Let me tell you a dirty little secret of Procure to Pay: solution providers aren't telling you everything about their AP Automation capabilities.
So you're going to implement a procure-to-pay system to automate the processing of all your invoices, right
You've done your homework and put together a detailed calculation of how much money AP automation will save your company. You're going to eliminate paper processing, drastically reduce invoice cycle times, quadruple the number of invoices processed per AP clerk, achieve 90%+ touchless invoice processing, get rid of late payment fees, and take advantage of discount opportunities. AP automation is going to make you a hero!
Well, guess what? Most likely, you are going to miss the mark big time! Take a much closer look at those procure-to-pay systems for AP automation. Can they really automate all of your invoices? Sure, the system can probably handle the indirect PO-backed invoices; maybe it can handle some of your less complex non-PO invoices. But here's the dirty little secret: those procure-to-pay providers say they can automate all your invoices, but the reality is most of them can't even come close! What about all the direct POs? Can the procure-to-pay system import those POs and match against them? And, can the system handle all your complex routing of Non-PO invoices without requiring manual intervention... what about services invoices...facilities invoices...utilities invoices?
If you really want to get to 100% AP automation, you better make sure you get into the weeds of evaluating the invoice processing capabilities of your procure-to-pay provider, because most of them are harboring a dirty little secret. There's only a couple full procure-to-pay systems that offer real AP automation and can truly handle 100% of your invoices. Read more about what AP automation capabilities to look for in a procure-to-pay solution in PayStream Advisor's 2017 Global AP Automation report.