When Ovation Fertility, a collection of independently-thinking IVF and genetics labs, went looking for help with their AP process issues, DocuPhase rose to the challenge, delivering an accounting automation solution that would help them increase accuracy and productivity, while setting them up for future growth.
Today we’re going to take a closer look at their story, in addition to examining ways Process & Workflow Automation can be leveraged in any accounting department:
As we’ve already mentioned, Ovation Fertility is a collection of IVF and genetics labs. These labs share their research, experience, and best practices. This innovative, integrated platform allows Ovation Fertility to provide their patients with unique IVF solutions based on the collective knowledge of more than 50 full-time scientists and clinicians.
Ovation Fertility’s Top Accounting Challenges
Before implementing an accounting automation solution, Ovation Fertility faced some fairly common accounting-related challenges.
The Ovation Fertility accounting team found themselves frequently in a position where they’d have to chase down various managers in order to get invoices approved. This slowed down their AP process and took time away from other tasks that needed their attention.
Before implementing a paperless solution, Ovation Fertility’s AP process was paper-based. Everything was manual, from scanning invoices to emailing approvals. They were manually tracking invoice statuses, entering data, filing invoices, and more. This added up to a ton of paper, which they also needed a storage solution for.
The team at Ovation Fertility was manually keying data into their ERP. The problems from that practice were twofold: First, data integrity was questionable simply because humans make mistakes. Second, manual data entry is a tedious process that takes a ton of time.
Needless to say, there was some room for improvement in their data entry process.
Based on some of Ovation Fertility’s challenges, let’s talk about the 5 most common challenges faced in accounting departments, on a larger scale.
If you’re experiencing any of these pain points, you’re not alone.
Accounting and finance professionals are tasked with verifying thousands of account balances and invoices. This means they must compare multiple sources of data, including bank statements, invoices, purchase orders, and more.
While data integrity is crucial within any finance operation, manual review adds a ton of time to processes. Still, this is definitely not a place where you want to cut corners, no matter how rushed you are.
Fortunately, workflow automation solutions like automated 3-way matching can transform these manual processes for you, making your processes more efficient while ensuring that your data is accurate.
Documents flow into accounting departments from a variety of sources – snail mail, fax, email, and more. When these documents (and their data) aren’t stored in one centralized place, it can become difficult to track down the information you need.
Plus, the cost of paper storage can really creep up on you. It’s estimated that each file cabinet costs a company about $1,400. Multiply that by the number of file cabinets you have in your office…
Considering going paperless now?
3. Paying Late Penalties Rather than Taking Advantage of Early Payment Discounts
Slow, manual processes rarely allow you to make payments early. Instead, sometimes you end up owing late payment fees. How much money could your accounting department save or earn by using a more efficient, automated AP process?
If you’ve ever used a manual invoice process, you know the pains of processing payments manually. Not only is it inefficient (compared to an automated invoicing process), but it can also produce errors, which cost even more to fix.
An automated AP process can free up a good portion of your budget. According to a study by The Aberdeen Group, the average cost to process a single invoice is $6.29, while the cost to process an invoice using AP automation software is only $3.34. That’s almost a $3 difference, per invoice. Now multiply that by the number of invoices your company processes in a year.
5. Inefficient Data Capture
Is all of your data up-to-date and accurate across all of your systems? If your team is still manually keying in data, this can be a little bit dicey.
The solution? Automation tools include OCR (Optical Character Recognition), which allows you to convert your documents into business-ready data and also to validate that data against your other systems.
An enterprise automation solution will also connect with your existing systems, allowing you to share data seamlessly.
Find out more about how to fix these top 5 accounting challenges with workflow automation.
Let’s revisit our company spotlight – Ovation Fertility.
Here’s how they were able to partner with DocuPhase to find solutions for their 3 biggest issues:
With DocuPhase’s enterprise automation platform, approval routing is automated.
Here’s how it works: Any time an invoice is in need of approval, the system routes that invoice to the appropriate manager. The approver is presented with a task, which includes step-by-step instructions. All the information he or she needs in order to make a decision–the invoice, purchase order, and receiving report–is presented along with the task. Upon reviewing the invoice and related documentation, all the approver has to do is click “Approve” to route it to the next step in the AP process.
This system dramatically reduces the time it takes to process an invoice. It also provides visibility into where a document lies within the business process.
That’s right – Ovation Fertility went digital!
DocuPhase’s document management solution stores all of their documents and data electronically, making it available digitally to any employees who need it, when they need it. The DocuPhase platform also provides time-saving, productivity-boosting features like full-text search, automated document routing, and powerful auto-indexing. These features reduce the time it takes to manage and update records, while keeping everything secure and organized.
Like we said before, the Ovation Fertility had been manually keying data into their ERP. This had to change!
With DocuPhase’s advanced capture tools, key data (including line item details) is automatically extracted from invoices. OCR tools eliminate the low-value, time-consuming task of manual data entry. This means that costly human errors that can come along with manual entry are eradicated. Once data is captured, it’s synced across other software systems, ensuring that all data is accurate and up-to-date, organization-wide.
Here’s what Ovation Fertility was able to do after implementing their new AP automation solution:
Sounds pretty fantastic, doesn’t it? We invite you to find out what AP automation can do for your accounting team. Visit this page to sign up for your own solution demo – just make sure you select Accounting Automation from the Demo Topic dropdown list.
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