This article was originally published in the Autumn 2019 issue of The Record. Subscribe for FREE here to get the next issues delivered directly to your inbox.
“What’s the problem?” is one of the most common questions we hear in our professional lives. Finding a solution to workplace challenges can be tricky, but when it comes to solving problems associated with processing and managing paper documents, there is an easy answer: document management/paperless automation solutions.
Challenge 1: The accounts payable (AP) team spends too much time on manual data entry.
Solution 1: Robotic process automation automates tedious and repetitive processes, captures data and automatically pulls out the pertinent information, before routing it to the correct approvers and indexing it without the need for human interference.
Challenge 2: Inefficient processes are costing time and money.
Solution 2: According to research from AccountingWEB, the average staff member or accountant makes 60 trips to a photocopier each week and spends 15 hours per month printing documents. Meanwhile, executives spend 150 hours annually looking for misplaced documents. Wasted time and labour costs can be greatly reduced by automating processes.
Challenge 3: The company is losing track of invoices and paying them late.
Solution 3: Companies without a document management solution averaged 14.4 days to process an invoice, according to research by Aberdeen Group. Plus, they may be paying excess fees due to interest on late payments or missing out on early payment discounts by not knowing the optimal time to pay. Paperless automation allows organisations to see the status of invoices and identify bottlenecks or delays to optimise workflow and expedite payments.
Challenge 4: The company’s document management system isn’t integrated with its enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.
Solution 4: Homegrown document management solutions are tricky to integrate with an ERP platform. However, a paperless automation solution that integrates tightly with all Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions makes it simple to route documents back and forth between the relevant people and it’s easy to access all financial documents.
Challenge 5: There’s a lack of knowledge about the status of invoices and the C-Suite doesn’t have any visibility.
Solution 5: Paperless automation solutions have charts to give AP staff and the C-Suite insight into the status of invoices so they can ensure that payments are made on time and the workflow is working efficiently. The result? No mysteries, no missing invoices and no late payments.
What is your company’s paper problem? A document management/paperless automation solution may just be the key to paperless success.
Alyssa Putzer is marketing communications specialist for Metafile Information Systems
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