Automation is the Key to Clean, Current Vendor Data | Direct Commerce

By The Direct Commerce Team

High-quality vendor master data is the key to taking your shared services performance to the next level—it allows your company to capture the full benefits of e-Invoicing solutions while lowering the risk of fraud. With productive vendor master data, companies can also better analyze their performance to leverage spend and reduce costs.

Rely on P2P automation to keep your vendor master data up-to-date.

Despite the clear benefits of having high-quality vendor master data, many companies still rely on manual processes to manage this complex data. The costs of using a manual process can be detrimental because low quality or inaccurate data is more susceptible to fraud. The main problem faced by most companies when striving to ensure the quality of their vendor master data is the issue of having to continuously monitor data changes over time to maintain the accuracy and completeness of the data.

By focusing on removing the manual parts of the implementation processes, data is more likely to be accurate. Automation tools integrate and manage the data to do the heavy-lifting for you so your team can focus on working more efficiently. With automated checks and references, the initial data input is more complete and any necessary changes or updates over time are made automatically. The potential for human error is nearly eliminated.

Automation tools also help to validate data and reduce risk.

Research has shown that many of the most common fraud schemes can be prevented by automatically validating data. By frequently validating vendor master data and monitoring the accuracy of the data regularly, your company can combat these fraud schemes and reduce risk significantly. Interest in self-service supplier portals is on the rise. For many companies, this can be an easy-to- implement and effective strategy to ensure completeness, validate data and limit duplication.

By allowing suppliers to access data on their own, self-service supplier portals provide a faster and easier way to keep data current and accurate over time.

The emphasis on high-quality data in vendor masters is increasing as the threat of fraud grows. Automated solutions that validate data continuously and allow suppliers access to the data through a self-service portal take the burden of monitoring data off of your company, so you can work more efficiently.