Why ERPs are not Enough to Navigate a Volatile Economy

Finance leaders play a critical role in helping their business navigate the economic downturn.

But many finance leaders are flying blind when it comes to making tough cash and spend decisions.

How can this be?

After all, many businesses have invested in an enterprise resource planning application (ERP).

The thing is that ERP applications do a great job of recording, managing, and protecting enterprise financial data and administering finance user roles. But ERPs were never designed to receive, process and post invoices, much less serve up insights into invoices before they are approved.

This means that no matter how good the ERP, unless the organization integrates it with an automated accounts payable solution, CFOs and front line staff alike will waste time chasing down information, re-keying data, patching together reports, and trying to make sense out of financial information.

IPS can help.

Our cloud-based accounts payable solutions seamlessly integrate with any existing ERP to streamline the invoice approval and posting processes that feed it. Connecting an accounts payable solution with an ERP eliminates the need to handle invoices received as paper or through e-mail, submitted to an online portal or uploaded via File Transfer Protocol. Compared to an ERP application, automated accounts payable solutions also make it easier for organizations to tailor approval workflows to their needs and to facilitate online collaboration to resolve exceptions. And leading accounts payable solutions use the latest technologies for processing invoices. Less paper handling results in lower costs, fewer errors, faster delivery of invoice data to the ERP, and better tracking and control.

These benefits are available to users of any ERP, including those from SAP, Oracle, and Sage.

Importantly, combining an automated accounts payable solution with an ERP provides organizations with 360-degree visibility into invoices, from the moment they are received through the mail or delivered electronically. An ERP application only provides visibility from the time the data on an approved invoice is uploaded, and most ERPs do not provide access to the image of the invoice.

IPS even provides cloud-based digital mailroom solutions that automate the capture, management, and upload of financial documents such as purchase orders, integrated with an existing ERP.

Regardless of how many invoices your organization receives each month, how they arrive, the complexity of your business rules for approving them, an automated accounts payable solution delivers a strong return on investment, while extending the value of your ERP investments.

Want better visibility into your organization’s cash and spend?

Contact us to arrange a no-obligation consultation with one of our experts and learn how to automate your invoice processing lifecycle.