanation now let me show you what this looks like in real life so Teresa mentioned that the universal connector can pull data from almost any third-party application we're going to stick with stage one in this case to round out the story so let me show you what we mean we've processed our workflow now and we're at the stage where we have to pay well we can do this using sage one or another program but we may at this point want to review the invoice or any related documents before paying although the invoice is in therefore you don't have to go opening therefore specifically to go look for it we can take a shortcut by using the universal connector in this case so let's say that we're about to pay this invoice but we need to take another look at the original so I'm in sage one ready to go and all I need to do is highlight a certain value a unique reference like the invoice number and press the hotkey I set up so here we go it automatically pulls up the relevant document and therefore I can review this document and like we saw before we can also easily view related linked documents like the EPO or the PID so using the universal connector we can see that it's possible to interact with both systems both ways and use the data we pull from the third-party application to both save and retrieve information and therefore ok so we looked at the whole processing cycle and therefore but as we know that's not the end of a documents lifecycle we still need to hold on to it well beyond the time it's done processing and for that we need to see the long-term storage capabilities of the system all right so let's take a look now at the archive part we know that therefore has a great repository with all the tools you need to keep your documents secure even after processing and we want to draw your attention in particular to there fors robust retention policies which allow you to migrate your data to primary and backup storage and to secure your documents for the legally required time period this is all automated without any user intervention and it really helps you by maintaining complete records in case of any audit access permissions are another way therefore excels there are completely customizable permission settings which allow you to restrict access to documents so that they can only be viewed by authorized personnel and of course you can also log and track actions performed on all documents in the system should you need to do so for this we're going to show you a quick example of what these two tools look like and therefore right so let me show you briefly how this is done and therefore now this is getting a little more technical here but I know there's a lot of technicians watching this presentation too so I'll give you a quick rundown so first we talked about retention policies which help you keep track of your documents and make sure they're not deleted before a certain period of time if I open be there for solution designer which is our administrative program I'll go down to the storage section and take a look at my retention policies I already created a policy here called ap documentation seven years so let's see how I set this up I said I want to delete old documents and then I chose 84 months which is seven years of course you can change this to whatever time period you want we can choose how to measure these 84 months as well in this case I chose the simplest option which starts the clock at the date of the creation of document but you can also choose to have the date of last modification or you can base it on some kind of date field in the index data which gives you full flexibility in determining how and when documents are deleted when it comes to access permissions therefore has a really easy way of doing this if I check out the categories that we were using in this demo I can view the security by just simply right-clicking and selecting security here I have some basic permissions set up with admins having full access and regular users having only read and write permissions now of course I can break this down further like if I want a specific user to have special rights if I click the advanced permissions year I can see all sorts of specific permissions which I can individually allow or deny giving me full flexibility and deciding who can access parts of the system and what they can do since the permission structure is hierarchical I can make it easier to assign similar permissions by going to the next highest level so for example if I assign these permissions on the folder they'll be inherited by all the categories below so I don't have to do it individually all right well that is the end of our demo for today we just have one more short topic we want to talk about before the end of the session so now we've basically seen the the impetus for change and we also looked at how to bring this about using their form so let's quickly recap by going over the benefits of an automated ap process the obvious one here is the reduced costs you can decrease the cost of invoice processing as a whole decrease or eliminate late payment penalties and take advantage of early payment discounts all of this adds up to significant savings at the end of the year another benefit is the increase in efficiency and productivity that you get by automating data entry and decreasing human error this also leads to faster cycle times and a higher ability to manage large changes in invoice volumes on top of that we also get benefits to how you control your information and comply with regulatory standards an automated solution gives you clear visibility into the process and helps you maintain good supplier relations and the very nature of a secure digital repository means that you can maintain sound records for compliance purposes now finally an automated solution like therefore gives you a massive benefit in terms of your document archive digital storage is very secure and you can easily control access to prevent unauthorized viewing or tampering of data documents can't be misplaced or lost since backup copies are automatically retained even in the event of primary data loss alright so now we've reached the end of the session and we want to take a few more minutes to show you a success story of a cost are using therefore in AP with pretty much exactly the same scenario we talked about today the customer is called Micawber BK they're based in India and they're a civil engineering and construction company with a long history and providing materials handling systems to industry with the help of our colleagues that can in India they now use therefore in their finance department to manage invoices and workflows so I'll go ahead and play this case study video now so that you can hear all the details for yourself looks familiar have documents got you in a bind don't you wish managing documents could be easier it can be with their fault therefore information management solution can help organizations all around the world work smarter by offering a way to improve the storage management and processing of information the segmentation off therefore in the finance department has been very successful it's very nice I find it to be quite useful Kannan implemented therefore in Micawber BK a 96 year old civil engineering and construction company with annual revenues of more than 800 crore Micawber BK's finance department had a difficult time tracking and processing the large volume of invoices we are engaged in the EBC business where a lot of invoices and sent to the customers and since they are long projects long duration projects two to three years and finally payments comes after when the plants are commissioned and handed over to the customer and that point of time complete reconciliation is required of the of the invoices raised so we are required to keep track of those invoices and earlier it used to be a pain actually tracking of invoices aside Micawber BK also struggled with physical storage of documents retrieval of documents was also cumbersome their search for an efficient solution led them to cannon well I think cannon is a quite experienced as far as the workflow management for a project company like us is concerning and I think cannon we've done affiliated mediation Gallants team was well equipped for the change management process they worked to train the Micawber BK team to benefit from the best features of therefore for example with their poles capture feature documents are easy to scan upload digitize it also makes indexing archiving and classifying easier the navigator and viewer makes finding and editing documents of breeds there are several other benefits of implementing a system such as therefore enhanced security of documents automated workflow and saving on valuable office space Micawber BK's finance team was delighted with the way invoice processing workflows were made simpler after therefore implementation it effectively automated and managed how information was routed through the organization hostess implementation what we saw is that there was a major reduction in terms of man-hours spent by employees and and simplicity of workflow an approval process [Music]

Channel: ThereforeTV

Views: 21,105

Rating: 4.9073358 out of 5

Keywords: document management, Canon, information management, scanning, OCR, software

Id: 8JQQQagozYc

Length: 38min 35sec (2315 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 21 2017