How Does AP Invoice Automation Help with Remote and Hybrid Working?
You’ve likely taken great strides in enabling remote working in the last year. Advancing ten years in two weeks is a common perception in relation to how quickly tech issues were resolved in order to facilitate remote working.
But you need to ask yourself how many of your tech solutions are “sticking-plasters” and how many are long-term, value-adding solutions that embrace everything that digitisation has to offer.
Because remote and hybrid working is here to stay. Nearly 70% of employees who have worked remotely since COVID-19 believe this is the right way of working for them in the future.
Now is the time to get the long-term solutions in place.
The “Sticking-Plaster” Solution to AP Invoices
Your remote working AP invoice process could be the perfect example of an improvised solution. If you had a paper-based process in place, you’ve likely switched to email. When an invoice arrives in the post, it’s scanned and sent internally via email for approval and sign-off.
But this replaces a physical inbox with a virtual inbox.
A cloud-based AP invoice solution facilitates remote working much more efficiently – and gives you a host of other benefits that improve your productivity and business resilience too.
How AP Invoice Automation Facilitates Remote Working
All invoices can enter the system electronically. Instead of manual data entry, OCR technology captures the data automatically, saving time and reducing re-keying errors. It’s a solution that goes much further than the scan-and-email option which still relies on data entry.
It goes further too.
All approval-related communication happens in the solution too so you can see the status of an invoice at any time. Has it been approved? Submitted? Who has it now? Where is the hold up?
It puts an end to time-consuming email ping-pong as you try to track down where an invoice is in the system.
Above all, it enhances the experience for employees, as a cumbersome process is replaced with a streamlined one. It helps to maintain employee engagement as well as boosting productivity across the business.
The Wider Benefits of AP Invoice Automation
AP invoice automation doesn’t just help with the process itself.
One of the biggest problems with a paper-based process is a lack of visibility. You see spend too long after the fact. It’s difficult to get a true picture of where spend is happening – and therefore where you can save it.
Automated AP invoice solutions give you visibility of spend much earlier in the process.
They can also extend to matching invoices with purchase orders. Everything you pay for can be automatically verified against everything you receive, and mismatched figures, errors, and exceptions can be flagged before payments go out the door.
You can harness reporting capabilities so you can establish and track key metrics and make more informed decisions about when to pay suppliers to optimise your cash flow.
It all helps you be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to spend, which is more important than ever right now.
Explore Concur Invoice
It is likely you have implemented a remote working fix already, but now is the time to get the long-term solution in place.
Because when you fully embrace digital solutions, you put your business on the front foot in terms of remote and hybrid working – and gain a wealth of other benefits around business resilience and productivity.
As you start your research, our Accounts Payable Automation: A Buyer’s Guide has some useful pointers, including how to scope your solution, calculating your expected ROI and questions to ask solution providers.
And when it comes to evaluating providers, see what Concur Invoice has to offer.