Invoice processing is a core operation of many organizations. It is particularly known to be repetitive, drawn and time-consuming and that makes it an excellent use-case for enterprise automation. But first, let’s understand the challenge itself.
It takes about an hour for a clerk to get through 5 invoices, including the legitimacy checks, reconciling missing or incorrect details and finally processing it. For this instance, I am assuming a medium to large scale organization which receives about 3000 invoices a month to process. It will demand 450+ man-hours to just process them.
The Traditional process
The persisting problem with this traditional approach is the time consumed for the whole process. Another hurdle is caused by the inconsistencies made with all the back and forth. That can be effectively solved with RPA.
Sub-processes such as manual data entry and data validation can be eliminated completely. They can be optimized to be accurate and error-free by using the text processing abilities of RPA. The waiting time that is prevalent in these processes can be completely removed.
Improvements
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Text/Image processing
Invoice processing is a data-entry intensive process. This can be replaced with text or image processing. Automation software comes with robust features that help with extracting data from various files such as PDFs, Text files and even pictures.
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In-Bot validation
Fraud detection and reconciliation is a speciality of robotic process automation. In fact, Data validation powered by bots is fast, efficient, completely error-free and accurate and presently used in a number of processes by itself.
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Mail Listeners
Bots also eliminate the time constraints prevalent in a traditional process. One example is a mail listener, which triggers the process immediately after receiving an invoice through email or a file placed without any delay.
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Enhancements/Exceptions
There are always exception scenarios. When a particular invoice doesn’t fulfil the requirements or when they need to be categorized according to month/department/type etc. The bot can be configured to handle these effectively and even send reports and alerts at regular intervals.
The Automation
The newly revamped process enabled by the bot reduces the processing time by at least 70%. This translates into an accurate and efficient process at reduced cost directly and frees up employees to focus on important tasks. Previous implementations of RPA across many fields have shown instant ROI on the projects of over 50% to 70%. It could be even higher with invoice processing.
RPA has the ability to make an organization agile, fast and efficient at a reduced cost. Drop us a mail at [email protected] or chat with us here on this website to find how RPA fits in your organization.