Do you spend an inordinate amount of time ensuring vendor compliance? Are you taking advantage of discounts to improve working capital? Is paperless just a buzzword?
There has been much discussion on the benefits of electronic invoicing and the business impact it has for customers; including improved cash flow, reduced costs, and improved supplier relationships. However, according to Ardent Partners, only 25.7% of invoices from suppliers are submitted electronically. A supplier portal can increase this percentage dramatically. However, statistics demonstrate that only about 50% of organizations that are deemed "best-in-class" are using a supplier portal, and of the rest of the organizations, only 20% utilize supplier portals. Let's drill into three key improvement areas that you gain by implementing and providing a portal that suppliers love!
You will benefit most if onboarding your suppliers is a touchless process. Required is a mechanism for your suppliers to create and edit their master data, a view into your ERP system (PO, invoice and payment status), as well as eliminating the need for mailing invoices. If met in a seamless and user-friendly way, then adoption of your portal is all but guaranteed. Thereby reducing calls into the AP department, concerns over meeting complex global tax regulations, and overall supplier satisfaction.
Often customers fail to take full advantage of early-pay discounts offered by their suppliers. Resulting in millions of dollars per year in lost savings. A portal can provide the standardization and discount options presented to suppliers that map to the organizations working capital objectives. This level of flexibility and collaboration is sure to win over your suppliers and your finance department alike. Accomplishing a win-win scenario.
Continuing to utilize paper for dispute processing and invoices is a recipe for lost time, reduced productivity, and increased complexity. Moving these processes to portal-based solutions can reduce paper by over 80% in most finance departments. Providing the ability through a portal to answer dispute related questions, submit required documentation electronically all with immediate access to status and steps to resolve, reduce not only paper but also improves relationships. Additionally, e-invoicing through the portal ensures faster validation of invoices, ability to match to PO's, and immediate access to invoice and payment status, without paper! Reducing your carbon footprint is something that will provide us all benefit.
Customers are finding that they can transform their finance departments by merely putting the power into their supplier's hands and providing a more collaborative approach to ensuring invoices are handled more efficiently and with fewer errors.
Effective supplier adoption is a continuous journey that begins with an understanding of your supplier needs, continues with solutions for enabling a delightful user experience at no cost to them, and ends with happy suppliers and finance departments that are more performant and strategic.
For more information on using technology for more effective supplier onboarding and automation, read our ebook now. If you like what you read and need help putting these solutions in place, contact Direct Commerce at 415-288-9700 or request additional information.