Scaling Accounts Payable: why automation is key for business growth

It takes a lot of planning and hard work to scale your business into a profitable entity. According to Forbes, one of the most important strategies that can help you scale your small business is to define standard operating procedures and systems and employ technology to automate and streamline processes: “By putting the right systems in place, you can quickly scale your small business and disengage from non-productive tasks within your business.” (Forbes)

Businesses starting to experience growth soon realize that their small AP teams that use slow, manual processes are struggling to keep up with the expanded pace. Invoices get back logged, payments are made late and vendor relations can suffer. Implementing AP automation with a trusted outsource provider, will enable your business to handle the volume fluctuations and manage the increase in AP activity as your company grows.

 AP automation is key for business growth because it:

Improves Invoice Processing Times

AP automation will give your company the ability to handle a greater number of invoices by speeding up workflows and shortening your invoice processing times. Taking advantage of early payment discounts will provide you with more funds to put back into your business to help it scale.

Increases Cash Flow Visibility

With AP automation software, you will be able to track key AP metrics such as average number of invoices, average invoice process time and average cost per invoice, giving you a better understanding of the cash flow in your AP department. An increase in cash flow visibility will enable you to better plan for the future and anticipate potential issues.

Improves Vendor Relationships

The speed and accuracy that AP automation offers will help to ensure invoices are paid error-free and on-time which will help your organization build relationships with a team of reliable, loyal vendors. By having strong relationships with your vendors, you will gain better value for your organization by benefiting from preferred pricing and dedicated service.

Key Features of Accounts Payable Automation

As a trusted outsource provider, Octacom can prepare your business for future growth by helping you automate your accounts payable process. Octacom’s AP automation solution utilizes invoice capture and workflow automation software to streamline invoice management from receipt to approval. The key features of Octacom’s AP automation solutions include:

• Simplify Invoice Receipt: Centralize receipt of invoices through a variety of options - email forwarding, custom vendor portal, EDI, and our digital mail room services.
• Automate Invoice Capture and Matching: Eliminate manual data entry, purchase order matching and GL/dimension coding through automated capture increasing efficiencies and reducing cost, thanks to our AI and Machine Learning technology.
• Digitize Complex Approval Workflows: Octacom’s Odiss Software caters to your delegation of authority and invoice approval workflow with simple dashboards, notifications and insights.
• Secure Archive and User Management: Octacom provides a rich searchable archive with the ability to enable granular user permissions to satisfy compliance requirements.
• Improve Organizational Access: Leverage instant digital access to invoices, status of approvals and payment confirmation.
• Streamline Exceptions Management: Octacom's Odiss Software allows users to easily automate exception handling and vendor returns, including duplicate invoices, invalid vendors and invalid POs.
• Implement a Fully Integrated Solution: Integrate Octacom’s Odiss Software to any ERP or Procure-to-Pay solution to enable a fully integrated and touch-less accounts payable automation solution.
• Improve Reporting and Analytics: Octacom provides full visibility into the accounts payable process, invoice cycle times, spend by vendor and approver and more.

Octacom is a SOC 2, Type II Audited enterprise software and services company focused on document and data automation solutions, including automated data capture. Founded in 1976, Octacom specializes in accounts payable automation and automated invoice processing, among other digital / automated business process outsourcing services. 

If your organization is looking to learn more about our solutions and services, please contact us and we would be glad to help.