Article written by Stephanie Onofri
It’s not just a dream for the future. While the Food & Beverage Industry stumbles through the 21st century with its vintage 20th century style of invoice management processes and time practices, NASA is preparing for a passenger-laden space craft voyage to Mars.
Isn’t it time for outdated Accounts Payable Receivable practices to catch up with the times? After all, it is in the department’s best interest. We have all heard by now elusive terms such as “Invoice Automation” or “paperless office.” The question is, what do they really mean? Can they really help Food & Beverage AP processes become smoother? And if so, how?”
As it stands, the major challenges Food & Beverage Accounts Payable Receivable departments face are:
- Lack of a centralized process: paper being sent from multiple locations results in processing delays.
- Time consuming data entry: data entry is often performed manually by employees whose job consist of other responsibilities
- Storage inefficiency and high cost: digging for documents from a filing cabinet is a huge time impediment.
- Compliance and risk: invoices and PO’s are difficult to track, and the manual process is prone to human error.
Invoice Automation is the process of converting paper invoices to electronic format and storing it into an enterprise content management system (ECM) that allows you to keep track of where the document is in the process. And in effect, it helps solve all the pain points listed above in order to optimize existing AP processes.
Food & Beverage business will be able to:
- Hand their scanning and data entry to someone certified to do just that, so AP personnel doesn’t have to
- Automate the workflow process so invoices are received automatically by respective parties for updates and/or approvals
- Eliminate paper storage costs so they don’t burn unnecessary holes in the departmental budget
- And most importantly, improve the invoice management process by automatically sending financial documents to the appropriate location for processing, eliminating mailing costs
Centralizing and automating the invoicing process is the fastest and most cost-efficient way of ensuring better and quicker ROIs. Contact DataBank to find out more about how Business Process Automation helps Food & Beverage Industries make the most of their Accounts Payable Recevable investments! Also, download our Northeast Utilities Case Study below to find out how we helped revitalize their AP processes!
