Invoice Processing Software – Major Business Benefits

Posted on January 6, 2012 by

Article by Jimi St. Pierre

According to IBM, Gartner and Aberdeen Group, between 75-80% of invoices in any business or organisation, are still processed manually – despite the advent of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). These days, sophisticated invoice processing solutions are available to cut a swathe through the time and costs involved in handling supplier payments and to enhance business workflow.

Invoice Processing: The Real Costs

With a manual system, hundreds – often thousands – of invoices must be reviewed and entered onto an accounting system, at massive cost in terms of labour, time and potential error.

Byline Group’s research into Accounts Payable processing has shown that 90% of Accounts payable invoice processing involves keying data from paper; that the average time taken to process and Accounts Payable invoice is 12 days, and that 25% of all invoices are paid late.

Also according to Byline’s research an accounts payable clerk handles just 70 invoices per day on average. Thus it is easy to put a labour cost on the front end processing. But the repercussions are felt further down the line too.

Invoice Processing Solutions: Key Benefits

Invoice processing solutions comprise software to allow invoice processing to be speeded up massively. This has a great impact on reducing accounts admin costs associated with invoice processing and also enables companies to make best use of any time critical payment times which may attract supplier discounts.

Automated invoice processing solutions allow a wide variety of typical invoices to be scanned at the same time and for them to be automatically reconciled against the original purchase order with minimal user intervention or data entry.

In essence, an invoice processing system uses sophisticated OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and data matching techniques

Invoice Processing Solutions: The Basic Principal

The best invoice processing solutions will automatically scan, extract and validate invoice data and feed directly to an accounting system. Invoices come in a multitude of formats, layouts and styles from a wide variety of different suppliers. They can be machine printed or part handwritten, single or multi-page, coloured or white paper, and come from home or abroad.

However, all of these can be handled simply by scanning in a seed invoice and selecting the items of information that you want to capture. This is done by defining a target zone for each of them; the system will automatically distinguish between the field label e.g. VAT amount and the associated value. If you now select the supplier name as a unique attribute of all such invoices, every invoice from this supplier can automatically be recognised and processed and the captured data sent straight to the accounting system.

Sophisticated Functionality

The challenges of identifying columns and lines of information, knowing where one item description ends and another begins, handwritten information, validation against almost any criteria or data values – all these are the remit of sophisticated invoice processing systems today.

Managing digitised invoices through the entire workflow approval process offers the potential for even greater efficiency and cost savings, and so it pays to check out software providers who can offer an interface with purchase-to-pay (P2P), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Electronic Content management (ECM) and Document Management (DM) to offer integrated workflow solutions.

Invoice Processing: Summary Benefits

1. Removes the need to handle and store large volumes of paper2. Increases staff productivity and reduce processing costs3. Faster invoice processing improves supplier relationships4. More up-to-date position of the business/organisation’s financial position5. Reporting on all financial transactions assists with compliance to appropriate Accounting Standards

About the Author

Jimi St. Pierre writes for several Office IT Equipment suppliers in the UK, including document management systems supplier Principal. The Principal Office IT Systems website can be found at => http://www.principalcorp.co.uk/

Manager’s Checklist of Questions to Ensure Successful Business Process Automation

Posted on November 28, 2011 by

Article by Laurel Sanders

Business process management and workflow software build on the value of the data stored in your enterprise, using it to drive work efficiently across the enterprise. The topics below are designed to help managers to ask critical questions of themselves and their vendors so they can evaluate potential solutions. They are not designed to steer the reader to specific solutions, but rather to ensure the buyer is aware of some of the options, pitfalls, and barriers to success so informed decisions can be made.Functionality and Ease of Use

____ Is your BPM/Workflow solution part of an integrated enterprise content management (ECM) solution with products that are designed to function seamlessly? Is it a new addition to an ECM suite as a result of a merger or acquisition that might affect communication with the rest of the suite? Or is it a standalone product?

____ Does the solution enable you to carry out all elements of BPM, i.e., design, model, execute, monitor, and optimize your business processes?

____ Is the solution browser based? Does it allow browser-based access to all of your tasks and documents?

____ Does the BPM/Workflow solution let you make changes to processing rules on the fly as they are necessary? For example, if new regulations require you to make a procedural change, or organizational restructuring results in major hierarchical changes, how easily and quickly can your system adapt?

____ How substantial are the tracking and reporting capabilities? Can you extract data from multiple places within and outside of the system simultaneously? Can you deliver specified data to a single screen for easier decision making?

____ Does the solution allow workers to flow single pages of a multi-page document (may be preferable for security reasons)? Can you flow multiple, specific pages from a document? Entire folders and sets of folders?

____ Can associated documents and folders-for example, a college admission form, SAT scores, school transcripts, etc.-be gathered together and sent as a package within the workflow to facilitate the end user’s review?Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

____ What is the total cost of ownership for the solution? Is it costly, medium, or low compared to other options? Is traditional licensing the only purchasing option? Is subscription-based pricing or another alternative offered that might help you keep a strong cash flow?

____ Does the solution permit an unlimited number of workflow transactions and web services calls when integrating with other software systems? Are you charged for concurrent users, by the transaction or service call, or when certain volumes are reached?Services

____ How extensive are the professional services offered by your vendor? Does the vendor offer product training with appropriate documentation, customized training, custom application development to meet unique needs, process analysis and workflow design, business continuity planning, and disaster recovery? Will you have the support and services you need as your organization grows and changes?

____ Are step-by-step instructions and tool tips included to help end users, especially to ease the transition to the system, bring new users onto the system, or help them understand and use a feature or function they only need occasionally?

____ Is sufficient documentation available regarding how to administer, use, and maintain the products?Integration

____ Are there easy-to-use integration tools that make it possible for workers to maximize the use of data stored in emails, faxes, line-of-business applications, and legacy systems for pertinent business processes?

____ Does the solution enable you to access BPM/Workflow functionality behind the scenes, within workers’ familiar software applications? If, for example, a manager using claims software regularly needs to access, package, and forward claims with client payment history, can the request be carried out within the existing claims software via seamless integration?

____ How effectively is records management addressed by the solution? As documents reach the end of the active lifecycle, can you automate records retention, disposition, migration, and backup?BPM as Part of an Integrated ECM Suite

____ If the solution is part of an integrated ECM suite, does it offer single sign-on to all functionality within the suite, or does it require users to switch in and out of applications to access documents, task lists, functionality, and other software systems?

____ Is the software easy to use? Does it offer customizable work spaces that allow users to view information and work on tasks in the ways that are most productive for them?BPM/Workflow Standalone Products

____ If the BPM/Workflow solution is a standalone product, and you need data from other applications in order to make decisions within the processes you are automating, can it integrate with other applications where relevant data is housed?

____ If you choose a standalone product, what measures are in place to ensure document security and appropriate feature rights relating to those documents? Can you ensure that only authorized persons will be able to retrieve, view, manage, approve, sign, or otherwise act on documents related to the automated processes?Questions to ask yourself about your team:

____ Do we have a passionate project leader on board who understands business and can bridge the gap between IT and business needs?

____ Do we have a solid project plan in place with timelines, expectations of the vendors and ourselves, milestones, benchmarks, a communication plan, training plan, and testing?

____ Do we need to add staff resources temporarily to enable our employees to focus on the implementation? Would it be better for us to tap into the resources of our vendor or an outside consultant?

____ How will we communicate the project goals to managers and end users? What incentives can we offer to ensure staff embraces the project, and to empower them to succeed?

Examining your needs and comparing them to your favored solutions is essential before you make an investment. If you evaluate your options thoroughly, understand what you are getting, and feel confident the choice you are making is right for you, you are well on your way to success.

For more information about ECM and BPM, check out Jim Thumma’s five-part article series, Enterprise ECM: Strategies for Success. To learn more about Optical Image Technology’s imaging, document management, and business process management solutions, email us at info@docfinity.com, visit our website at http://www.docfinity.com, or call 814-238-0038.

About the Author

Laurel Sanders joined Optical Image Technology as the Director of Marketing in August, 2004 and was named Director of PR and Communications in January of 2008. Business articles by Laurel have been featured regularly in imageSource, Office World News, TAWPI’s today, document, and ECM Connection.

SAP Business One Support via Web Sessions and Teleconferences

Posted on November 25, 2011 by

Article by Andrew Karasev

There is large number of underserved existing Corporate ERP customers across the country. Let’s name it as secondary consulting and technical support market. You may still remember initial project implementation with data, conversion, user training. You went into production with your new accounting system and in a few months you may decide to go ahead with phase two, where the plan is to add custom module, integration with your legacy applications, Crystal Reports design. You called back to your original consulting firm and figure out that they do not really carry Software Development Kit programmers, Crystal Reports designers in staff and are not really excited about being involved into phase two. And there is no reason to blame anybody here, as consulting organizations typically have margins on SAP B1 software licenses and specialize in initial system setup and user training. Whatever goes beyond these borders – it might be difficult for them to find enough local orders to support permanent programmer position. Then what are my options? Let’s review them:

1. Software development firms serving USA and Canada nationwide. Such organizations might not really be interested in initial software licenses sale and local implementations, as if they would do that – CPA oriented consultants and salespeople are needed. But instead these firms are interested in technology challenging phase two and three type of projects, where they provide project manager and software development team. There might be not enough business in the region and at the same time programmers typically work in their cubicles and do not travel to the customer office. Project manager is typically ready to fly out to your location for initial meeting and following phase closing event. Project meetings are typically held via so-called web session, where programmers and project manager connect to your server or user computer remotely and share your desktop and have the ability to take keyboard and mice control. Phone conference number is typically provided via such web session instruments as Gotomeeting, WebEx. If you have international location where the cost of phone call per minute is higher, there is always an option to deploy free telephony tools, such as Skype or Tango

2. Second option is regional firm with driving out to your office from nearest business metro center possibility. Such consulting firms typically have good technical consulting team. However you should be ready to schedule meetings in advance and pay long mileage driving cost in consultant expense report. Plus hourly rates might be the same to what they could command in Chicago, New York or Los Angeles downtowns. This option might be selected as feasible in the situations, where your customization or integration project deals with variable hardware, such as barcode scanners, RFID readers, POS terminals. If you are in Supply Chain Management, Warehouse Management, Wholesale business with Barcoding related logistics – we recommend you to find regional firm

3. Modification options and tools. One of the first ones to consider is SAP B1 SDK. Here you can do both Integrations and User Interface Customizations. Typically SDK programming is done in Microsoft Visual Studio C# or VB, where you can depend on sample code, provided in SDK references and online help. However you can envelope custom integration login into SOAP web service interface and then call it from non-Microsoft computing environments, such as Linux/PHP/MySQL. If you would like to achieve higher integration performance and the ability to handle high volume of documents per minute, consider DI programming

4. Reporting. In current version 8.81 there is no need to deploy special add-on for Crystal Reports. It is integrated in native business logic. It is recommended to base CR on SQL View or even better Stored Procedure to abstract data selection from report design itself

5. Support for Country Side businesses. Remote web session based support is perfect here in our opinion. Internet enabled new technologies, including VOIP and web session. If you have reliable internet bandwidth – there is no more a disadvantage to be in the rural area and you still enjoying the advantages of symbolic office rent cost and cheap gas, food and general merchandise prices

6. Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904 (for international customers, where our representatives pick up the phone in Naperville and St. Joseph, MI call center). help@efaru.com We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, South West Michigan, Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). Our consultants speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese.

About the Author

Andrew Karasev is Microsoft Dynamics Certified Master, MVP, help@efaru.com 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904. He is also the initiator of eFaru project http://www.efaru.com and founder of Alba Spectrum information space

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Improve Your Business Health: Efficient Information Recycling Streamlines Costs and Improves Patient Services

Posted on November 22, 2011 by

Article by Jim Thumma

Every healthcare provider and institution is unique. Yet no matter what services you offer or who your constituents are, you and your peer institutions share at least two common goals:

A. Provide the best quality of care possible.

B. Get paid quickly and appropriately so you can continue offering care.

If only it were that easy.The art of getting paid

Tom Brokaw once wisely said, “It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.” For healthcare institutions and providers, however, the opposite is often true: all hands are on deck in the effort to help people, but afterward, getting paid is challenging. It all boils down to accountability: having each piece of a patient’s information puzzle in place so you can prove the right services were provided and (finally) get the monies you deserve. Information must be gathered from multiple sources – including third parties – and fully reconciled. Chart deficiencies must be rectified. Unless paperwork is 100% complete and timely, payment may not follow.Deciphering the requirements

Rulings such as the CMS July 13 “Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Payment Program Final Rule on Meaningful Use” raise the bar for patient care as well as professional and institutional accountability. Standards and criteria for achieving meaningful use (of electronic information) have been set, along with mandated timelines. Whether the requirements are for clinical, research, or reimbursement purposes, each depends on something few manage well: the efficient exchange of patient information.

To get paid, patient information must be complete and correct. Few incentives are more effective for getting things right.

Coordinating the efficient, secure, electronic exchange of information – often scattered and on diverse paper and electronic media – is a vital step toward electronic health records (EHRs). Yet as practitioners work toward compliance, they fight another battle: protecting confidentiality of patients’ health information (and proving it).

So what does all of this have to do with enterprise content management (ECM)? Everything.Satisfying mounting expectations

A powerful integration and information management tool, ECM bolts onto existing information systems, giving pre-authorized persons access to interact appropriately with clinical and administrative documents and systems. From doctors’ orders through lab tests, radiology reports, admissions, surgeries, prescriptions, billing, and more, a thoroughly integrated ECM system arches over clinical, HR, accounting, and other systems, providing a holistic view of patients’ treatments and transactions.Make “exchange” happen

Workflow connects the dots, recycling meaningful information that’s available through ECM, wherever it’s needed. Patient information that is otherwise manually collected and replicated is extracted, then pushed or pulled to its intended destination via institutional rules – minimizing human involvement, increasing security, eliminating mistakes, and saving time.

Let’s examine how it works in three critical areas.

1. Deficiency Chart Tracking

Before requests for reimbursement can be made, all required forms must be on file. Missing signatures, insufficient documentation, and other deficiencies must be tagged; someone must be assigned to address them; issues must be resolved.

Workflow simplifies and expedites the process, letting you:

* Dictate which documents and transactions are required for documentation to be complete; * Prioritize work based on deadlines, patient discharge, and other pertinent information; * Electronically pull all relevant documents on demand or at a pre-specified point in the process; * Ensure ECM’s security authorizations are respected; * Automatically tag what’s missing; * Route deficient files to pre-assigned persons for follow-up; * Create prioritized work lists for each doctor so s/he can see what must be addressed; * Compile completed documentation.

By capturing, storing, routing, and handling everything electronically, you also lay the path to meet a future requirement under meaningful use: electronic claims submission.

2. Invoice Processing

ECM and workflow bridge the gap between information stored in your clinical applications and the administrative files that accompany and support patient services. Together, they make invoicing easier, faster, and ensure accuracy by:

* Prioritizing invoices for timely payment; * Matching purchase orders with requisitions and receipts; * Gathering and packaging all pertinent backup documentation for invoice review; * Routing invoices for approval; * Answering vendor inquiries about payment status; * Creating a clear audit trail of transactional activity every step of the way.

3. Keeping patients informed

New legislation acknowledges that patients need timely access to summary care records that they can understand. Information needs to follow each patient so s/he can make informed decisions. Getting information into clinical, ERP, and administrative systems typically isn’t difficult. However, extracting it on demand and into meaningful formats can be cumbersome, challenging, and frustrating for providers and institutions.

Underlying all of your electronic information systems, ECM becomes a pointer to scattered information, letting authorized persons access, view, annotate, report, and manage files according to their permissions. Complete, accurate, timely reporting – another benchmark in the process of enabling meaningful use – is a task designed for ECM.Prepare for Success

Whether or not meaningful use rules directly affect you now, they are a big step toward EHRs, and EHRs are the future. ECM advances your readiness. By taking steps to embrace electronic recordkeeping now, your staff will transition gradually into a digital healthcare environment, and you’ll be positioned for EHR success. Not only will you offer better services and be compliant; you’ll meet your other main objective: to be paid for the quality care you deliver…so you can continue delivering it.

About the Author

Jim Thumma has over 20 years of experience working with industries that use document management software and has leveraged that experience to help businesses and organizations advance not only their technology, but their processes and, ultimately, to be more successful. Thumma is a frequent presenter and has authored numerous articles that can be read in Integrated Solutions magazine, ECM Connection, document, TEQ magazine, and other industry publications.

Advantages of Business Process Management Applications

Posted on November 18, 2011 by

Article by Martin Anderson

Research shows that organizations using business process management applications get an internal rate of return higher than 15%. Business process management tools emphasizes on the participation of the business owners and not just systems integration. These tools are part of the business process management solutions offered by the business process management vendors. They develop business process management software that improve service levels, reduce errors and promote the transparency of the business processes. Thus the demand for business process management applications through the business software applications is in the rise due to advantages to the over-all of an organization. They are as follows;

Save time and money- business process management provide optimization of the organization’s goal, process modeling, management and automation. To be successful, business process management applications must include the owners combined with the right technology. The outcome would be inter-departmental and inter-system business software applications. These applications should also easily integrate with existing applications like CRM, ECM and ERP. There should be no need to redesign the whole system just to fit in the business process management applications.

Improve quality of work- Aside from saving time and money, another advantage of a business process management applications is reducing or eliminating loss caused by loss of documents, error in filing or error, and the lacking important information needed for review. Also, flow visualization enables all those involved in the process to clearly understand their role at any given time. Visualization in business process management tools also clearly defines the duties, what time and kind of work that needs to be completed. There would be no misunderstandings and negligence and most important, no more excuses for delays. Business process management applications also improve coherence and external and internal parties are clear on their expectations. End result the satisfaction of both the owners and customers.

Streamlining business process- since the inception of a business, processes are in place, and as the business grow, so is the creation of other processes making the organization more complex. All businesses have set of policies and procedures with detailed management standards, thus implementation of these poses as a challenge. Many businesses recognize this challenge so they spend money on consultants to streamline their processes. However this leads to confusion among the workers and the consultants leading to system failure.

Business process management applications when applied at the inception of the business will streamline all the processes in its early stages, control the recording and working hours, standardized the management and its needs and quality service requirements.

Optimize processes – Business process management enables an organization to discover their hidden potentials by modifying their current processes to give higher yield or higher internal rate of return. Business process management covers from the procurement, research and development, sales and marketing and accounting. Business process management tools are used by most organizations for continuous process optimization in its lifetime. Factors in choosing the right business process management tools are standardization, waste minimization, kitting, preventive maintenance and proper metrics.

About the Author

Enterprise Scorecard and Risk management solutions. Based in Milton Keynes UK, but serving the world. Our data gathering service supports ISO 9001, and ISO 27000 IT security management.

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SAP Business One Consulting on the Secondary Small Business ERP Market

Posted on November 3, 2011 by johnsnow

Article by Andrew Karasev

Accounting system selection, executive demos, licenses acquisition and initial implementation are just the first steps in your ERP application life cycle. Even if you believe that you did detailed homework in reviewing functionality, compiling and matching specifications later on you might decide to change procedures and deploy alternative business logic. In other words you are leaning toward something that could be categorized as second phase in your implementation project. And here you may think about such improvements as customizations, integrations, reporting and user interface modifications. You may also come to unexpected conclusion that your original reseller is not really excited about doing custom programming for your new Small Business ERP application even considering the fact that they sold you software licenses and did decent job in initial implementation. This is fine as every consulting firm has its own specialization and strong points:

1. Secondary ERP Market Consulting Specifics. Here you cannot feature your consulting company as strong in getting new customers via telemarketing followed by aggressive sales efforts. Instead you have to prove that you are expert in technology and ready to undertake custom software development project. If you cannot proof that you are guru in your consulting field there is no options for you to enter secondary market as here you have customers who are unhappy and need help with second opinion, failed customization recovery or similar problems

2. Customizations. Generally it is recommended to deploy native business logic and minimize custom software developing. Custom logic should be planned as small fraction of original functionality available out of the box. You should understand that such surgery as future version upgrade requires special attention to custom modules. They should be reviewed and recompiled as the minimum. However future version might introduce changes in the collection of the fields on the form or in table structure. All these mean that if you have custom business logic it is recommended to do test version update first and test all custom logic there. If you got a feeling that ERP application requires massive custom coding and even if you got very good recommendations from friends or business community we recommend you to look at alternative platforms where less customization is required

3. Unrealistic Data Conversions. Working with Corporate ERP data migration and cleansing projects we can certify that this is one of the most likely reasons for implementation project to hang in limbo or even fail completely. The relations with consulting organization should be manager. If you suggest something like ‘migrate all the documents including all the history’ then your consultant might be facing the dilemma on discouraging you from such massive migration or execute the order as it means high data migration consulting budget. Try to consider keeping legacy accounting running for just data inquiries and move only master records and beginning GL balances to the new accounting

4. Integrations. ERP application is not something isolated in its dedicated server computer. It has to talk to your peripheral applications, such as Ecommerce, EDI, POS and Retail or Client Relation Management. Some of these applications might be driven by SCM and Warehouse Management technologies including Barcode scanning or RFID tags. In integration implementing try to avoid custom coding and consider deploying native integration tools first. This approach should secure future version update projects to be smooth. Let us give you also couple of recommendations of cross-platform integrations where you have to import transactions from MySQL, Oracle, Sybase or another database platform. Try to deploy ODBC connection where records are cleansed via custom SQL View

5. We tried to make this small paper to be easy reading for managerial personnel and business owners. If you are programmer and need technical details please see our earlier publications from Alba Spectrum and Faru Corporation. Alba is dedicated to Dynamics GP and all the historical versions of Great Plains Accounting and Dynamics while Faru is about SAP Business One and Dynamics AX or formerly known as Axapta

6. Last Flint or international ERP consulting. Here you have to pay attention to fiscal policy of the local country as well as to business related legislation. In the United States we are enjoying one of the most liberal business codes where such risking folks as new business initiators are favored. In the foreign country you might find the opposite approach where small business owners are overtaxed. One of the typical hurdles is Unicode characters support required for hieroglyph based alphabets including Chinese, Japanese and Korean

7. Data export from Great Plains Accounting for DOS. This ERP application was popular in earlier 1990th and currently we are facing strong trend of migration from GPA to SAP Business One, Dynamics GP, Axapta and small business packages such as Peach Tree and QuickBooks

8. Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904 (for international customers, where our representatives pick up the phone in Naperville and St. Joseph, MI call centers). help@efaru.com. We have local presence in Atlanta, Chicago, Southern California, South West Michigan, Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA, Canada, Mexico and Brazil nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). Our consultants speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese. One of our experiences is international Corporate ERP and Consolidated Financial reporting

About the Author

Andrew Karasev is SAP Business One consultant and Great Plains Certified Master, MVP, MCSE and MSDBA, help@efaru.com 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904. He is also the initiator of eFaru project http://www.efaru.com and founder of Alba Spectrum information space. Please note that we implement and support Dynamics GP directly through Alba Spectrum