APOC

Accounts Payable with Future Ready Procure-to-Pay Solution

Accounts payable (AP) and procure-to-pay (p2p) processes are at the core of any business's finance and accounting, and supply chain management operations. They also play a significant role in ensuring business success by managing the flow of materials and services to the business and customers. As a result, the p2p process in accounts payable is complex, touching many parts of your business, and is often prone to inefficiencies and bottlenecks that can influence your business outcomes. Future-ready p2p solutions, however, leverage automation and next-gen technology solutions to identify and resolve these issues so you can make your AP processes faster, more accurate and more efficient, which, in turn, can help you improve your bottom line.

Factors driving accounts payable automation

Automating the p2p accounts payable processes is an integral step of the digital transformation journey of any business as it is an integral function for every company. And since automation has answered many common p2p challenges, the accounts payable automation market is growing at a CAGR of 10%, from $2.3 billion in 2021 to $2.6 billion in 2022 and reaching $6.7 billion by 2032.

Some of the most common reasons driving demand for accounts payable p2p automation include:

• Increasing prevalence of digital payments.
• Increasing need for accessible and faster AP and p2p processes.
• Increasing need to reduce paper invoices in the face of growing business.
• Increasing volume of AP and p2p transactions.
• Increase the necessity of fraud detection and prevention mechanisms.

And other factors contributing to the growing popularity of AP automation and future-ready p2p solutions include:

• Remote and hybrid working environments.
• Need for better visibility and transparency in AP processes.
• Increasing expectations of real-time AP insights to drive strategic decisions.
• Expectations for error-free and efficient p2p processes in accounts payable.

Automating accounts p2p process

If you are investing in automating your accounts payable procure-to-pay process, some future-ready solutions you can get access to include:

• Purchase request management
• Vendor on-boarding management
• Purchase order creation
• Invoice management
• Vendor portal management
• Contract lifecycle management
• Payment processing
• Master data management

The focus of each of these solutions is on eliminating manual processing, reducing processing times, promoting visibility and transparency, facilitating coordination and improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the accounts payable p2p processes. Additionally, easy accessibility, centralised data management, insight-based decision support and easy integration with your existing systems allow you to leverage the next-gen technologies to transform your AP and p2p processes to make them more efficient, cost-effective, error-free and future-ready.

Benefits of efficient p2p process in accounts payable

An efficient p2p process has many benefits including:

• Better supplier relationships are fostered through on-time payments and transparent accounts payable p2p processes.
• Full visibility of cash flow and financial commitments through internal controls, visibility and insights across the end-to-end p2p cycle.
• Fraud prevention via strict invoice matching, multiple review points and stringent screening protocols.
• Increased efficiency with centralised procurement, supply chain and accounts payable processes to avoid information silos or human errors.
• Cost saving through faster invoice processing to save time, better spend management and accurate demand forecast.
• Streamlined accounts payable and procure-to-pay processes for faster processing and quick response to supply chain disruptions.
• Predictive modelling can help you identify potential opportunities and pressure points for more efficient risk management and mitigation.

And investing in future-ready procure-to-pay solutions gives you further benefits of automation that can help you:

• Track KPIs to give you insights into your team’s performance and help you identify your weak points, and fine-tune your operations for maximum efficiency.
• Promote insight-driven decisions with the help of process mining and data analytics.
• Facilitate root-cause analysis to dig deeper into consistent problems and identify inefficiencies within your AP and procure-to-pay processes.
• Support process optimisation by allowing you insights into potential challenges and benefits of process change across the end-to-end p2p cycle with the help of process simulations while recommending the best course of action and safeguards against potential challenges.

And you can leverage the next-gen technologies and future-ready p2p solutions to create cost savings and increase business value with the help of insight-driven strategic decisions across your p2p process lifecycle in accounts payable.

For organisations on the digital transformation journey, agility is key in responding to a rapidly changing technology and business landscape. Now more than ever, it is crucial to deliver and exceed on organisational expectations with a robust digital mindset backed by innovation. Enabling businesses to sense, learn, respond, and evolve like a living organism, will be imperative for business excellence going forward. A comprehensive, yet modular suite of services is doing exactly that. Equipping organisations with intuitive decision-making automatically at scale, actionable insights based on real-time solutions, anytime/anywhere experience, and in-depth data visibility across functions leading to hyper-productivity, Live Enterprise is building connected organisations that are innovating collaboratively for the future.

How can Infosys BPM help?

Infosys BPM Accounts Payable on Cloud (APOC) is a SaaS platform that can help you leverage the next-gen technologies to digitally transform your accounts payable and procure-to-pay processes. With deep domain expertise, APOC offers a single layer of engagement for all your invoice processing needs, ensuring enhanced stakeholder experience via improved efficiency, effectiveness and real-time insights. With Infosys BPM APOC offerings like end-to-end AP workflow, self-service supplier portal and AP cockpit, you can save up to 90% of the time, free up your resources, achieve faster ROI and OCR and turn your invoice processing into a profit centre.