Pandemic-proofing your relationships with vendors and customers

By Rithvik Reddy

Amidst widespread unrest and a pandemic, businesses go into survival mode. When business owners cut costs and ship orders as fast as they still can, they often think about how they can reduce their cost of goods sold, streamline labor, and connect with customers more closely. Meanwhile, the expensive and time consuming processes that shadow the dealings between businesses are overlooked as a hindrance.

These dealings are the countless invoices and shipping labels that are processed every day by businesses across the country, and globe. An average of 40% of firms of all sizes indicated that most of their vendors submitted paper invoices, while this applies to about 62% of small-mid sized enterprises (ARTSYL). More than 50% of these companies report these manual and paper-based processes to be a pain point in their business (AIIM).

Many businesses have not yet adopted this technology primarily due to lack of awareness, fear of change, and perceived upfront costs. With that being said, why are so many CFOs and business owners impressed when they DO discover Accounts Payable (AP) automation?

In this case, the numbers speak for themselves. In a nutshell, automation can cut costs by 81% and improve efficiency by 73% (Business Insider). To address cost and efficiency, AP automation can save $16+ per invoice, depending on the size of your company (Vanguard Systems) and professionals who automate invoice capture and payments save an average of 1 hour every day (MineralTree). And the long term costs of all this? AP automation software has been found to pay for itself within 6–18 months on average (Vanguard Systems).

​The savings may seem too good to be true, but the hidden costs and time spent sending, processing, and organizing paper invoices have blinded executives to alternatives. Ditching paper invoices and manual entry eliminates the need for a redundant bookkeeper and consolidates accurate records in a single, secure location for easy retrieval. With numerous social and economic forces acting against companies, there has not been a better time to integrate automation into your business.