Why you need to pay attention!
No longer a ‘buzzword’, but rather an increasing necessity – Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming life and business as we know it!
Across financial services, AI is enabling the creation of new opportunities and personalization of products and services. It also improves risk and fraud management. This ensures easier compliance, greater transparency and vast improvements in the automation of processes and reduction of costs. In the world of Accounts Payable, it is fast proving itself a notable game-changer.
Whilst some benefits are essential, others may be ‘nice to have’. To help navigate this new landscape, what exactly does one need to look for in AI-powered Accounts Payable solutions?
Start at the beginning
The potential solution should complement the functionality of your existing ERP system without duplicating it. It must enhance what you already have and be customizable with no need for any big redevelopment. The safeguarding of supplier relationships is key to effective AP operations. Therefore, make sure the chosen solution will have zero impact on your suppliers’ existing processes.
The non-negotiables
- A single interface.
- One version of the truth and everything at a glance for complete control and visibility.
- Multi-channel and standardized receipt of invoices.
- Receipt of all invoices from an email inbox allows you to retain the link to the original email, segregate invoices from other attachments and assign them to the correct recipient.
- Data verification from a single interface.
- Ensure that the extraction of invoice data using AI, 3-way processing, and automatic detection of duplicate invoices or any discrepancies is possible.
- Functionality should allow purchase order and delivery note data synchronization on demand or prescheduled.
- 3-way matching.
- The ability to compare and ensure consistency between invoices, purchase orders and goods delivery notes.
- Your solution should allow you to check and validate all necessary information. Examples include discrepancies between documents, amounts that do not match, changes in banking details, etc., thereby improving your existing processes without changing them.
- Standardized processing of all invoices via an ergonomic and centralized interface.
- This facilitates any necessary inter-department collaboration to quickly and effectively obtain any information needed to manage supplier invoices.
- The non-PO invoice.
- Ensure your chosen solution can manage all eventualities, including the non-PO invoice.
- These include invoices for unquantifiable or unspecified amounts, such as repair services or travel and hotels and must still be part of your organization’s AP workflow and validation process.
- The ability to seamlessly synchronize for real time access and feedback.
- This, with your ERP or accounting solution (SaaS or on-premise) via API (Application Programming Interfaces – a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other).
- Timestamping and full traceability of all invoices from receipt to payment.
- The ability to connect to all types of platforms, portals or networks.
The benefits are significant!
- Flexibility in a constantly changing business environment, this includes the ability to:
- setup workflow approval on demand and to change it as and when needed;
- assign and delegate validation processes per branch, office, or AP group;
- address document tasks requests with non-ERP users
- manage local and international invoices irrespective of language or currency.
- Increased compliance with regulatory requirements and fraud prevention:
- A complete audit trail of chronological information related to each invoice and supporting documents
- Full traceability from receipt thereof to payment.
- Automatically verify any supplier information to help secure your processes and avoid fraud.
- Quick and informed decision making.
- Applying specific validation rules to invoices enables you to define decision making patterns and quickly obtain approvals from the relevant parties. It also helps to minimize invoice processing errors, thereby reducing one’s administrative burden.
These are just some of the ways in which AI is transforming the Accounts Payable function. It is saving time and money – all the while upping efficiencies, transparency and security whilst further automating and streamlining the receipt, management, and processing of inbound invoices.
‘Tech-for-tech’ sake is never strategically sound. However, failure to embrace new technologies that will undoubtedly add enormous benefit and value to your organization and the Accounts Payable function can ultimately see you left behind.
At Symtrax, we help businesses accelerate their transition towards the digital future they envision and need!
We realize that digital transformation is about so much more than simply upgrading a single piece of technology for one process. The combined effort of multiple technologies able to work together, albeit on disparate systems, is what truly contributes towards effective (and holistic) digital transformation.
Our collaborative approach empowers organizations to harvest the most out of their resources, improving efficiencies without comprising security. Using automation, our document management services help reduce manual dependencies, making data management easier (cloud and on-premises).
Further, our direct integration with ERPs (API-based) ensures a direct communication channel with the system, delivering automated data conversion that allows you to toggle between the data formats best suited to your business processes. As your business grows, scale your initiatives to match your changing requirements – maximising the value of digital document transformation.
