Convergence Still A Hot Topic

By Mark Brousseau

The convergence of payments and document automation was a hot topic at last week’s TAWPI Forums & Expo in Orlando. During a meeting of TAWPI’s Payments Capture and Clearing (PCC) Council, panelists Jim Bunn of IBML, Bo Minogue of Mavro Imaging, and John Kincade of J&B Software, offered the following tips for ensuring that a payments and document automation initiative delivers the greatest return on investment.

… Before purchasing or implementing any new technology, thoroughly review the way your operations currently do things, to avoid automating bad business processes and work rules. You want to re-engineer process flows to eliminate as many hand-offs as possible, Kincade said. And you don’t want to stop the process flow for exceptions handling.

… Be sure to benchmark and measure the throughput of every process. Minogue said organizations could do this through the use of simulation software that compares current and proposed processes. Modeling the impact of various processing scenarios helps organizations make workflow changes that deliver the most payback. And don’t put the cart before the horse: organizations should never select a technology solution until they have considered potential process improvements.

… Look at document and payments automation from an enterprise level, rather than from a departmental or process perspective. Organizations can achieve significantly higher payback by implementing solutions that reach across an enterprise, Bunn noted. Ideally, payments and document automation solutions would also link the front and back office, but Bunn said this typically is not happening.

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