Caspar Herzberg |
This article first appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of The Record.
In a highly regulated and information-rich industry such as manufacturing, having good data visibility is a critical factor when it comes to retaining the robustness of supply chain and logistic practices. Enhancing competitiveness through more efficient use of resources and eliminating errors and waste is also hugely beneficial.
All companies want to have the right processes in place in order to maximise the user experience while minimising resource use. If you’re not shipping to your customers and you’re not billing, then you’re not getting paid. You want to get paid for what you’re selling, and you want to pay your suppliers to make sure you keep the wheels in motion.
Financial, manufacturing and logistic documents are of vital importance when it comes to making a business run effectively and efficiently. At Bottomline Technologies, we help customers pay and get paid, while reducing manual touchpoints and processes associated with financial documents. We help customers capture data, store and share this information, and then outbound it in reports and other documents, helping to provide insight into the customer communications process and cash collection. We also help ensure the requisite levels of compliance are achieved.
One key to success in modern manufacturing is the ability to convert information into a competitive advantage. At Bottomline Technologies, our solutions allow customers to capture information contained within documents and run them through machine learning tools to gain decisive insights.
But building digital process maps is complicated by the up and downstream dependencies with customers and suppliers, making external communications key to creating a robust supply chain. When an important document is sent, such as an invoice or a report, this creates a blind spot as there is no guarantee it has been successfully delivered, let alone acted upon. At best, you know what’s happened to the e-mail, but not the document.
Systems like Bottomline PT-X ensure delivery and provide process insight to the progress of important documents, such as purchase orders and invoices, once they have left you. They give both sender and recipient control, ensuring you get paid on time and your supplies arrive as planned.
While enterprise resource planning systems can manage some documents, document management systems like PrecisionForms from Bottomline Technologies have been specifically designed to work with Microsoft Dynamics and have a major impact on document workflows.
Valuable data – often locked up in paper – can be automatically processed, shared and routed for maximum business value. This dramatically reduces the operational overhead of document compliance, and manufacturers can ill afford to ignore the opportunity this presents.
At Bottomline Technologies, we help tie together all documents across the business. By embracing this structure, manufacturers can bring about a range of logistical benefits.
Ian Bamber is head of product for financial document automation at Bottomline Technologies