A world leader in manufacturing and producer of materials used in durable goods and in other major sectors of our economy understands the value of focusing on its core business. As the worldwide economy tightened, this global giant looked to further reduce costs in areas not central to its business specifically in its Accounts Payable Department, where 30,000 to 35,000 invoices are received monthly.
The organization’s approach to going digital was to set up an internal operation to handle all invoices – they were on the right track by going digital but the efficiencies expected were not realized.
Invoices were received at their Post Office box; staff opened mail, sorted and scanned all incoming documents. Once the invoices were scanned, staff spent considerable time indexing and data capturing all needed information for import into their internally developed system. Furthermore, the manual effort to complete processing of each invoice for payment was tedious and time-consuming.
In researching different software products that could deliver Business Process Automation, many looked like they could provide the capabilities they needed. But they also realized that software alone was not the answer – they needed to address the inefficiencies in their paper handling and scanning operations.
As a leader in their industry, they knew that it was not going to be sufficient to outsource to just any service provider; they needed a provider who would take a consultative approach, apply their expertise, and who had a track record of successes – DataBank met that criteria and more.
DataBank’s Professional Services team, working with internal AP staff, redesigned workflows that sped up processing and automated tasks based on the organization’s processing rules.
But what further enhanced the entire operation was the outsourcing of all document handling. Now, DataBank picks up all incoming mail at the PO Box daily, performs all tasks associated with converting invoices to digital, and imports images and captured metadata directly into their software system. Invoice processing automatically starts as incoming documents are received. DataBank’s production staff has reduced all paper handling significantly and consistently meets 48 hour turnaround except when they provide 24-hour turnaround during month-end.
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