Brainware and the Institute of Financial Operations Issue 2012 Process Quality Study on AP Automation

Report Details Impact of Automation Technologies on Accounts Payable Operations

June 21, 2012, Ashburn, VA—Brainware and The Institute of Financial Operations announced today the publication of the 2012 Process Quality Study on AP Automation, a report which incorporates the input of accounts payable professionals representing a range of industries, business sizes and regions to present a broad view of the current state of automation technologies and their impact on accounts payable.  A number of approaches to automation were taken into account, including OCR-based capture applications, approval workflow, EDI, purchasing cards and dynamic discounting.

“Document imaging is becoming a major part of accounts payable operations, and of all the available options, intelligent capture has the largest impact on all aspects of the process,” said Brian G. Rosenberg, Chief Executive Officer at RPI Consultants.  “Organizations using intelligent capture overwhelmingly reported that they are less absorbed in manual tasks such as sorting mail, scanning, invoice entry, validation, invoice approval, check production, matching checks to invoices and filing.”

“Such organizations observed benefits throughout the procure-to-pay process, with efficiency gains experienced variously among purchase-to-receipt, receipt-to-approval, approval-to-entry and entry-to-payment times,” added Rosenberg.

“While there are a host of available automation solutions generating ROI and improving the day-to-day routine of accounts payable, this report bears out our assertion that intelligent data capture offers the most holistic solution for processing all invoices, including those from high-volume suppliers as well as the ‘long tail’ of outliers typically relegated to manual entry,” said Charles Kaplan, Vice President of Marketing at Brainware.  “Furthermore, our findings strongly suggest that financial managers see a greater benefit in creating efficiency and process transparency through implementing automation and best practices internally, as opposed to outsourcing operations to a third party.”

Download the 2012 Process Quality Study on AP Automation today, or view a free, on-demand webinar presentation exploring the report’s findings, Accounts Payable Automation—Where We Stand.