by
July 21, 2022
It is not possible for any company in the manufacturing sector to run efficiently without accounts payable. Yet with the changing times, the need for accounts payable are also changing. The department has to handle huge piles of paperwork that are manually processed leaving AP departments out of intellectual tasks for revenue mitigation. Although with AP automation, a lot of time spent on manual processing can be saved, thereby, today we’ll be exploring the possibilities of AP automation via VisionERA Intelligent Document Processing.
Accounts payable (AP) is a necessary part of a manufacturing company. It lubricates the flow of inventory and makes sure the payments are transferred to the supplier in a timely manner.
For a very long time these AP processes were handled within the manufacturing infrastructure either manually or by using an OCR. Yet, with the rising numbers of invoices to process, multiple authorization, and unstructured invoice templates from various suppliers, the task of AP processing became cumbersome.
To mitigate the problem, manufacturing companies slowly started to adopt AP automation to ease this part of the process and make it exponentially faster and efficient. To deploy AP automation, manufacturing companies today have multiple options in terms of accounts payable automation software. Although today, we’ll be talking about AP Automation keeping VisionERA IDP in context.
To understand what VisionERA is, it is better to understand IDP first. An IDP or Intelligent Document Processing is a smart document processor that is an amalgamation of multiple proprietary advanced technologies. These technologies are Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, and Computer Vision.
These various technologies make VisionERA a cognitive as well as intuitive platform. VisionERA can extract, verify, and store data from a multitude of unstructured documents. It processes data in bulk and allows for seamless integration with the existing infrastructure with minimal intervention. It also boasts of a variety of compelling features that we’ll unravel later on.
Accounts payable can get pretty complicated in today’s scenario. Yet with the inclusion of IDP in the AP department, the department can enjoy a handful of benefits that are almost immediate post deployment. These are:
Companies may or may not have realized this in the pre-covid era but in today’s scenario capability to work from anywhere is a much bigger boon for running organizations. With SAAS based services such as VisionERA IDP, the employees can take benefit of the platform from anywhere. Work from home is not a liability rather it becomes an asset to save on additional cost of maintaining a physical office. VisionERA IDP is a cloud-based service which means the employees only need authentication to the company's network and a device to access VisionERA for their document processing requirements.
As discussed earlier, VisionERA IDP is essentially a data capture software or platform that makes the process easy and hassle-free. At one end, the employee needs to feed the batches of documents or invoices they wish to extract data from and on the other, they get processed information either in form of sheets or directly to the central database.
The platform also make-up for a compelling verification tool. The employees can either manually verify invoices from another piece of document or directly connect it to the existing database for verification. The data received is going to be 100% verified for the defined fields for verification.
Each and every company has its own unique process and a unique workflow. In essence, it may look the same but there are always subtle nuances that differ from company to company.
Having an automated workflow makes the process much more smoother and efficient. It provides the capability to process thousands and millions of documents without any manual feedback autonomously. Adding to it, VisionERA IDP also offers a custom DIY workflow. Before starting document processing, the platform will ask to create a custom workflow suited to the requirements. This workflow once selected would follow along with multiple batches of documents being processed without any manual intervention. The employees also get the benefit of changing workflows or creating new ones for specific needs.
The most important benefit of using VisionERA IDP is its capability to process with higher accuracy without making any errors. The work of document processing is monotonous and repetitive. It makes up for so many human introduced errors that are later on reflected in the audit trials and reports.
With VisionERA IDP, the data employees receive is 100% accurate and without any induced errors. Also whenever there is an exception, the tool itself raises a flag for manual intervention and replicates the intervention instruction to all the remaining exceptions. The platform makes the creation of reports for audits exponentially faster and provides data that is dependable making the audit way more efficient.
An AP automation platform is not an automation platform if it can not integrate with the existing infrastructure easily. A huge point of introducing AP automation to a manufacturing company is to seamlessly integrate data within the architecture.
VisionERA IDP can seamlessly integrate with multiple types of downstream applications with the help of APIs. Applications such as SAP, ERP, DMS, mails, messages, etc. These types of applications can belong to various different vendors such as ZOHO, Zendesk, Salesforce, etc. The user only needs the API to integrate it within the architecture and it starts operating autonomously.
Traditional method of document processing offered significant challenges. For instance, OCRs required a day or two, maybe more plus additional training hours for the system. Adding to it, manual data processing required an entire department to handle the job.
On the contrary with VisionERA IDP, it's just plug-n-play. The platform can be up and running in less than an hour. Also unlike OCR or multiple other IDP vendors, VisionERA doesn’t require any pre-training samples to get started with. The platform starts its operations with a custom workflow and learns & evolves along the way giving an automation level of upto 99% or more overtime.
Time Saving: VisionERA IDP is exponentially faster than any of the traditional document processing methods.
Cost Saving: It doesn’t require a huge team to handle the operation instead it operates autonomously, thereby saving cost for the company.
Easier Collaboration: The previous operation of document processing that took hours and sometimes days can be dealt with VisionERA in minutes. It makes the collaborative effort within the department much more inclusive because no employee has to wait for another employee to finish off his/her work and then get started with further operations.
Zero Erroneous Data: VisionERA IDP is a digital platform that doesn’t get bored of repetitive and monotonous work. It makes for error-free data because it gives each and every invoice or document the same amount of significance unlike humans.
Higher Transparency: With sorted and segregated data, it is easier to search data rather than searching the entire desktop for files or searching cabinets for folders and files. Adding to it, the cloud-based infrastructure makes it more of a suitable choice considering this factor. Also because of this, it is easier to pick on fraudulent activities using triangulation logics and common sense.
There are multiple types of AP automation softwares out there. Starting from data management softwares to invoice capture softwares that can help aid the process. In fact, there are multiple IDP vendors, thereby making it essential to choose the right kind of vendor as per the requirements.
VisionERA IDP resides in the innovative IDP space. Calling ourselves better in the space would be an overstatement but we’re the latest platform with features that are developed keeping the current requirements in the market. For example, there are still multiple IDP vendors that require a pretraining model to begin with but VisionERA doesn’t.
Adding to it, we are constantly innovating and keeping our clients happy with our bonafide platform. We stand to serve our clients and make sure that they get what they expect. With AP automation via VisionERA, the AP employees would be able to speed up their document processing and spend more time on operations that require their intellect. They’d not only be limited to performing their predefined tasks but can also aid in terms of strategic partners. Having VisionERA onboard would not lubricate the entire operation but would also cut redundant time and cost for better revenue figures.
Want to learn more about the compelling features of VisionERA and what it can do for you? Schedule a demo with us today.