How Prepared are You for Electronic Invoicing?

According to various research firms like Forrester Research and Sterling Commerce, switching from manual invoice processing to an invoice automation solution typically results in major savings. Conservative estimates for manual invoice processing costs hover around $12 to $15 per invoice, whereas fully automated invoice management solutions offer a unit cost of approximately $3.50. So even businesses that only process five invoices per day stand to save $1,000 each month. That’s why I found it so shocking to discover that B2B adoption of e-invoicing solutions in most developed countries remains as low as five percent! Why would companies pass up on such a clear opportunity to improve their margins?

The reasons that researchers cite include lack of awareness and lack of a business strategy for implementing a digital invoice processing system. At least some of the difficulty in formulating a solid strategy comes from the absence of a clear framework for determining where an organization currently stands with respect to implementing electronic invoicing capabilities. Thankfully, information management researchers have recently outlined a maturity model for electronic invoice processes (Cuylen, Kosch, and Breitner, 2016). Using their Electronic Invoice Process Maturity Model (EIPMM), businesses can gain a much clearer understanding of which parts of their invoicing procedures require the most immediate attention, and how large an ROI they can expect from adopting e-invoicing.

The EIPMM covers four categories: Strategy, Acceptance, Processes & Organization, and Technology, each of which are further divided into between three and five subcategories. Against these subcategories, evaluators can award between zero and four points, depending on the current state of their invoicing procedures. Assuming you weight each subcategory equally, your organization’s final maturity score will range from zero to sixty.

The Strategy category reflects an organization’s preparedness in terms of how well-aligned its business strategy is with implementing invoice management software, how willing stakeholders are to adopt new technology, whether detailed cost-benefit analysis has been performed, and so on. Since factors listed in the Strategy category are critically important for successful implementation, improving their maturity scores will help e-invoicing proponents secure internal acceptance and executive buy-in.

The Acceptance category details the degree to which internal groups, business partners, and external entities agree to adopt or support electronic invoicing. This involves ensuring that employees (especially management and accounting) understand the benefits of e-invoicing, how willing partner organizations are to adopt or otherwise facilitate electronic invoicing, and how mature the external environment is for supporting e-invoicing, including communication with regulatory bodies, invoice management service providers, and government revenue agencies. In the same way that a clear strategy makes implementation much easier, high levels of acceptance indicate that the time is right for adopting an invoice management solution.

The Processes & Organization category outlines how clearly electronic invoicing processes have been designed, and how proactively legal matters and internal policies have been addressed. Businesses that have practices in place that are well-suited to e-invoicing will have an easier time transitioning to invoice management software. Similarly, businesses that have ensured that their internal practices already align with government regulations on electronic invoicing will be able to adopt fully automated invoicing with fewer complications.

Finally, the Technology category measures how prepared an organization’s IT infrastructure is for the paperless processing of invoices. Companies that can reduce manual effort more effectively receive a higher maturity score, as do companies that apply technical standards more consistently. Businesses with well-integrated IT operations also score higher. Companies that already manage most documents electronically will transition to e-invoicing more smoothly, and so will companies with strong information security standards.

Using the EIPMM or a similar method for evaluating your organization’s readiness for electronic invoicing is a great way to address various implementation challenges in a systematic way and convince decision makers of the value of investing in a digital invoice processing solution. For more information on how your organization can improve profitability by adopting e-invoicing, please contact Visionet Systems.

If you already use ERP and e-commerce, is integration worth it?

Most companies that use ERP technologies also operate an online store for consumers, or use a web portal for B2B sales. However, many of these companies that use both types of digital technology have yet to unify them. Should they? If they did, what should they expect to gain? To what degree would such an investment yield tangible benefits?

Thanks to the rise of cloud technologies, digital products that were once out of reach for most small and medium businesses have become affordable web services. Probably the most valuable among these is ERP, which combines an organization’s various internal business processes into a tightly integrated and highly efficient whole. Companies that use ERP suites tend to spend less time managing business documents, customer information, and other internal data, and more time achieving their primary business objectives. As a result, productivity and profitability increase.

However, the effects of implementing a traditional ERP solution are almost exclusively felt within the organization, with only indirect benefits spilling over to inter-business processes like procurement and sales. ERP platforms are designed to make information sharing easier amongst company departments and personnel, but not with partner companies or other external stakeholders.

That’s where e-business technologies come in. These web-based (and increasingly cloud-based) technologies are designed with extra-organizational coordination in mind, and help companies securely and efficiently share critical business information across the supply chain. Procurement platforms help with bidding and RFQs, vendor management tools simplify replenishment and supplier relations, and e-commerce platforms provide an easier and more effective way to engage and do business with customers. The first two examples of e-business technologies share information ‘up’ the supply chain with suppliers, while the third communicates ‘down’ the supply chain with customers.

Even if you just went on instinct, you’d probably agree that transferring relevant information throughout the entire supply chain would be more efficient than operating your external upstream, internal, and external downstream information systems separately. For example, real-time information on customer transactions (downstream) could be sent directly to suppliers (upstream), which would provide much more accurate demand forecasting and mitigate the bullwhip effect. That sounds much easier than receiving a stand-alone report on online sales, manually calculating changes in demand, and then firing off an email to your supplier. With more accurate information on consumer demand, businesses can decrease their inventory levels without any adverse effects, and can also respond to unforeseen spikes in demand with greater agility. These improvements in business processes are only possible when both e-commerce and partner communication platforms are integrated with internal ERP systems.

Thankfully, you don’t have to rely on instinct. According to recent research (Hsu, 2013), the value created by integrating ERP and e-business technologies is real, and is significantly greater than the value of operating both platforms separately. The study involved 150 firms that use ERP platforms, and analyzed survey responses as well as objective accounting data to determine changes in cost efficiency, differentiation, and the intangible benefits of ERP, e-business technologies, and their integration. Hsu and other researchers (Srinivasan and Dey, 2014) have found ERP and e-business technologies to exhibit a high degree of complementarity. Not only were the benefits of integration found to be greater than the benefits resulting from the mere co-occurrence of these technologies, but the benefits of integration were also longer-lasting. While ERP platforms also yield greatest gains between years 2 to 5 since deployment, platform integration produces steady returns over a much longer period.

Now that we have evidence that integration makes a real difference, we can move on to address the question posed earlier: is integration worth it? In other words, do the returns justify the investment? Simply put, the answer is “yes”. With enterprise application integration (EAI), there isn’t any need to replace two separate platforms with a single, comprehensive (and often prohibitively expensive) replacement. Instead, EAI service providers securely connect the information systems that you already have in place to form a much more affordable unified system… one that your employees are already familiar with. Taken a step further, pre-built solutions exist that are designed to connect specific pairs of digital platforms. These platform connectors deploy even more quickly, cost less than custom EAI services, and make ERP-to-e-commerce integration a highly attractive path to achieving serious competitive advantage.

Researchers have, however, raised a caveat. While the benefits of integration are real, it isn’t enough to simply get different software packages talking to each other. Organizations that secure the greatest competitive advantage from integration are the ones that emphasize operational coordination of business functions across the supply chain. Software integration is necessary for this to occur, but is not sufficient on its own. To maximize ROI from platform integration, businesses must pay close attention to improving their inter-organizational processes alongside enhancements to their technology infrastructure. Whereas any organization can purchase and deploy the same ERP and e-commerce software, the competitive advantage gained from process optimization is firm-specific, and therefore harder to replicate. An experienced technology implementation partner is a major asset in this regard.

Please contact Visionet Systems for more information on how our CommerceLink integration solutioncan help you achieve the benefits of a unified supply chain.

References

HSU, P. F. (2013). Integrating ERP and e-business: Resource complementarity in business value creation. Decision support systems, 56, 334-347.

Srinivasan, M., & Dey, A. (2014). Linking ERP and e-Business to a Framework of an Integrated e-Supply Chain. In Handbook of Strategic e-Business Management (pp. 281-305). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

The Hidden Benefits of Electronic Invoicing

For virtually any business, invoicing is a fact of life. The advantages of quick, cost-effective invoicing practices can spell the difference between turning a profit and merely breaking even. The advantages of electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) are well-known, including lower average processing cost per invoice, shorter invoice processing cycle time, and improved processing accuracy. However, there are several less obvious reasons why switching to an invoice management system can produce significant rewards.
It’s clear that e-invoicing leads to improved margins, since it eliminates the need stationery and shipping costs, reduces manual labor, and helps fewer workers process more invoices in a day. These savings from process efficiency are dwarfed by the amount most businesses capture in the form of soft savings. For every $1,000 that a business saves from processing efficiency, they can look forward to saving an additional $2,000 in early payment discounts, $3,000 in working capital, and prevent a whopping $4,000 in contract leakage. In other words, the overall monetary benefit of using invoice management solutions is ten times what you might expect.
Of course, not all benefits are measured directly in dollars. Businesses that adopt e-invoicing also reduce the risk of noncompliance, whether that takes the form of late payments, incorrectly calculating taxes, line item mismatches, or using the wrong accounting codes. Invoice automation solutions bring these mistakes down from 30 percent to under 2 percent.
Finally, another underreported advantage of using an invoice processing system arises from operating entirely in the digital realm. When an organization’s invoicing is performed digitally, it becomes extremely easy to compile detailed analytics on each line item in each invoice. This simplifies cash flow forecasting and improves visibility of your expenditures. You can also improve accountability and information security, since digital systems are much easier for organizations to monitor and audit.
So if you’re thinking about moving your business over to a vendor invoice management system, you can rest assured that these subtle advantages, combined with more obvious cost savings, offer tremendous return on investment. To learn more about our invoice management solution, please contact Visionet Systems.

AtClose extends platform with e-closing capabilities

October 23, 2017, Denver, CO – Visionet Systems, Inc. announces the addition of e-closing capabilities to its AtClose Title, Settlement and Appraisal platform at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Annual Convention & Expo 2017 being held in Denver, CO. The new e-closing functionality is being included in AtClose as a seamless, secure, and fully compliant module.

E-signatures simplify the closing process for lenders, settlement providers, and borrowers. Executed documents flow back into AtClose effortlessly, reducing the need for paper documents and giving parties additional time to review each loan package. AtClose is highly configurable, allowing agents to selectively enable e-closing for specific lenders or geographic areas to meet local recording requirements and individual lender or investor needs. AtClose gives settlement agents complete control over which documents will be pushed for e-signatures, and when they should be made available to the respective individual(s).

“The biggest advantages that AtClose offers settlement agents are a significant reduction in notary fees and the elimination of post-closing errors,” explained Arshad Masood, CEO, Visionet Systems, Inc. “Our sophisticated platform saves them the time and trouble involved in re-doing the signing process. With the CFPB and other regulatory bodies encouraging e-closing, it is time for Title & Settlement firms to begin closing all loans electronically."

AtClose is a cloud-based vendor and workflow management solution that provides a comprehensive and intuitive platform for the Appraisal, Title & Settlement industry. AtClose provides advanced security and high availability by leveraging core AWS cloud services, and improves operational efficiency by offering fully customizable workflows and numerous vendor integrations. Please visit www.atclose.com to learn more.

About Visionet Systems Inc.

Visionet Systems, Inc. is a full-service technology consulting and business process outsourcing company that delivers software solutions, services, and technology-led BPO products built on a best-of-breed philosophy to help its customers increase business agility, drive down costs, and reduce risk. With deep ties to the mortgage industry, Visionet has spent the last decade working with the top mortgage companies in the country, building various mortgage industry-specific products and solutions.  In addition to AtClose, Visionet products include production lead management, product recommendation engines, channel and broker profitability, post-close compliance automation, loan boarding and special loan setup, escrow float and shortage management, prepayment risk modeling, default risk analysis, loss estimation and tracking, and REO.

Can Robotic Process Automation (RPA) really help your organization? Here is a perfect example of how

Can Robotic Process Automation (RPA) really help your organization? Yes! Here’s a current, real-world example. Just this week, I was in a conversation with an executive who had an immediate need to identify the square footage of a parcel of land to help with pricing and vendor assignment.

This individual stated they had 2 immediate solutions available to them: 

1. Option 1 - go back to their client and request the lot size. While this reduced the workload on the organization, it simply made the overall process more complex and would impact service level agreements.  Not to mention, the cost of the client communications would eat further into margins.
2. Option 2 - obtain the information themselves from a public source. While this eliminated the back and forth with the client, it increased the amount of time it took them to process an order, which also reduced their profitability.  

At a volume of 5-10 orders a day and 2 minutes per transaction, this conversation is immaterial. It would take too long to recoup the investment in an automated solution given the fraction of an FTE you would need. However, at 500+ orders a day, that same 2 minute transaction could require multiple FTEs to meet daily demand, adding significant stress to the bottom line.

A system-to-system integration with the client’s system of record or the public source would provide a seamless way of obtaining the information in a high-volume environment. The drawback here is that it requires the organization to have access to the application code, or some type of middleware technology in place, to facilitate the integration. During our conversation, the executive commented he could look at building an integration to solve the problem, but with his current IT backlog this would be a 6+ month duration, and he needed to address this issue today, without adding FTE’s.

While RPA is the latest buzzword in the industry, most organizations are using it primarily for back office processes. This scenario is a perfect example of where RPA can provide lift to an organization quickly. Within hours, an RPA Bot was created that demonstrated the ability to obtain this information without waiting months or adding additional resources.

There are times when building a complete integration into an external system is required. But with the maturation of RPA technology, businesses can now solve problems more quickly and bring value to their clients and their organization sooner, without incurring such a significant investment in time and money. This was a perfect example of where an RPA Bot could be deployed that improves customer experience, reduces the burden on operations and solves a problem in days, not months. 

Over the next 12-24 months, we will begin to see a paradigm shift - from building direct integrations between systems, to simply deploying Bots for quick, efficient and less costly solutions. We will also see these Bots move from simply automating mundane back office processes to really improving the customer’s experience by impacting up-front, value added work steams. The applications for RPA are virtually endless - and its low investment, quick deployment and minimal risk mean all organizations can realize the benefits.

For more details regarding our services please visit: https://www.visionetsystems.com/services/robotic-process-automation

Staying Competitive in an Ever-Changing Market

While chatting with a friend who works at one of the top tech companies in the US, I discovered that he has not received a raise in the last 6 years despite several promotions and relocations. As the discussion unfolded, I realized that the mass exodus of talent from midsize companies to the better-known brands isn’t due to the prospect of jumping salary brackets but rather the work culture that is associated with the brand name.

Top tech companies are fortunate enough to be able to draw from an endless pool of resources, all clambering over each other to be the next chosen one. Mid-size organizations continue to lose their brightest talent to the allure of working for the big names. It is time for midsize companies to step in to the ring and don fighting gloves to retain their talent. While midsize companies can’t offer the prestige associated with the bigger names, with each swing they must remember the bottom line - people work for people not names. The key to staying competitive then lies in ensuring that that resources remain engaged.

Mid-size organizations, that have previously considered work culture to be a privilege, need to invest in change. This change must come at the top management in the form of servant leadership. Rather than dictating each step, management is there to encourage and guide strategic thinking. Top management must today invest in a culture that empowers its employees and allows them to function autonomously. Independent thinking carves the path for employees taking ownership of their projects. When each successful execution is incentivized, resources will more readily align career paths with targets that contribute to the overall growth of the company. “Monkey see, monkey do” is not only applicable in the toddler classroom but is equally applicable to adults. Recognizing the hard work of an employee at a staff meeting goes a long way towards others seeking similar approval. Neither a pat on the back nor verbal praise will offset the bottom line, however small a company.

Cultivating a work environment that encourages a healthy lifestyle shows its employees that management is not just concerned with profitability but is also focused on the wellbeing of its employees. Providing subsidized access to fitness, arranging incentives for attendance, organizing team building activities that foster healthy competition, all contribute to a more holistic approach to employee satisfaction. In 2016 more than half the US workforce only consumed up to 54% of their permitted paid time off. When the message from the top management is encouraging employees to utilize their allocated paid vacation and have a healthy work life balance, staff will no longer feel threatened or worried that they will lose out if they are not available 24-7.

A healthy employee is a happy employee. A healthy body leads to a healthy mind. A healthy mind will thrive under servant leaders that provide their employees opportunities for self-discovery and allow resources to set common growth goals and objectives with those of the organization.

Source: https://www.visionetsystems.com/blog/staying-competitive-ever-changing-market

Building a digital partner ecosystem beyond traditional B2B/EDI communication

Perception of traditional B2B (business-to-business) electronic communication is all about batch oriented, point to point transactional document exchange with the business partners through EDI VAN or directly managed file transfers.  This involves exchanging transactional information using various industry standard EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) formats configured for each partner along with partner/document specific logic customization for line of business applications. In typical supply chain or retail context, these partners are vendors, customers, services providers like 3PL (Third Party Logistics Providers) and b2C ecommerce websites.

Even though EDI based implementation model has matured over decades of commercial use, the traditional approach lacks many inherent capabilities required for modern digital evolution. The chart below highlights some of the fundamental features and gaps between the traditional models versus the capabilities required to support the modern digital paradigm:

Traditional capability model for B2B communication	B2B capabilities required for modern Digital Evolution
Batch Oriented (EDI or proprietary managed file transfer)	Near real time interchange (via API’s) where partners can exchange transactions, status and 360 degree visibility with the process context: For example, ·         Rapid fulfillment of B2C Ecommerce order fulfilment ·         Near real time inventory information exchange for automation based accurate decision making
Point to Point Architecture - Single document exchange centric architecture	Business process driven architecture where single B2B system manages all process touch points through the value chain
Tight coupling with internal systems where business logic is spread across (EDI and internal LOB applications) for inbound and outbound communication. Implication -> Replacing internal systems typically requires throwing away entire EDI system which is tedious, expensive and risk prone..	Open architecture with self-contained, scalable services as strategic self-contained systems, independent of any specific LOB internal application.
Scalability limited by the nature of the EDI application.	Linearly scalable services with inherent architectural capability to driven by demand.
Reliability and degree of recoverability varies from application to application.	Well defined system with the ability to recovery features and proactive notifications for manual guaranteed recovery

Given the prevalence of EDI based integration for decades, this form of communication will continue in near future. However, it is imperative for both business and IT leaders to assess how their current B2B communication ability will affect their organizations through the journey of industry wide transformation. It is also critical for businesses to start viewing B2B communication platforms as strategic self-contained, standalone asset and not just a bolt on to their internal business application(s). The modern architecture for deploying a strategic B2B communication capability needs to incorporate the following:

• Complements existing batch-based electronic data interchange (EDI) with API enabled real-time B2B collaboration
• Centralized B2B partner onboarding and management
• Common workflow for all type of communication
• Decoupled solution with minimal dependency on internal applications (in terms of code logic)
• Single point of management for all B2B communication by the operational staff  

A modern B2B communication architecture to support digital growth

A well-guided investment in B2B integration will reduce organizational risk, improve processes and increase the partnership advantage through longer-lasting relationships. When done wrong, B2B integration becomes a limiting factor, which will burden staff, introduce inefficiencies and increase compliance risks leading to substantial loss of revenue and opportunities.

 Visionet Systems offers PartnerLink, an innovative, process-centric B2B integration solution that streamlines setup, onboarding, operational management of all forms of B2B interchange including EDI, real time API’s and file based/proprietary integrations. It encapsulates all partner setups, document exchange configurations, API support, and business rules into a single robust solution. It leverages Microsoft’s cutting-edge Azure cloud and server technology to handle very large transaction volume and provides native integration adapter for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations (Azure Cloud based ERP platform). PartnerLink solution is a long-term strategic asset for the organizations for B2B interchange that is no longer dependent on any specific source or target ERP system. 

Source: https://www.visionetsystems.com/blog/building-digital-partner-ecosystem-beyond-traditional-b2b-edi-communication