AP Workflow Automation – Too Many Benefits Not To Switch!

Times change – and little really ever stays the same. And as far as technology is concerned, things tend to change even faster. Just when you’ve got everyone trained on a platform, an upgrade comes out that totally revamps the platform – leaving your team to have to learn it all over again. There is however usually good reason behind these upgrades – a sort of necessary evil – and it typically involves making a process easier by adding more features, streamlining steps and making the overall platform more user-friendly – and in many cases – more cost-effective.

You may have heard the quote attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer that says, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” In the first stage, the risk is high, in the second the risk is mediocre and by the time it is self-evident, the risk has typically been mitigated – but the cost of entry is typically higher at this stage. Most organizations are slow to adopt new technologies, mainly because they don’t want to invest and become the proverbial ‘guinea-pig’ of a new software or process – the risk is just too high. They usually want to wait until the platform has become ‘self-evident’ – because that is where there is the least amount of risk.

The good news is that with the advent of SaaS (software-as-a-service), AP processes have had the opportunity to become highly streamlined and much more efficient, through what is referred to as ‘workflow automation’. And because of the significant savings experienced by implementing SaaS-based AP Workflow Automation, both cost of entry and ongoing costs are reduced to the place where ROI is realized rather quickly, more than recovering any implementation or ongoing costs.

Here are 5 reasons that justify adopting AP Workflow Automation – ASAP

1. Implementation: With virtually no capital expense – and little if any requirement for IT involvement, AP workflow automation can be implemented quickly and easily, allowing an organization to save on both financial and human resources while reducing time to process and improving accuracy and accountability in the payables cycle.
2. Accessibility: By utilizing AP Workflow automation, anyone with proper authority can retrieve an invoice and its supporting documents from virtually anywhere in the world, 24/7. Each point in the workflow process can be dealt with in a decentralized manner, allowing people in different parts of the world to handle different parts of the process seamlessly.
3. Availability: Implementing a SaaS-based AP workflow automation process will eliminate the unnecessary stress experienced in the day-to-day manual AP process – that is typically the result of misfiled invoices, searching for supporting documentation, not knowing if an invoice has been received, not being able to take advantage of discounts, or trying to get the appropriate approvals. All invoices and supporting documents will be available with the click of a mouse!
4. Efficiencies: The entire concept of ‘automation’ is designed to add or improve efficiencies. With AP workflow automation, the end-to-end cycle of paying each invoice is completely streamlined – allowing the overarching AP operation to run in a much more cost effective manner – and increasing turn-around exponentially.
5. HR Savings: By implementing AP workflow automation, human ‘resources’ become human ‘capital’ – and can be reallocated at minimal if any cost, reducing HR overhead significantly.

There’s a much better way to handle AP workflow – through automation – by taking advantage of cloud-based SaaS technology – that will forever change how your organization handles its accounting process. The heavy lifting has been done for you. The risk has been mitigated. Now all you have to do is ‘engage’.

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