Alyssa Putzer: Metafile |
Intelligent automation has proved beneficial for nearly every industry and every department. When artificial intelligence (AI) technology is integrated with accounts payable (AP) automation and a Microsoft Dynamics enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, companies can lower costs, accelerate processing times and eliminate manual data. As such, intelligent automation has allowed companies to work smarter in a variety of areas, from marketing to AP and beyond.
There are five ways that automation can improve AP departments, including:
1. Lowering invoicing processing costs.
Intelligent automation technology, especially automation that works with Microsoft Dynamics ERP software, eliminates the need for companies to process paper invoices, reducing the costs linked to printing, faxing, scanning, mailing and filing by up to 80 per cent.
2. Reducing exception rates.
Lowering an exception rate by nearly 60 per cent is a huge benefit of implementing intelligent automation as part of an ePayable strategy so that teams can spend less time hunting down information in folders and more time on strategic projects.
3. Eliminating repetitive, redundant tasks.
Intelligent automation removes repetitive tasks so that employees don’t need to intervene physically or electronically. For example, MetaViewer’s Touchless Invoice Processing automates the workflow for purchase order (PO) and non-PO invoices, facilitating two- and three-way matching, as well as reconciliation for PO invoices without the need for any human intervention. For non-PO invoices, AP teams can create unique business automation rules for the system to run each invoice against, automatically routing them to a Microsoft Dynamics ERP if it passes all appropriate business rules, or a human approver if necessary.
4. Enhancing scalability.
MetaViewer customers have integrated their intelligent automation solution into AP, accounts receivable, human resources and legal groupings. When processes and procedures are streamlined, exceptions are reduced and costs are lower, companies have more capital to use towards other digital transformation projects, including scaling their intelligent automation solution and its functionality across the entire enterprise for even more efficiency.
5. Increasing accuracy.
Optical character recognition has the power to automatically convert scanned document images into digital, easy-to-access information and AI can read them, understand what it means and then perform specific actions based on that information. It also learns from its actions to perform even more accurately in the future.
The future of automation technology is here, and the power of workflow automation paired with AI is bringing companies into the next generation of efficiency, accuracy and savings, without the need for human intervention.
Alyssa Putzer is the marketing communications specialist for Metafile Information Systems
This article was originally published in the Autumn 2022 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.