Author: James Adie, Vice President EMEA Sales at Ephesoft
When the government announced a country-wide lockdown on March 23, companies were forced to quickly adapt their business processes to enable employees to work from the safety of their own home. This created extensive challenges, especially because it was unknown whether staff could perform all their daily tasks remotely. Did they have hardware devices and software apps required to operate effectively? Could they be productive?
Finance teams and office managers, who are required to handle sensitive and mission-critical processes, faced their own set of challenges. One of these was the need to capture invoices remotely.
While invoice processing is not the most glamorous function in a business, it is one of the most critical. Delays in payment can result in lost discounts and any lapse in scrutiny can result in costly errors. Moreover, invoices can arrive in many formats – paper, email, web transfer – so processing them manually takes time.
When three-quarters of the UK’s workforce is in no hurry to get back to the office, and the future of work is expected to become a hybrid of in-person and remote working, these new circumstances will be a challenge that’s not going away any time soon. So how can companies ensure that the accounts payable team can continue to run smoothly when teams are operating remotely?
Work with established habits and existing tools
Part of the solution lies in a device that stays next to most of us almost every second of the day – the smartphone. It may be a world of social media and cute cat videos, but with the right apps, it can also be a powerful business tool.
According to Crowd Research, 84 per cent of employees now use their personal mobile devices to manage emails, appointments and contacts in a professional context – and around half of all employees also access corporate intranet services via smartphones or tablets. Business consulting firm Frost & Sullivan has found that productivity increases by 34 per cent when employees save 58 minutes a day by using their mobile devices to perform everyday work tasks.
When there is such a willingness to use smartphones and tablets in a work context, it makes sense to take advantage of their ubiquity to simplify invoice processes. The deployment of mobile-capable capture solutions on these devices will mean all relevant data can be transferred immediately to the company’s internal invoice system.
The adoption of this approach will also mean the person responsible for dealing with invoices can efficiently capture invoice information with ease in the office, at home or wherever the paperwork might be.
Regardless of the format of the information or how it reaches the organisation, this approach can be used for all types of input – whether it is order confirmations in purchasing, ID cards and applications in HR or collection slips and receipts in production.
Gaining a competitive advantage
Mobile invoice capture solutions offer secure https connections to ensure the necessary data protection standards are met. But, this is just the beginning of the business benefits this tool offers.
Features such as automatic cropping of document margins, and the intelligent alignment of the respective page, create enhanced usability. This will help ensure they are gladly accepted and used by employees – and no disruptive change management programme is required. The most innovative mobile capture tools can also integrate into your ERP or accounting platform, eliminating tedious data entry into multiple systems.
The digitisation of the process will also decrease the potential for human error and reduce the costly impact this can have. Time-sensitive information will then reach the company’s information system directly and without delay, improving the productivity of the teams relying on that data.
When less paper pushing is required, teams are able to use their time more effectively, on tasks that can add value to the business – and, thus, help provide the business with a competitive advantage.
With remote working here to stay, companies will increasingly need to deploy flexible tools, such as mobile invoice capture. It will be solutions like this that keep employees productive and help them to adapt quickly and easily to the new normal. How does your AP team compare?
