In 1999, the head of a major electronic-invoicing task force predicted that 95 percent of the Fortune 500’s U.S. paper invoices would be transformed into electronic invoices by 2002. Over 10 years later, that prediction has not been fulfilled.Although there have been significant technological breakthroughs that can help accounts payable dramatically reduce costs and improve cycle times, most AP organizations have been slow to adopt them. Invoice automation is one example.
An annual survey of technology adoption in AP conducted by RECAP Inc. for 10 years from 1998 through 2007 found that adoption of technology takes significantly longer than it should. In follow-up discussions with selected survey participants, it was discovered that many firms repeatedly put off their key automation initiatives despite significant pressures to reduce costs and reduce AP cycle time, the time from receipt of an invoice to payment.
Typically 80 percent of the work done in accounts payable is associated with invoice processing. Over 99.9 percent of all invoices are prepared on computers, yet the vast majority of them are processed by manually keying information from a paper invoice document into an automated system to
process and pay.
read more
More...