Taking the complexity and costs out of e-invoicing

As more companies move to adopt e-invoicing they often discover the complexity of invoice types and formats that they receive can not only be a hindrance, but have considerable cost implications, particularly for companies receiving large volumes of e-invoices in XML format. Despite this, XML is attractive because exceptions are highly uncommon, making straight-through processing a reality.

The XML message format for e-invoices has been used since the inception of XML in 1998, with standards in place since 2001, and yet companies receiving XML invoices still run into limitations and problems when attempting to connect to an EDI to enable XML invoice automation. Common issues include all invoices in one message must be from the same supplier and supplier site; custom code conversions must be defined as part of trading partner setup; invoices in one message are limited to one organisation and tax groups may not  be supported. Also, suppliers need to generate XML invoices that comply with the relevant standards to ensure that these invoices can be received through the EDI and then processed.

As a result companies receiving XML invoices typically spend a large amount of money setting up and maintaining XML invoice automation. The cost to start up is estimated to be around £150-£200 for each supplier and may include monthly charges and/or volume-based fees.

Based on ReadSoft’s experience, for every 1,000 invoices there are approximately 200 suppliers in a typical mid-sized company, so outlay can quickly climb from £40k to more than a £1 million in a larger organisation.

In response ReadSoft has developed a more efficient and cost effective way to process complex XML invoices with multi-channel capture. Enabled for all important financial documents, ReadSoft can fully integrate straight-through processing within organisations’ existing systems. The new capabilities included in INVOICES 5-7 will help businesses achieve greater automation rates and make it even easier to adopt e-invoicing.

All e-invoices (image, PDF, and XML) are processed in the same way as paper invoices, scanned, digitized, and data automatically extracted. Attachments are processed to separate invoices within a document or sort out junk emails; critical invoice data and line-item details are quickly and accurately extracted; while first-time suppliers are identified from master data. The SmartXML technology processes any XML format and standard, including Svefaktura, Finvoice, OIOXML, OLOUBL, and E2B.

Invoice information, including barcodes, and other supplier-specific data, is captured and validated against available purchase order, goods receipt, and master data, with  automated checking of sums, supplier data, dates, and tax amounts. Once validated the invoice data enters resolution workflow, where any discrepancies and missing information are flagged for user verification. Exceptions are routed to a workflow integrated within the ERP for resolution.

With enhanced self-learning technology which retains knowledge from supplier-specific invoices, the software will automatically correct recognised errors, so accounts payable staff only need to validate invoices with exceptions. But with extremely accurate data extraction there is a considerable increase in straight-through processing as most XML invoices can be processed without any human intervention.

With the expanded capability to automatically process complex XML invoices, businesses can achieve significant benefits from AP efficiency in terms of flexibility and cutting the set up and administration costs usually required for handling new invoice types and formats.

Click to learn more about INVOICES from ReadSoft.

http://www.readsoft.co.uk

Sales Orders: a challenge for business

achieve better results with your sales order processing

Almost every organisation recognizes the value of processing sales orders quickly and accurately in today’s economy. New research conducted by Dynamic Markets on behalf of ReadSoft shows, despite the high proportion of management who are engaged with handling sales order paperwork, that this crucial area of business is typified by ignorance and an under-appreciation of the scale of the task.

87% of companies identify challenges associated with sales order processing, and for half it remains too time consuming. On average organisations estimate it takes more than a week (51.4 hours) to handle the paperwork associated with a single sales order. Such delays are typically the result of manually chasing and keying in information – Are goods or services available?  Does the price match the quote? Will the customer’s deadline be met?

At the heart of the issue is the paper driven process. Over half (53%) of organisations questioned still receive orders in paper form through the mail, and 74% over the telephone requiring manual input. Today almost all (93%) companies have to handle some form of paperwork when it comes to processing sales orders. This makes the task both labour intensive, slow and prone to error.

More than three quarters (77%) of organisations questioned believed that the time involved in the manual processing of sales orders is holding back the growth potential of their company. This is an opinion increasingly held by those in the most senior level positions, who were increasingly shown to be deeply engaged with rectifying the issues which spring from managing sales order paperwork.

To be able to process sales orders quickly and accurately requires a change in the approach to how paperwork is handled, from the moment it arrives to how it is directed through workflow and how errors are identified and dealt with. ReadSoft delivers a working environment where automation brings an end to the drudgery of business administration.

Through the application of software, ReadSoft is able to automate the processing of sales orders, capturing any layout, paper or electronic, immediately minimising errors in manual input. When integrated with an organisation’s ERP system, something 48% describe as extremely important, automation software delivers clear sight of quantities, customer identity and the status of outstanding business which is necessary to bring control back to the process. The large majority of sales orders can then be processed in a matter of minutes, rather than days. Any discrepancy automatically enters the workflow for correction in a matter of hours.

Automating the sales order process enables organisations to become more business agile. They can react quickly to the needs of the customer and improve cash flow which translates into greatly improved customer relations, and that is better for business.

www.readsoft.co.uk

 

Capturing a vision of end-to-end automated business process

ReadSoft was pleased to be able to support Capture 2013, the UK’s largest capture technology event, which was recently held at ibml’s Headquarters in Guildford. The event itself was extremely well attended, exceeding all prior expectations and more than 120 guests arrived for the AIM Europe sponsored event.

Capture represents the first step in the process of automating and standardising the entire P2P process, and according to ReadSoft’s Andrew Speak who attended and presented, “the differentiation of our solution showed, not just as a capture solution, but as an end-to-end business process automation platform.”

With new automated capture techniques significantly reducing the need for much of the manual drudgery in the back office, AP staff are now being freed up, moving from data entry to query resolution roles. This is where it became clear on the day that AP departments required a technology driven resolution for more than just front end capture.

Andrew was on hand to explain how to deploy and increase the value of capture technology investment with a single, simple to use platform. From this vantage point ReadSoft can provide a completely flexible, scalable, multi-client/process/location offering for all document capture needs.

With ReadSoft, on-boarding and time-to-market is accelerated, yet now requires less effort through the application of automation, which provides new transparency of process and a better ability to monitor the entire production routine. With this clarity of reporting comes the ability to better manage the entire capture process, from pre-image to delivery, for end to end management of SLAs providing the capability to constantly improve process and therefore business efficiency.

Only by embracing new capture technology which address the end-to-end needs of AP departments can organisations bring to an end the familiar manual traits of wasted time and squandering of valuable resources, only to show poor process speed and stagnant business growth as a result.

http://www.readsoft.co.uk

Could cutting paper by 2018 save the NHS?

Today, UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that he wants the NHS to be paperless by 2018.  A report written by Pricewaterhousecoopers (PwC) states that this could help save the health service billions of pounds a year.  PwC suggests a potential £4.4bn could be saved with better use of information technology; part of which would be giving people online access to their health records by March 2015.  Furthermore, health information should be available to staff online by the middle of 2018.

We agree and it is a message that we have been keen on for a long time.  Part of the solution for the NHS is automation of back-end processes and paper based documentation.  The government is looking towards “digital by default” but they have two big challenges as we see it:

1.  When you’re working next to a patient, or doing ward rounds, or rushing to provide urgent care in accident and emergency, the last thing you want to do is spend time booting up laptops, walking away from the patient or losing the close connection to the patient by having a computer screen in the way.  Sometimes, we all know that paper and handwriting is the only practical way.  And that needs digitising and handling.

2.  How do you get historical data in to the system – written doctors notes often stretch back decades.

For both of these issues, as the largest global provider of software and services to businesses that want to better control and improve back office and administrative processes, ReadSoft has some great automation solutions to capture, sort, group and route documents into appropriate workflow processes, even where handwriting is used.

The amount of time saved in administration and having straight-through processing will allow medical professionals to dedicate more time with their patients. Not having to fill in endless forms or attempt to interpret another person’s handwritten notes, sometimes from years previous.  The John Taylor Hospice near Birmingham found that using laptops more than doubled the amount of time clinicians could spend with patients.

The upshot means that different professionals involved in one person’s care can start to share information safely on their treatment.  It ensures that simple, yet potentially fatal mistakes – such as not identifying medicinal allergies for instance can be avoided and the entire patient history can be considered to create a far more effective healthcare plan for any individual issue or symptom presented.

At ReadSoft, this process is already in the works with individual health trusts, which we know still struggle with paper based systems. If we consider just the Accounts Payable (AP) processes used for ordering and paying for prescriptions. Hundreds of staff are regularly tied up requisitioning and then approving requests within systems which remain very inefficient. Despite a range of invoice types and formats coming from various hospital locations, ReadSoft INVOICES, for example, can process any and all combinations, including handwritten documents. In AP alone the savings are considerable, but of greater value is the substantially improved visibility, both internally, and for external audit.

With it taking up to six days per invoice for manual internal distribution alone, hospitals are lacking the control necessary to deliver the level of care we as patients of the NHS would expect in the 21^st century, and this is at the heart of Hunt’s calls for improvements in process through better application of ICT.

Better healthcare for all?  That’s something that ReadSoft certainly supports.

Want to know more?

 Read here about how the UK’s Health Protection Agency (HPA) in its role providing an integrated approach to protect­ing public health through the provision of support and advice to the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), local authorities, emergency services and other bodies is using ReadSoft DOCUMENTS to improve efficiency in disease control.

Finding the right tools for manufacturing to fend off a triple dip recession

 

UK car workers at Honda’s Swindon factory last week found themselves facing the same fate as so many of their European counterparts as 800 workers were laid off. Unlike US based manufacturers, government support for the UK car industry, apart from car scrappage schemes during the credit crunch, is thin on the ground. In the US the emphasis has been on growth rather than austerity. The result is US people are more willing to go out and spend money, because their government has more directly intervened. In Europe manufacturers cannot rely on the same state backing in the face of government austerity and concerns over the Eurozone’s stability.

As recently as last week sales in the automotive industry showed a UK sector in growth during the past year, but this latest news demonstrates the thin line that many manufacturing companies are forced to tread, or face being caught under or over producing for their target markets. Capacity glut can be especially damaging to businesses, so manufacturers need to improve their processes if they are to avoid surprises in the future. It is a place where automation within the back office has a role to play.

Recently discussing these problems with manufacturing customers highlighted how the simplest of issues could cause considerable problems. Large manufacturers can expect to have many thousands of suppliers on their books, and these will be pan European in many cases, but if procedures are not correctly put in place then purchase orders, invoices and payments will quickly be disrupted. Good examples are conditions placed on purchase orders for freight and duty on goods coming into the country. If an invoice is submitted in $US, paid in €, but reported in £ then a variation is thrown up if a system is incorrectly set up. With a variation detected, the PO is halted for manual verification and approval. That takes time, payment is delayed and the manufacturer looks inefficient and unprofessional.

Expanded across 500 or 5,000 suppliers, the cumulative issues within manual business procedures results in a significant impact on a business’ ability to deal with a changing market landscape. Prior to automation, the time taken to manually resolve such issues can be considerable, with customers talking of dealing with just three approvals a day. Post automation, these numbers climb into the hundreds per day, which radically improves a department’s capabilities and early awareness and resolution of problems.

It seems strange to be discussing automation, which can lend itself to head count reduction, in the wake of news on large scale job losses, but the truth is that if back end processes were better automated within the manufacturing industry, we would see an improvement in operations in terms of supply and demand, payment and cash flow. With data capture automated and smartly indexed, business intelligence would improve and manufacturers would be better prepared to make core operational decisions early enough to stave off last ditch solutions such as the mass redundancies that will typify an economy flirting with a triple dip recession.

Electronic invoicing – are you ready for 2013?

Electronic invoicing or e-invoicing will be familiar to most as around 5 million European businesses and 75 million consumers were sent or received e-invoicesin the past year. Getting to grips with electronic transfer of invoicing information (billing and payment) between business partners (supplier and buyer) is at the heart of the latest European e-invoicing initiative which it is estimated will save businesses EUR 64,5 billion per year.

The key principles of the new directive will establish equality of treatment between paper and e-invoices, with business controls implemented to guarantee the authenticity, integrity and legibility of an invoice from the point in time of issue until the end of the period for storage of the invoice. Once the use of e-invoicing is accepted by the recipient, it will have to put business controls in place which create a reliable audit trail between an invoice and a supply of goods or services.

ReadSoft customers who have invested in INVOICES software to take care of paper based invoice processes – scanning documents, capturing data and posting to finance systems – will recognise the value of automation, and are in a perfect position to react, if they haven’t already, to this new directive on e-invoicing which comes into force from January 1^st 2013.

With INVOICES, the required business controls and data trails to audit processes are already in place. If a business is already receiving a mix of invoices by post, fax or by email in PDF, Word and JPEG, the answer is simply a case of resolving the need to reliably print off and scan those electronically delivered invoices. ReadSoft COLLECTOR is a simple, installed-in-a-day bolt-on for INVOICES which permanently monitors a dedicated e-invoice email inbox. When an invoice arrives, no matter the format, COLLECTOR immediately extracts the relevant information and posts straight into the finance system faster than scanning from paper.

COLLECTOR represents a very simple, painless way to transfer over to e-invoicing. Not only does it help meet the requirements of the EU directive, it ushers in truly paperless invoice handling, reducing both costs and effort, whilst raising the quality of data extracted.

From ReadSoft’s own experiences with customers it knows a move to e-invoicing can save between 60-80% of current invoice costs. To put that into a real world scenario, a ReadSoft customer handling 60,000 invoices per year had already saved €12,000 per year by implementing ReadSoft INVOICES, but by adding COLLECTOR to handle the 6,000 invoices per year it received in electronic format it was able to save a further €6,000 per year. Notably, after encouraging its suppliers to move over to e-invoicing, they also began to save by not having to print and post invoices, in this case €2 per invoice.

You can read a full customer account here to learn how to speed up invoice systems, deliver greater accuracy and end bottlenecks with e-invoicing through applying COLLECTOR.

Related articles

• UK local government finance departments bloated and underperforming (readsoft.wordpress.com)

 

Manage invoicing with record to report

Cost reduction is an overarching theme of business in recent years, and there are many tools in the market that have helped organisations become leaner and more cost effective. Operational feedback on how a business is performing is important if a company is to keep ‘on track’, otherwise managers will find themselves repeating cost cutting exercises, reducing headcount and weakening as opposed to strengthening a business for future growth.

Good management processes require real-time information to align the strategic with the financial and operational, and in every case early intervention is necessary to keep a business agile.

Record to Report (R2R) is a management process whereby strategic, operational and financial feedback can be collated in order to better understand how an organisation is performing. R2R relies on the input of current and historic data from internal systems, for the finance function within accounts payable (AP), this means capturing invoice documents into the system. With data extracted from the transactional system, it becomes possible to transform it into meaningful strategic, operational and financial performance information and thus indicators that help create a framework for ‘strategy to success.’ If a finance department is regularly struggling to meet period end consolidations, and demanding additional staff to manage accounts receivables, then there is a clear opportunity to improve R2R.

The R2R process delivers two main functions: it provides the necessary feedback and performance indicators to measure the cost of management. Typical opportunities for R2R within AP are to clarify the finance function and to gain control of invoice flow. As all parts of the invoice-handling process are monitored in real time it is simple to review a system to see if it is operating up to its capacity. This helps pinpoint the origin of any problems that have occurred, and provides instant access to detailed information for tracking issues as they develop.

The other key area of opportunity revolves around the many issues of audit and compliance. R2R helps keep stakeholders and external bodies satisfied with the level of both financial and non-financial disclosures, and the manner in which filings are made to regulatory bodies. R2R is one of the only processes scrutinised by outside auditors, so R2R tools provide vital information to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Deploying R2R within the workflow process of any finance function within an organisation is simple common sense. It is going to help an organisation to keep track of documents, give the finance team control of all payments and quickly spot bottlenecks within invoice processing, improving efficiency and controlling costs.

Because R2R provides accurate real-time information, it becomes a truly powerful tool for delivering positive strategic business decisions. If an organisation is to succeed within its business environment, R2R needs to become the backbone of integrated reporting strategy.

ReadSoft wins Document Management Product of the Year at the Green IT Awards

ReadSoft wins Document Management Product of the Year at the Green IT Awards

ReadSoft, a leading global provider of software for document process automation, has been awarded Document Management Product of the Year at the third Green IT awards for its paper saving DOCUMENTS software.

Simon Shorthose, Managing Director & Adam Chapman, Director of Marketing

ReadSoft provides a range of back office automation products which address the capture and processing of business and finance data from paper and electronic format documents including: invoices; expenses; purchase orders; forms; HR and general documents.  ReadSoft’s award winning DOCUMENTS software automates the work of capturing, sorting and indexing documents of any format whether electronic or paper based. By extracting key information in digital format, ReadSoft ensures information is completely searchable within an organisation’s business system whilst helping to reduce the need for paper copies.

Simon Shorthose, Managing Director ReadSoft UK said: “It is a great honour to receive an accolade which was voted for by partners and customers. By reducing reproduction of various documents, organisations not only improve their business processes and reduce costs, they can demonstrate real corporate social responsibility.”

In some offices, as many as seven paper copies might be made of each document in the course of usual business. Automation can reduce this paperwork on average to just two pages of hard copy per document meaning ReadSoft customers are already saving billions of sheets of paper every year! As they move from hybrid processing towards electronic-only based models those customers will be able to begin to transform the back office into a truly paperless environment.

ReadSoft was named winner alongside other leading organisations including Kyocera, Acronis, Fujitsu, Dell, CA Technologies and HMRC.

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Sustainability: Paperless office | Business Excellence Magazine

The much talked-about ‘paperless office’ remains more of a myth than reality—but businesses can still continue to take steps towards it, says Simon Shorthose.

Despite all the hype, business technology and the environment often make uncomfortable bedfellows. In recent years this has become apparent with organisations ‘going green’ as part of the corporate social responsibility drive. When the global downturn bit, it was the crusade to go green that was one of the first things to be shelved, but this may well have been a short-sighted decision.

The recession did deliver one bonus for the environment: the use of paper in UK offices fell nine per cent in 2009. Unfortunately, this was an aberration of a downsized market, with average levels falling just one per cent each year since 2000 (according to data from the National Association of Paper Merchants, 2010). The inability to deliver a paperless office environment is perhaps the great eco-failure of modern business, because here is a way that companies can actually make a change for the better, and positively impact on the environment.

The myth of the ‘paperless’ office

It is not a difficult sell to encourage business to think about moving towards a ‘paperless’ office. We all recognise that scraps of paper and old file folders are business-inefficient, and that going paperless should deliver greater return on hardware, software, and technology investment. Many will say they operate a paperless environment and point to the use of scanners instead of copying machines, sending electronic faxes, and PCs where thousands of messages stored in e-mail inboxes or documents in databases would otherwise have generated reams of paper files.

All true; but the reality is that this takes us only a step closer to the paperless office, and there will always be a need for hard copy. Last year when the census again dropped on my doormat, it was a great example of a large paper document that had to be processed in an office—but it could also have been an invoice, or a job application. The Gartner Group estimates that when invoices are handled manually, they are usually copied 11 times before they are passed around for approval as internal mail! The problem then is to address how we can reduce what are perceived as critical services that currently demand paper copies and demonstrate that technology can not only make a difference to the environment, but crucially, can improve daily business operations.

We believe that accounts payable automation is a crucial part of the progression towards a paperless environment. The financial division is an early adopter, scanning incoming bills into the system; and then this expands to include all general business correspondence across all other divisions. What we have seen is a true environmental effect across our customers worldwide. By running just invoices through a scanner and automated document management software, we are seeing an active reduction in the need for paper copies.

Save a tree, save money

Our customers alone process more than 270 million invoices every year, a figure that continues to climb. Even if we reject Gartner’s estimate as over inflated, and suggest that companies produce just two copies of an invoice, with the average length being two to three pages (we’ll ignore any appendices), that’s five pages of hard copy per invoice saved, or 1.4 billion sheets of paper!

There is no hard and fast rule for the number of sheets of paper produced from a single tree, since different trees and different weights of paper need more or less volume of pulp (and wood fibre). The consensus is anywhere between 22,500 and 80,000 sheets of A4 copy paper per tree. What this means is that our customers, by reducing paper invoices, need between 17,500 to 62,000 fewer trees felled each year.

It makes for a convincing argument that using a solution for e-invoicing (sending invoices in PDF, XML, or image files) can lower paper consumption. However, the biggest environmental gains with e-invoicing come from reduced transport.In terms of carbon footprint, those 1.4 billion pages weigh in at between 6,000 and 7,000 tonnes. According to CEPI, the European organisation for the paper industry, every tonne of paper product uses 0.34 tonnes of CO2 (according to the CEPI Sustainability Report 2007).So for 7,000 tonnes of paper saved, that’s also more than 2,000 tonnes of CO2 saved per year. That’s a real tick in the box for the environment.

The business of going green

Intelligent document process automation can be seen as a funnel for all incoming business documents, beyond just invoices, no matter what the format. Optical recognition software is employed to create a virtual image of any document—paper, PDFs, tiffs, XML data, even detecting cursive handwriting. This technology takes the process beyond simple ‘scan to archive’, recognising a document rather than a stream of data, accurately receiving, indexing and saving the document and the data it contains.

By eliminating the physical handling of paper, most users see a productivity increase of 25 to 50 per cent. An important step in the paper-to-digital conversion is this ability to label and catalogue scanned documents. This labelling allows scanned documents to be searched, and so create an electronic workflow which is much faster than manual handling, especially if users are in different locations and time zones. Faster processing times will decrease late payment penalties and allow organisations to negotiate early-payment discounts.

Invoice automation is a true business sustainability solution, reducing paper waste. Will we achieve the dream of the paperless office? Probably not, and certainly not in the near future, because, despite the drive for organisations to be greener, we all still see a demand for hard copy in the office. Fortunately, invoice automation can equally deal with hard copy and electronic sources, enabling organisations to ease towards true sustainability with a hybrid approach in the first instance. What will push the adoption is that it really helps companies improve their bottom line: and this is just a small part of how introducing document management across a business can reap true rewards, both environmentally and through improved business agility.

Simon Shorthose is managing director of ReadSoft UK. Prior to joining ReadSoft he was vice president of Sales Europe at International Business Systems, an ERP software house, and was VP Sales and Marketing at Catalyst International, a US software company. He has also worked for major corporations such as Hays plc and Ocean Group (now DHL) in a number of commercial roles. He was also involved in a VC-backed IT start-up company in the telematics industry. www.readsoft.co.uk

This post was originally published: Sustainability: Paperless office | Business Excellence Magazine.

Get ready for the Cloud – Part 2

Get ready for the Cloud – Part 2

Companies know data is possibly the most valuable business tool they have.  Even companies that do not yet know how to use their data want to keep it so they can work out what to do with it later!  But because the volume of data being captured by companies is increasing, it is becoming harder to keep data on site. Cloud computing can help to solve this storage issue, providing an affordable means to store and access reams of business intelligence for use now or in the future.

This should generate business value.  By this we mean using your time to stay engaged with your customers. Cloud offers two ways to achieve this: through mobile and social engagement. While companies will be able to add social capabilities to cloud applications to bring a Facebook-style approach to communications with customers, it is the shift to mobile could well be the most powerful tool yet, especially for smaller companies that require real flexibility in their operations.

The trend for bringing your own device into work may already be coming more acceptable within medium and large businesses; but the real advantage of accessing apps from anywhere via smartphones, tablets, and notebooks is for SMEs. They can access their business tools from anywhere, so can be out dealing direct with customers, but still be able to access all the tools they need to keep the business operating.

Business at all levels is expected to embrace Cloud in its many forms within the coming year. At ReadSoft we have already embraced Cloud, recognising the flexibility it can deliver to the small to medium businesses, even if that company lacks a dedicated IT resource. ReadSoft Online is a simple way to integrate automatic data capture from documents, including supplier invoices, as a standalone solution, or integrated into a broader Cloud based infrastructure. Either way, we can use the Cloud to help businesses immediately bring their back office processes and automation online, transforming the collection, storage and management of paper and electronic documents.