David Johnson, AP solutions manager, Perceptive Software
In a day and age where the corporate mantra includes: “do more with less,” “work smarter not harder,” or “Kaisen,” we still see many organizations processing accounts payable invoices the old-fashioned way. That is, many organizations still receive a majority of their invoices via paper, route them through the organization through intercompany mail--or just walking them from desk to desk, move invoices from pile to pile (waiting to be matched, matched/waiting to be entered, entered/waiting to be paid, paid/waiting to be filed, filed/hopefully to be found again).
Perhaps it’s time to say, put your money where your mouth is. Better yet, put more money on your bottom line by investing in an enterprise content management system that will make your AP processing significantly more efficient.
The Institute of Financial Operations recently conducted a survey regarding the automation of accounts payable with the results issued at their annual Fusion Conference in Orlando, Florida. According to their study, more than 75% of the respondents indicated that they receive a majority of their invoices via paper. Of those responding, 39% stated that their paper invoice volume exceeded 90% of their total volume.
When looking at the paper invoice volume, 32% indicated that their volume over the past year has not changed. When combining the following categories over the past year: slightly lower, unchanged, and slightly higher, the results showed that over 80% of paper invoice volume has essentially remained static. There appears to be no end in sight of paper invoices for these organizations.
There is a cost associated with the manual payment process too. According to this same study, 41% of respondents indicated their processing cost per invoice was $5.00 or less while 59% reported a per invoice cost in excess of $5.00. These processing costs savings do not include the potential for early payment discounts offered by vendors.
I attended Disney’s Accounts Payable Department presentation at Fusion on their world-class accounts payable processing. They reported a per invoice cost of $1.61 per invoice with the aid of automation. It’s worth noting that Disney processes in excess of 5 million invoices annually. Thus, a mere change in cost per invoice of $0.01 will affect their bottom line by $50,000.
So c’mon, do more with less and work smarter not harder, let automation bring bottom line results to your organization. Your competitors are.
What do you think? Post your comments below.
Showing posts with label Perceptive Software. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Perceptive Software. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Selling top execs on records management
By Mark Brousseau
Every organization, regardless of industry, needs to have a records management policy, and they must have a records manager. Nonetheless, it can be an uphill climb convincing top managers to embrace records management, Kevin Joerling, senior project manager, records management, Perceptive Software, said yesterday at the company’s Inspire 2011 user conference at the Wynn in Las Vegas.
Records and information management is defined as the systematic control of records and information throughout their lifecycle, encompassing creation, use, storage, retention, and disposition. “Retention is where we find many companies are not doing a very good job – knowing how long to keep documents,” Joerling said
And this is an area where companies can waste a lot of money, Joerling said: For every $1 spent on disk storage, $3 to $8 per megabyte is spent on managing that storage, he explained. “In some cases, companies don’t even realize this,” he said.
Joerling said records and information is more important than ever because it: reduces storage costs; organizations information for quick retrieval; facilitates litigation risk avoidance; helps protect information assets; and ensures compliance with recordkeeping laws and regulations. To this last point, Joerling said records management is a key part of an organization’s commitment to risk mitigation.
“Liability lawsuits are often decided on the basis of old records,” Joerling explained. What’s more, the loss of records can have more devastating consequences than the loss of a plant, Joerling said, noting that some companies based in the World Trade Center during 9/11 went out of business because they didn’t have backup records.
So why don’t more top execs embrace records management?
For starters, most top execs don’t understand records management. “Records management is not mainstream yet,” he said. “It’s not taught in too many colleges or universities, so business managers coming out of school don’t understand it.” Many organizations also don’t have a records management professional. “Who’s going to be that champion in your company to go to senior management and say ‘We need to look into this because we could get in trouble by not doing it?’” Joerling asked.
Additionally, records and information management benefits can be difficult to quantify. With tight budgets as a result of the recession, this makes it more difficult to persuade senior management about records and information management.
Joerling offered tips for selling top execs on the need for records management:
1. Describe how records management will solve issues facing your organization.
2. Propose a recommended solution, whether it’s hiring a records manager or records management consultant.
3. Detail what will happen if a records management program is not undertaken.
4. Explain when the records management program will be deployed, and how much money, how much time and how many people will be needed for the program.
5. Keep the discussions at a high level and targeted to c-level core concerns, such as how the program ties into the company’s strategic plan.
“It’s an uphill battle because you’re dealing with something that a lot of executives don’t understand and don’t recognize why it needs to be done,” Joerling admitted. But with the growing importance of records and information management, it’s critical that document professionals convince top execs on the need for a program.
What do you think?
Every organization, regardless of industry, needs to have a records management policy, and they must have a records manager. Nonetheless, it can be an uphill climb convincing top managers to embrace records management, Kevin Joerling, senior project manager, records management, Perceptive Software, said yesterday at the company’s Inspire 2011 user conference at the Wynn in Las Vegas.
Records and information management is defined as the systematic control of records and information throughout their lifecycle, encompassing creation, use, storage, retention, and disposition. “Retention is where we find many companies are not doing a very good job – knowing how long to keep documents,” Joerling said
And this is an area where companies can waste a lot of money, Joerling said: For every $1 spent on disk storage, $3 to $8 per megabyte is spent on managing that storage, he explained. “In some cases, companies don’t even realize this,” he said.
Joerling said records and information is more important than ever because it: reduces storage costs; organizations information for quick retrieval; facilitates litigation risk avoidance; helps protect information assets; and ensures compliance with recordkeeping laws and regulations. To this last point, Joerling said records management is a key part of an organization’s commitment to risk mitigation.
“Liability lawsuits are often decided on the basis of old records,” Joerling explained. What’s more, the loss of records can have more devastating consequences than the loss of a plant, Joerling said, noting that some companies based in the World Trade Center during 9/11 went out of business because they didn’t have backup records.
So why don’t more top execs embrace records management?
For starters, most top execs don’t understand records management. “Records management is not mainstream yet,” he said. “It’s not taught in too many colleges or universities, so business managers coming out of school don’t understand it.” Many organizations also don’t have a records management professional. “Who’s going to be that champion in your company to go to senior management and say ‘We need to look into this because we could get in trouble by not doing it?’” Joerling asked.
Additionally, records and information management benefits can be difficult to quantify. With tight budgets as a result of the recession, this makes it more difficult to persuade senior management about records and information management.
Joerling offered tips for selling top execs on the need for records management:
1. Describe how records management will solve issues facing your organization.
2. Propose a recommended solution, whether it’s hiring a records manager or records management consultant.
3. Detail what will happen if a records management program is not undertaken.
4. Explain when the records management program will be deployed, and how much money, how much time and how many people will be needed for the program.
5. Keep the discussions at a high level and targeted to c-level core concerns, such as how the program ties into the company’s strategic plan.
“It’s an uphill battle because you’re dealing with something that a lot of executives don’t understand and don’t recognize why it needs to be done,” Joerling admitted. But with the growing importance of records and information management, it’s critical that document professionals convince top execs on the need for a program.
What do you think?
Inspire 2011 kicks off in Las Vegas
By Mark Brousseau
More than 900 document automation professionals have descended upon Las Vegas this week for Perceptive Software’s Inspire 2011 user conference at the Wynn.
This is the fifth year that Perceptive Software has held its Inspire event.
The attendance at this year’s Inspire user conference is a record, Jeremy McNeive, Perceptive Software’s public relations manager told me yesterday, topping the crowd of about 700 that attended Inspire 2010 in Kansas City. McNeive attributes the growth to the improving economy, the continuing pressure within organizations to improve efficiency, and the value that end-users perceive from the content. For instance, yesterday’s keynote address on the state of the company by Perceptive Software President and CEO Scott Coons was “very well received,” McNeive said.
Inspire 2011 includes more than 60 educational sessions (more than ever before at an Inspire event), with learning tracks dedicated to higher education, healthcare, financial services, the back-office, and product and platform information. There also is a large resource center where end-users can try out Perceptive Software products and get answers to technical and product questions from the company’s experts.
Eight of Perceptive Software’s partners also are exhibiting at the event: Lexmark (Perceptive Software’s parent company), Fujitsu, Napersoft, Scanning America, CSP Group, Docucon, Global Information Distribution, and HyBridge Solutions. Many of these partners provide various components for Perceptive Software’s solutions.
One of the hot topics among attendees is the anticipated release next year of ImageNow 6.7, which will offer “a little bit of everything” for end-users, McNeive said, including records information management and foldering capabilities. It will help end-users move towards collaboration in an even bigger way, McNeive added.
“There is lots of energy here and lots of excitement,” McNeive concluded.
Going to school on workflow
By Mark Brousseau
Kansas State University (KSU) has increased productivity, raised efficiency and reallocated staff by deploying Perceptive Software’s ImageNow enterprise content platform in its admissions office. Rhiannon Englert of application manager and ImageNow client administrator, undergraduate admissions, shared the university’s story yesterday at Perceptive Software’s Inspire 2011 user conference in Las Vegas.
Founded in 1863 and located in Manhattan, Kansas, KSU offers more than 250 majors and programs and serves over 23,500 students. The university’s admissions office has about 50 ImageNow users, and holds about 30 seat licenses at a time.
The university processes about 20,000 applications and 20,000 transcripts per year.
Before deploying ImageNow in 2002, the university previously used a “very large and very loud filing-drawer system” for managing its admissions documents. “It was a very clunky system and took up a lot of space,” Englert said. “By deploying ImageNow, we were able to replace that system with three workstations.”
Until three years ago, KSU used its ImageNow solution primarily for electronic document storage. The school’s workflow was used largely for basic tasks and was centered on an in-house routing slip and back-end document scanning
In this paper-driven environment, the university would date-stamp incoming admissions documents and then send them to its document processing staff, who would perform data entry and make any necessary notations directly on the original documents. The documents then would go to an evaluator-level employee for more processing, and any action that needed to be taken. Once this step was complete, the documents would be scanned and electronically linked to a student ID number.
This process created some challenges, Englert said, starting with the labor involved in manual data entry. “We also were concerned about the location of documents during processing: the only person who knew the location of a document was the person who was processing it,” Englert explained. Similarly, there was no way to quantify the processing workload. “Employees would say, ‘We have a huge stack of transcripts to process,’ but they could didn’t know how many,” Englert said.
That all changed in 2009 when the university upgraded to version 6.3 of ImageNow.
As part of its upgrade to the new version of software, the university evaluated its business process, looking for ways to improve efficiency and eliminate the “vicious cycle” of paper-driven processes, Englert said. Not surprisingly, the university decided to implement a paperless workflow in its admissions office. As a result, incoming documents – including applications and supporting documents – are now scanned upon receipt and then enter electronic workflow queues based on the document type or business process. The electronic documents are then linked to a student identification number in KSU’s PeopleSoft system, processed and archived.
With such a big change in how work is managed, it’s not surprising that Englert’s team had some concerns early on, including: how information would be displayed on monitors; whether they could make electronic annotations on documents: the clarity of document images (for determining the authenticity of transcripts); and the impact on processing turnaround. Some employees also were anxious about the system’s workload monitoring tools, and that someone would be watching them.
The university tackled these issues head-on (i.e. providing all employees with two monitors for easy image viewing) and kept communication to staff flowing.
The benefits have been significant. As a result of moving to a paperless workflow, the university increased efficiency, improved turnaround times, and reallocated staff – all at a time when its budgets are extremely tight. The workload tracking has proven to be a powerful tool for supervisors, helping them better understand staff workloads and turnaround times, and prioritize work when necessary. Englert said it is also easier to locate documents with ImageNow’s search capabilities. .
“During high-volume times, documents are now available in ImageNow within hours or a few days as opposed to several days or weeks,” Englert commented.
Now, the university is looking for more ways to take its processes to the next level.
Kansas State University (KSU) has increased productivity, raised efficiency and reallocated staff by deploying Perceptive Software’s ImageNow enterprise content platform in its admissions office. Rhiannon Englert of application manager and ImageNow client administrator, undergraduate admissions, shared the university’s story yesterday at Perceptive Software’s Inspire 2011 user conference in Las Vegas.
Founded in 1863 and located in Manhattan, Kansas, KSU offers more than 250 majors and programs and serves over 23,500 students. The university’s admissions office has about 50 ImageNow users, and holds about 30 seat licenses at a time.
The university processes about 20,000 applications and 20,000 transcripts per year.
Before deploying ImageNow in 2002, the university previously used a “very large and very loud filing-drawer system” for managing its admissions documents. “It was a very clunky system and took up a lot of space,” Englert said. “By deploying ImageNow, we were able to replace that system with three workstations.”
Until three years ago, KSU used its ImageNow solution primarily for electronic document storage. The school’s workflow was used largely for basic tasks and was centered on an in-house routing slip and back-end document scanning
In this paper-driven environment, the university would date-stamp incoming admissions documents and then send them to its document processing staff, who would perform data entry and make any necessary notations directly on the original documents. The documents then would go to an evaluator-level employee for more processing, and any action that needed to be taken. Once this step was complete, the documents would be scanned and electronically linked to a student ID number.
This process created some challenges, Englert said, starting with the labor involved in manual data entry. “We also were concerned about the location of documents during processing: the only person who knew the location of a document was the person who was processing it,” Englert explained. Similarly, there was no way to quantify the processing workload. “Employees would say, ‘We have a huge stack of transcripts to process,’ but they could didn’t know how many,” Englert said.
That all changed in 2009 when the university upgraded to version 6.3 of ImageNow.
As part of its upgrade to the new version of software, the university evaluated its business process, looking for ways to improve efficiency and eliminate the “vicious cycle” of paper-driven processes, Englert said. Not surprisingly, the university decided to implement a paperless workflow in its admissions office. As a result, incoming documents – including applications and supporting documents – are now scanned upon receipt and then enter electronic workflow queues based on the document type or business process. The electronic documents are then linked to a student identification number in KSU’s PeopleSoft system, processed and archived.
With such a big change in how work is managed, it’s not surprising that Englert’s team had some concerns early on, including: how information would be displayed on monitors; whether they could make electronic annotations on documents: the clarity of document images (for determining the authenticity of transcripts); and the impact on processing turnaround. Some employees also were anxious about the system’s workload monitoring tools, and that someone would be watching them.
The university tackled these issues head-on (i.e. providing all employees with two monitors for easy image viewing) and kept communication to staff flowing.
The benefits have been significant. As a result of moving to a paperless workflow, the university increased efficiency, improved turnaround times, and reallocated staff – all at a time when its budgets are extremely tight. The workload tracking has proven to be a powerful tool for supervisors, helping them better understand staff workloads and turnaround times, and prioritize work when necessary. Englert said it is also easier to locate documents with ImageNow’s search capabilities. .
“During high-volume times, documents are now available in ImageNow within hours or a few days as opposed to several days or weeks,” Englert commented.
Now, the university is looking for more ways to take its processes to the next level.
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