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January 2005 |
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Welcome to the January Fast Five Minutes! |
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Executive Insight - New Year's Resolutions and More Improvements! |
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Business Optimization Insider - Secrets To Determining Accounts Payable Process Needs |
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Optura in the News |
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Recent and Upcoming Events |
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Fast Knowledge Tidbits |
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| Welcome to the January Fast Five Minutes! |
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BRRR! Ok. So maybe I asked for the wrong thing this year for Christmas (or perhaps I didn't make myself clear). Not only did we get some snow - thank goodness - but we also got walloped with some of that good ol' fashioned below zero cold. So together with our happy Christmas we also got some of that weather we were looking for.
Did you get everything you wanted? Did your organization experience the true benefits of what an optimized enterprise can mean to your bottom-line (and personal life)? If not, then perhaps for 2005 you need to start asking for ways that you can address your business process collaboration issues and bring some sanity back to your company (and you)…. and Optura is just the organization to help you!
About this Month's Fast Five Minutes. The January FFM includes a number of articles intended to help you start the new year right with informed knowledge on how you can bring about those business process collaboration improvements you're looking for. Picking up where we left off in the fall, Doug Free again continues his series on Business Optimization by uncovering the myths and realities associated with Accounts Payable processes. Give it a read - and answer some of the questions included so that you may determine what some of the key issues are that your organization faces today.
It is going to be a busy winter season at Optura as we have many events that we are participating in - take some time to follow the web links and visit us at these events. We also encourage you to read, respond, and comment as we're dedicated to making the FFM your gateway to knowledge and insight on how you can reduce your process time - and return more of it back to you!
Enjoy your January FFM - and if you're living in the cold belt like me, throw another log on the fire, watch a new DVD, and stay warm! Spring is coming!
The Fast Five Minutes newsletter is published monthly by Optura Inc. We look forward to providing you with this information via email regularly - please let us know if there are other things you would like to see included. Contact Bob Monio (rmonio@optura.net) with questions or comments.
Enjoy your Fast Five Minutes!
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| Executive Insight - New Year's Resolutions and More Improvements! |
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It's with a great deal of pride and excitement that we prepare our first customer newsletter for 2005. On the heels of a gratifying 2004 we are busily preparing ourselves for what we believe will be an equally successful new year. We have our sights on introducing a set of powerful new enhancements to our existing line of already robust financial and materials collaboration applications. You'll see new functions that will help with integrating legacy data and workflows from across the value chain. Look for us to provide significant new services which will help organizations more fully re-engineer work processes to take maximum advantage of their new way of working together. In addition, last years successes with new partnerships will be expanded so don't be surprised to hear more third parties talking about our products and offerings.
As always, we realize we won't be able to meet our goals of offering the highest level of product quality and customer satisfaction without listening to our constituents so if you have a helpful hint on how we can improve let us know. I look forward to hearing from you.
Coleman Barney is the President and CEO of Optura. He can be reached at cbarney@optura.net.
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| Business Optimization Insider - Secrets To Determining Accounts Payable Process Needs |
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Accounts Payable Optimization - Myths and Realities Revealed
The way a company handles vendor invoices directly impacts efficiency of not only accounts payable, but other areas like purchasing and receiving - and it affects them both positively and (more often) negatively. In addition, management and requesters throughout the company feel the effects of the vendor invoice process when approving payment for goods and/or services without a PO. Poor process design and lack of automation can combine to increase:
- Percentage of late payments
- Cost-per-invoice
- Missed early-pay discounts
- Resistance from suppliers to negotiate better terms & pricing
- Percentage of duplicate invoices and payments
- Overall supplier dissatisfaction
- Risk of non-compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley
- And miscommunication between A/P and other groups.
As a result of inefficiency, invoice processing costs in A/P are often higher than desired, especially as volume grows. However, A/P costs are not the only consideration. Procurement leverage, internal controls, reporting, audit capabilities and productivity impact on other areas also represent valid areas of concern when improving the vendor invoice process. When the process is inefficient it can cause many individuals to invest a significant amount of time doing work they probably don't enjoy, and work that could be done faster and more accurately with a better system. Routing invoices for resolution and payment throughout the company can drain precious time from managers and others who have to stop and research, make copies, forward to someone else, and eventually respond back to A/P with their input. This can take weeks, or, in some cases, months.
As part of helping companies understand whether their Accounts Payable processes can be optimized, Optura uses some simple validation questions that help companies understand the core issues they face on a daily basis. Once an organization has been taken through the questionnaire, a corresponding ROI calculation is generated that determines amount of savings - in headcount, cycle time, and cash flow - is generated. Let's take a look at some of those sample questions and see if you can identify some areas that you believe you can address:
Optura Accounts Payable Sample Questions -
| General Info: |
Number of invoices processed, estimated cost per invoice, target cost per invoice? |
| Headcount: |
How many people involved in the process? How many in each discipline? |
| Invoice Sources/Monthly Volumes: |
What is your invoice volume? From what sources? How are they being collected? |
| Invoice Processing: |
How are you handling blocked invoices? Where does scanning and image management play a role in your efforts? Do you have a self-service, web-based capability available for invoice management and entry? Are duplicate invoices an issue - and if so, how large? |
| Vendor Relationships: |
How do you currently work with external Vendors? Do you have a call center? Do you provide self-service capability for Vendors? Do you support EDI or some other form of entry? Would Vendors give you greater discounts if their invoices were processed on-time? |
| ROI / Savings: |
How much would you like to save if you were to improve the invoice management process? |
What Do My Answers Mean?
As you can probably surmise, the Accounts Payable area has many components that contribute significant cost and impact to an organization's bottom-line. If you find yourself nodding your head and identifying with some of these areas, then your company can benefit from Optura's solutions. Put simply, eliminating Accounts Payable inefficiencies can result in significant benefits for the entire company, and particularly for A/P, procurement, receiving, and all approvers and coders. Benefits like headcount cost reductions, better on-time payment performance, improved vendor relations, better negotiating leverage and reduced duplicate invoice payments are possible when optimizing this process. Additional A/P results include lower cost per invoice, more invoices processed per person, reduced percentage of problem invoices and other quantifiable advantages.
To solve these problems and optimize the handling of vendor invoices, Optura has created a packaged, composite application called Vendor Invoice Management™ (VIM) that seamlessly integrates accounts payable, procurement, receiving, and all areas of the company. For example, VIM enables a company to route problem invoices to appropriate individuals for resolution and approval while including elements for web-based self-service for vendors and approval capabilities for internal users without SAP logon capabilities. In addition to streamlining the process, an added benefit is the increased user adoption of SAP to help maximize a company's return on their SAP investment. VIM makes use of imaging, workflow, and "best-practice" design to increase efficiency. Purchase orders, goods receipts, invoice transaction screens, invoice images and transaction notes and histories are all linked in one place to ensure problem resolution in a timely manner with a minimum of effort.
How Do I Learn More About How My Accounts Payable Operation Can Be Improved Through Optura's Vendor Invoice Management Solution?
Optura solutions personnel will be happy to help you understand how the issues identified in this simple questionnaire relate to your organization - and how a corresponding ROI can be calculated to determine what kind of process savings your company can realize. Please contact us via email at info@optura.net or call us at 888.658.0990. Also, look for Optura's soon-to-be-released White Paper - "Optimizing The Vendor Invoice Management Process" on our website (www.opentext.com).
We look forward to helping you optimize and improve your Accounts Payable Processes!
Doug Free is a senior Business Development Manager at Optura. Please feel free to contact Doug at (dfree@optura.net) or at (info@optura.net) with your questions or comments.
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| Recent and Upcoming Events |
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Optura Continues to Demonstrate Industry Leadership - here are some events to take note of:
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