Like many of you over the past year, your humble blogger has had to do more than a few work-related tasks at home.
“Great! No commute! More time for me!”
Ah, yes. But not so fast there, chief. For more and more of us, it ended up being something more like this:
“Great. No commute. More time…for work.”
And that right there is exactly the problem. When we have more time available for work, we run the risk of not using that time efficiently. It’s a paradox. Just because we do more work at home doesn’t mean we are getting more work done.
But enough about Major League Baseball umpires. Let’s talk about YOUR business and why you should automate your accounts payable tasks.
Automating AP accomplishes three big objectives:
Increased accuracy
Faster processing speed
Better cost-effectiveness
Increased Accuracy
When you’ve got invoices flying all around this big beautiful earth, life is good. Unfortunately, more invoices means more opportunities for mistakes. Most of the time, errors happen because we’re human. When you automate AP, your selected software eliminates all of that.
Faster Processing Speed
Speed is great, but it’s only helpful if you’re accurate at the same time. With AP automation software, you can go digital and rest easy knowing that invoices are processed faster than humans without careless errors. Now THAT’S something worth celebrating.
If you process invoices faster and do it error-free, then it’s only a matter of time before those time savings turn into “cha-ching cha-ching” savings. Think about it. You spend less time sending out notices, the notices are error-free, and you still have your loyal employees ready to handle other tasks that make better use of their talents. Everybody wins. Simply put, when you automate AP, you empower people.
Still not buying it? Check out the clip below from our friends at Oracle. When you’re done being converted, head over to our social media pages and tell us why your life’s about to get better.
Video Transcript:
The Accounts Payable Department in many organizations has to deal with many paper-based invoices coming out of the different channels. An employee has to figure out the type of the invoice, like it’s a purchase order or a non-purchase purchase order. Based on the type of the invoices, they need to redirect for appropriate action taken, as well as if it is a non-purchase order, they have to do a bad coding on top of it.
So this whole process is time-consuming. As well as the data entry at the end, he has to take care of all the process has been completed well or not. And then he can take action and send the data to the APS. In this whole process, sometimes invoices get lost, as well there will be human error at the time of the data entry. And that will add a cost to the company at the end.
As Naresh pointed out, this process has a lot of problems. We are going to tackle this problem using our Integration Cloud Service, which include Process and Insight Analytics. Before going into the demo, let’s introduce who are the persons who are going to participate
in this particular demo.
So we have a buyer, who is Joy. He is the person who bought the item for his personal use.
We have the manager who is going to approve whatever Joy has bought. And we have an Accounts Payable data entry person, who is Renai. She is going to take care of paying the seller. I’m going to play the role of Renai. She is the data entry person into the Accounts Payable Department in the company.
Over here, I am already logged into the Oracle Content and Experience Cloud services, where I will get all the invoices that need to be taken care of. So I can see I have a new invoice that needs to be taken care of. Let me go and see the details about the invoice. So I can see the invoice here, as well as
Content and Experience Cloud services managed to capture all the metadata of the invoice.So you can see it’s been captured here. And I can see status has not been started yet.So I need to start the invoice processing. So just simply–I just need to click here and start the process.
So as I start the process, it will trigger a process cloud on the backend side. And it will send this invoice to the appropriate person, based on the type of the invoice. Like if it’s a purchase order, it will go to the manager to approve.
If it is a non-purchase order, it will go for a buyer accounting. As the invoice that Naresh triggered, since that was the non-purchase order, I got an email which says that the buyer has to complete the coding. I’ll go ahead and click on View online. I can see that this particular invoice has Invoice Type, Invoice Number, and all the details have been filled.
All I have to do is click on this Account Coding dropdown and do the account coding for that particular line item. I can add more line items, if I want.
And if I want to go and check the original invoice, I can click on this icon button over here. And you can see that it pulls up the original invoice. For the time being, I am going to click on Complete, as I have done the account coding. Now once the account coding is done, the manager, who was John, he has to approve this particular invoice. As John, there is a new task in my queue that I need to approve. I’ll go ahead and click on that particular task. I see that the account coding has been completed by the buyer. I can go ahead and click on Approve.
Now, as the manager has approved this particular invoice, it goes back to Renai. The manager has approved the invoice. So now I will get back that invoice with all information that was required. So let me go and see the invoice. I can see the invoice has been processed. Let me click here. OK, I can see the whole details about the invoice. The account coding has been done. I can write the comment, as well as check the history. Let me go and see the inside of the invoice. So this graph shows all the milestones that have been captured for this invoice. You can see it’s been approved by the manager here if you click on that, you will be able to see who has approved this invoice and every detail that is required for data entry to take a decision.
So simply, let me go and Submit the invoice, as I have all the details that are required. Now let’s say if I am the head of the Accounts Payable Department and I want to know what the state of my department is, once I log in as the administrator, I can click on Invoice Processing. And I can see all the invoices that have passed through these different milestones. I can see the Milestone Summary. I can see the Passed Milestones. I can see how many invoices were actually rejected and how many invoices went into error.
Also, if I want to check how much time it takes for processing an invoice, I can check. So here, we can see that for a port invoice, it takes 36 minutes to process. It can be more, depending upon your business process. So this is where I know that where exactly the state is of my Accounts Payable Department. As you’ve seen the demo, with the help of Integration Cloud Services, we can streamline the whole process. So there will be no back and forth email required. As well as for a company, there will be no human error. And there will be no loss of invoices. And managers will be able to take appropriate action based on the analytic dashboard And for a company, it will save a lot of money at the end.
Online payment methods are regularly used around the world. The only difference between how you pay and how your customers pay around the world is the norms of their geographic location. Below are the most popular forms of online payment based upon the region of the world.
Top 10 online payment methods
Platform
Europe
North America
Asia
Australia & New Zealand
Credit/Debit Cards
MasterCard Visa American Express
MasterCard American Express Discover
UnionPay MasterCard Visa
Visa MasterCard American Express
eWallet
PayPal Amazon Pay Google Pay
PayPal Apple Pay Google Pay
WePay Chat AliPay Paytm
PayPal Apple Pay Samsung Pay
Crypto
Bitcoin
Bitcoin
Bitcoin
Bitcoin
Instant Financing
Klarna
Klarna Afterpay
Konbini
zipPay Klarna
There seem to be so many ways we can pay for things and how our businesses can receive transactions. We’ve listed the top 10 online payment methods you should consider now and in the future based on ease of use and coverage around the world. We’ve come a long way in the last 100 years for how we pay for things. Generally, people were able to barter and trade common goods for one another, now we typically focus on paying with the money we have in our bank accounts.
A woman sits with her laptop and financial reports doing her monthly budget.
1. Paypal
PayPal is one of the safest and popular forms of online payment. Its popularity stems from its simplicity and speed. While it is quick and easy to use, they charge a fee depending on the currency being used and the size of the transaction.
2. Amazon Pay
It seems that Amazon has their hands into every scope of business and shopping. Amazon Pay utilizes its users’ accounts to store payment information to ensure a painless payment process. One reason why their platform is so popular is that many third-party websites accept Amazon payment methods. If you have done any shopping online, you probably are familiar with this system.
3. eBay
This company’s payment system allows shoppers to enter their information, process it, and never leave the site. You do not need to have any other accounts to buy or sell items on their marketplace.
4. Google Pay
Once you enter your payment information on your google account, you are able to quickly check out on third-party sites, send or request money from your friends directly, and use your phone to pay in stores. One of the most convenient things about google pay is that it is free to use for you and your customers.
5. Apple Pay
With the mobile telephone market dominated by the iPhone, using Apple Pay seems like a natural choice for many customers to make. Hooking up Apple Pay to your phone allows you to pay with Face ID and without any contact at all. Compared to the typical debit and credit card payments, it allows users to pay in a safer and more secure way.
The top ten online payment solutions include platforms with NFC.
6. Direct Debit Payments
This method of payment takes the money directly out of your account and into the hands of the business. This allows for faster payments and less time for money to be sitting in your accounts payable. Direct Debit Payments also allow you to set up recurring payments to different businesses without ever giving it a second thought. You can read our article about options beyond ACH.
7. Gift Cards
We are all familiar with this form of payment. This card allows you to shop online but is usually restricted to a specific company or retailer. This card cannot be reloaded and is worthless once the amount on the card has been exhausted.
8. Instant Financing for Large Purchases
With instant financing, you no longer have to worry about having enough money in your bank account. This allows purchases to be made in full upfront for the business but allows the customer to create a payment plan for months to come. One of the best parts about this online payment method is that your payment plan is interest-free. The only downside is that you will have to pay a fee upfront to allow you to reap the benefits of later payments.
9.Cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies are on the rise for young investors. With the most popular crypto being BitCoin. When this currency first started, there was a lot of speculation and doubt to whether or not it really had value. Unlike the American Dollar, BitCoin is not backed by any physical assets. Most currencies have a gold backing, but crypto is backed by people believing it has value. Cryptocurrency is very volatile and its worth can change at any given moment so be careful and do your research before you make a decision. To stay current in your business, consider the future of online crypto payments. Even Tesla CEO Elon Musk is accepting BitCoin as a payment method for Tesla products.
The Scope of Online Payments
While there are many options in the fintech world, we understand that the landscape is ever-changing. What is popular today may be replaced by a new option in six months. We will try our best to update this article as the options become available.
Think back to moving out of your parent’s house for the first time. You finally got your own apartment and have taken full responsibility for yourself. The idea of moving out is exciting and you cannot wait to start. You are determined to start a new life on your own and think you can do it all by yourself.
Staff Augmentation Services
Once you get to your newly purchased apartment, you start to shop for furniture and find the perfect couch. You purchase the couch and it finally gets delivered, only to find out that the delivery service only drops it off at the bottom of your apartment complex. Now you are forced to try to drag the couch up three flights of stairs and potentially damage it. This is the time to swallow your pride and call some of your friends to help you move it. This task would have been impossible without them, but that is exactly what friends do for each other. In the workplace, we are often faced with the same types of issues that require an extra hand or two. In order to handle special situations, you should consider augmenting your staff.
The help you need in time of growth
The word augment itself is defined by Webster’s dictionary as, “to make greater, more numerous, larger, or more intense.” The application of staff augmentation has a very wide scope and fits into many scenarios, but not every situation calls for it. Staff augmentation’s categories are typically broken into the time-frame in which they are working, then into the specific needs for each job. Sometimes the gap in your business only needs to be filled because an employee is on vacation or there is a short increase in demand, this would be an example of a business that needs short-term service. Special projects may require an additional set of hands or a skill that you do not have in-house. This would require medium term service because it is still most likely faster than hiring someone to work for you permanently. We can specify these employees further by breaking them into three new groups: commodity, skill-based, and highly-skilled.
As per a Statista report, the global outsourcing market in 2019 before the Coronavirus hit the world was $ 92.5 billion. And after the pandemic, the IT staff augmentation market size grew to $ 132.9 billion.
Commodity
These workers are typically needed because you have a shortage of reliable employees and/or you need more hands to complete the task. The commodity worker typically deals in manual labor, warehouse, or retail work.
Skill-based
These workers need to have more skills than the commodity workers, but usually need to have basic skills to be able to work in an office setting. For example, a basic understanding of excel to handle spreadsheets in a basic skill that can transfer over to most office jobs.
Highly-Skilled
These workers have the highest level of skill and usually have lots of training and would be regarded as professionals. The hiring of these workers is based upon the skills that they have, not their overall usefulness. For example, you may be automating certain aspects of your business that require IT experts.
Companies are using staff augmentation to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Below are the reasons why you should consider augmenting today:
Bridging to Hire
Staff augmentation is a very efficient way to ease the hiring process. While you are currently looking for a qualified candidate for your empty position, you could use staff augmentation to fill the role until you find a permanent new worker. This allows your company to operate at full efficiency without a permanent full-time employee.
Specialization
Sometimes you run into a temporary problem that does not mandate a new full-time position. For example, if you are rebranding your company you can augment an employee that specializes in logo design and development to do it for you instead of using a current employee that may not be as well-versed in that area.
Increased Capacity
There are often seasonal demands that require more labor during certain times of the year compared to others. Augmenting staff during this time is faster than hiring someone for them to only come in during those seasons.
Business Strategy
Building a team to complete a certain task that may be out of your company’s niche can allow you to gain the competitive advantage by increasing time to market or being more agile.
Understanding the Scope of your Request
Staff Augmentation is optimized when utilized in the right scenarios. Identifying your situation will allow you to make the correct staff augmentation choices.
If your projected project time is under 500 hours (generally considered to be a smaller project), you should consider using a small outsourcing firm. Smaller firms typically have a smaller plethora of workers available and generally come at a lower price. Although the work will be less expensive, the work will not be of less quality. These companies work hard to prove themselves and ensure their quality of workers.
Larger projects that are projected to take more time will require larger companies and often cost more. These companies have a larger portfolio of previous work and are concrete with their work and its quality.
Staff Augmentation in Today’s World
There are huge advantages to businesses exercising staff augmentation. For example, old or smaller mom-and-pop shops show great potential from utilizing this service. Hiring outside IT staff to automate a businesses activity can improve profits and reduce hassle. Small shops do not usually have the human capital to perform these acts from within, so using staff augmentation makes their lives much easier. Don’t be intimidated by a system or process you are unfamiliar with. Consider staff augmentation to bring your company to the next level.
In conclusion, just like when you call the right friends to help you get a task done at home or at play. Staff augmentation is the right choice when it comes to a business savvy decision. This specific service is essential to your business during times of growth while saving you both time and money. Let oAppsNet be your partner and first choice when it comes to building out a great team. Contact us and we can help you get started in the right direction.
Have you ever seen a picture of yourself from years ago and wonder, “Where did that shirt go?” You start in the closet and tirelessly check through every hanger and every shelf. You swear the shirt was in there, but it still seems to be lost. You are so determined to find the shirt you head to the basement and start checking old boxes of worn-out clothes. Box after box, you find dozens of shirts, but not THE shirt. Your search seemed to be a failure so you head upstairs in defeat. You wake up the next morning to get ready to go to work, go to the closet, and find the shirt you were looking for was in your closet all along. You can not believe you missed it even though it was right in front of you the entire time.
Person working on laptop computer next to mobile phone on clean desktop without any paper in sight.
These “needle in a haystack” situations are often frustrating and time-consuming. If you had labeled your boxes in the basement or had organized the clothes in your closet, you could have found the shirt right away. We find these situations in the workplace as well as at home. A client calls asking for a specific purchase order from years ago and now you have to rummage through the old files to find exactly what they were asking for. With an automated system, all it takes is a few keystrokes and a search bar. This is the paperless advantage.
A recent Deloitte study showed overall improvement on customer service centric business after going paperless.
Understanding the Paperless Advantage
In the 21st Century, is it crucial for businesses to be up-to-date with technology in order to stay competitive, yet many companies are not utilizing these revolutionary advances. A survey by Ephesoft, Inc. reports that 85 percent of businesses are not fully paperless. While it may take time to be completely paperless, only approximately 50 percent of businesses are even pursuing a paperless workplace. This situation leaves room for your business to take advantage of this new financial technology while your competitors stick to the old methods.
The Advantages:
Time
Just like looking for your lost article of clothing, searching for specific documents can take much longer than it should. Your new automated system can sort and store your documents and allows you to quickly find the files you need. For example, in an automated Accounts Payable system a single clerk can increase productivity by 500 percent. Now you have the speed to cycle through more invoices and the ability to find specific documents quickly. Any automated system that regulates your business, moves your time from stressful number crunching to developing strategy.
Money
An automated Accounts Payable system can decrease the average cost of processing an invoice to only $5. The value of a single employee increases due to their increased efficiency. These are some of the things that may have been overlooked or unknown when surveying your own company. A perfect manual structure for handling accounts payable does not compare to an automated system.
Accuracy
Accounts Payable is a section of your business that tends to drown in paper. Your employees are dealing with stacks of invoices and purchase orders that often lead to confusion and error. With an automated accounts payable system, human processing errors disappear. Once your invoices are in the system, they will be able to detect inconsistencies and errors. Your team will now be able to produce the most accurate financial reports and manufacture the most reliable forecasting so you know exactly how your business has been operating and how it will operate in the future.
Understanding the Meaning of “Automation”
While this world is getting more technologically advanced every day, some of the methods we use are still not as useful if not done properly. For example, sending an invoice through an email as a PDF is an advance of technology, but still requires an employee to manually input the raw data. The government is trying to push for “e-Invoices” for tax and regulation purposes.
Many countries are actually requiring this type of automation for the same reasons. For example, if it is difficult to find a document in your back office, the government will probably have a much harder time than someone who knows the ins and outs of your business. This update in technology is also shortening the time between receiving invoices, and processing. All parties involved are benefiting from this process and, from the look of it, will most likely be a requirement for businesses in the future.
Updating your system to be more efficient is the next step in your business, whether it is by choice or by law. This update in technology is the future and is helping your business stay organized as well as keeping your tax information in order. By not utilizing the paperless advantage, you are putting your business two steps behind your competition. Alleviating the paper burden on your company will let your business reach new heights in the future.
In the process of incorporating new technologies in small and medium-sized enterprises, the Cloud continues to be the most important. It’s also the one that helps the most in improving day-to-day operations of most businesses by facilitating the reduction of time in deployments and operating costs, at the same time that it allows increasing productivity and in many cases, income.
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) app on smartphone screen connecting data with cloud computing, access to HR management, production control, accounting
To the Cloud and Beyond
There are three types of cloud services available and defining the right one for your business requires a close analysis of your companies needs, objectives, and long-term goals. The three types are:
Public
Private
Hybrid (public/hybrid)
As I mentioned before, choosing the right cloud configuration for your business requires that many department heads and or managers be involved in the decision-making process. As an example, the team that needs to make these decisions could consist of but is not limited to the following roles:
CIO (Chief Information Officer)
CTO (Chief Technology Officer)
Apps Manager
Business Manager
While these may be just a few roles, decision-makers, and influencers that may be involved in choosing the right cloud configuration for your business sometimes you may require input from an external source such as on-prem to cloud consultants. A consultant can be a great asset and help your team define the best route to take. The current changing landscape has pushed many SMEs into digital transformation and cloud computing is the fastest-growing sector.
“We’ve seen two years of digital transformation in two months.” —Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella1
In this article, we have outlined for you 7 things that are business viable in the decision-making process for on-premises to cloud migration.
Cost reduction
The Cloud does not need its own hardware since everything is hosted on the provider’s servers. This means savings in the cost of physical equipment and the costs of maintaining your own data center: space, energy, physical security, air conditioning, and maintenance costs are not covered.
Nor is it necessary to pay for specialized equipment to maintain and support the platforms. The Cloud is a service and as such, it includes the previous points.
Flexibility
Companies can outsource routine operations such as data storage and backup, thus focusing on their own business operations. Collaboration in such an environment gives organizations the ability to communicate and share more easily, compared to traditional methods.
If you are working on a project in different locations, these platforms could be used to give internal collaborators, contractors and third parties access to the same files.
Scalability
The use of the Cloud is a great solution because it allows organizations to scale and reduce their computing resources efficiently and quickly according to their needs. If resource demands increase, capacities can easily be upgraded without having to invest in physical infrastructure.
This level of agility can give you a real advantage over competitors. Having high-performance resources available on demand without upfront investments is probably the biggest advantage of the Cloud. Business continuity
Protecting data and systems is an important part of business continuity planning. Whether a natural disaster, power failure, or other crisis occurs, having your data stored in the Cloud ensures that it is backed up and protected in a safe place. Being able to access information quickly allows you to maintain operations, as usual, minimizing any downtime and lost productivity.
Competitive advantage
Not all companies will migrate to the Cloud, at least not yet. However, organizations that adopt these platforms find many benefits that positively impact the business. It’s cost-effective, cost-saving, highly reliable, and provides the scalability, flexibility, agility, high performance, and security businesses need today.
Trust
Cloud providers build redundant architectures as a first principle. In the Cloud, your data is not only stored on a server but on several servers. Depending on the vendor, the data could even be stored on servers in multiple locations in the event of a catastrophic failure in a given server farm. This means that no single hardware failure will affect the business. Also, it means that you can expect excellent reliability in terms of access to your data or services. Most providers even guarantee 99.9% to 99.999% uptime.
Security
Is the Cloud safe? Yes. There are mechanisms to ensure this. An authentication method is especially secure if, in addition to a password, at least one other parameter is required to unlock it, this is also known as Two-Auth and it is the most secure way to authenticate between accounts. It is for this reason that it is recommended for use in areas with a high-security risk. Along with the combination of different keys, there is also the possibility of using one-time passwords or integrating an object into the authentication process, for example, a USB stick.
Ready for your company to transcend? Please leave us a comment below or contact us and let us be your ally when it comes to on-premise to cloud transitions. More info at info@oappsnet.com
