If adopting a new technology and process could potentially yield huge savings, resolve inefficiencies and errors, and create new business opportunities, why would organizations be reluctant to embrace it?

This is the case with e-invoicing. Everything about it is compelling. Companies don’t just save money on printing and postage; they also profit from the benefits of automating the processes for all invoice-related tasks—error reduction, timely payments, improved compliance and controls, better visibility of liabilities, and better understanding and control of expenditures.

So what’s the hold up? Why is there still such a 20th-century reliance on paper and the postal service well into the 21st century? According to DB Research & Billentis, market penetration has grown from 1.7 percent to 7 percent across European countries in the past five years; and in a 2010 survey by Paystream, 27 percent of respondents in the U.S. said they were either using or starting to deploy e-invoicing, up from 24 percent a year earlier.

But these increases still fall far short of universal adoption, despite case studies from Gartner and the Aberdeen Group that indicate companies adopting e-invoicing can reduce accounts payable processing costs and processing time by more than half while also reducing errors.

There was a time when the lack of a single market standard held back adoption of e-invoicing, but technology advances have improved interoperability between systems and there’s widespread broadband access. These factors—and in Europe, strong support from the E.U.—have made e-invoicing implementation much easier.

We believe the real impediment to more widespread adoption concerns issues surrounding implementation—developing a strategy that delivers specific benefits and functionality, alignment with third-party collaborators, alignment with internal business processes, efficient process design, and effective implementation.

E-Invoicing in the Organization

It takes best-in-class companies 3.8 days to process an AP invoice at an average cost of $3.09 per transaction, according to research conducted by Aberdeen. For low performers, processing the same invoice takes 20.8 days and costs $38.77. It turns out that best-in-class organizations are processing on average 35.8 percent of their invoices electronically, compared to only 10.9 percent by the low performers. 

Initially, automation seemed to be the right approach to capture those cost benefits. Document scanning, workflow approval, and document management created process improvements and cost savings—but only to a point.The data still needs to be translated from one system to another, errors and exceptions continue, and there’s an ongoing need for paper to support the process.

Even with scanning, invoices still get lost and the length of approval cycles extends DSO and cash conversion cycles. So, while there were some improvements it wasn’t the panacea that was hoped for.

E-invoicing, on the other hand, creates a shared, streamlined process against a backdrop of the sophisticated use of technology—much of which you probably already have. The gold standard for e-invoicing? Zero touch of traditional documents.

For years, it was necessary to agree on standards, but we now have a variety of new technologies through which invoices and requisitions can be sent from one company to another—even if they maintain different systems—by using agreed-upon conversion protocols. The original method, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a direct peer-to-peer transfer of files with a specific file, record format, and method agreed upon between the supplier and customer. Extensible markup language (XML) is similar to EDI but enables wider flexibility for converting records on the customer side so one supplier format can be used for many customers. 

Then there’s PDF, a low-cost method of simply creating .pdf files of invoices that are attached to emails. There are also einvoice brokerages, which act as a hub between partners and convert received documents into the format preferred by the partner enabling suppliers and customers to outsource the conversion burden.

While data capture from electronic invoices would be easier to accomplish if all the data were in the same structures and file formats, this is no longer essential. Software that utilizes sophisticated fuzzy logic and text recognition can analyze invoice data and automatically create the AP invoice record in the customer’s preferred format.

Who are Your Partners?

E-invoicing is about collaboration. To make this strategy work, you need willing partners and customers along with established processes. The first step is to identify potential partners by contacting your supplier and customer base to establish who is already using e-invoicing, who is considering it, and who is resistant to the concept.You will also want to match this segmentation with your trading volumes in terms of cost and quantity. In the B2C arena, it’s already common for organizations to solicit their household customers for permission to deliver paperless invoices. 

Since not all of your potential partners will want to adopt the process at the same speed, start with a phased roll-out. Similarly, it is unlikely that all partners will eagerly embrace a standard one-size-fits-all methodology.This calls for analyzing, segmenting, and prioritizing the customer/supplier base by size, capability, and readiness to adopt. With this information, you can develop a tailored solution that balances your aspirations with those of your customers and suppliers.

The next step is to select and implement a technology solution to enable an e-invoicing pilot. While the first electronic invoice received or sent may be an achievement in itself, it won’t generate cost savings or efficiencies. These will come once a critical mass of partners has adopted the technology and the processes have been optimized for each segment.

Pursuing the Process

The basic steps to produce an e-invoice on the supplier side are:

1. Prepare and generate the invoice in the Sales or Accounts Receivable system.
2. Extract the invoice details in the Sales or Accounts Receivable system and write these to a file in an agreed format.
3. Send the invoice file to an agreed file location to be collected by the customer or e-broker.

On the customer side, the basic steps to process an einvoice are:

1. Collect the invoice file from the agreed file location and convert the records into the format required for the customer’s Accounts Payable system.
2. Import the invoice details into the Accounts Payable system and perform an automated validation of invoice details.
3. Invoices are now available for further processing (e.g., auto-matching with purchase order and receipts, and workflow approval).

By considering the needs of the supplier and the customer at each stage of the process, many of the traditional steps can be automated while others can be reduced to “control steps,” managed by simple algorithms, exception processing through workflow, or simple manual updates to record differences such as shipping quantity changes.

There’s also one other key element—aligning your employees to the process. Too often there’s a disconnect between the purchasing department’s sourcing people, who decide which suppliers to use and set up the commercial relationships with those suppliers, and the accounts payable team, which then feels the pain. Unless you consider the end-to-end procurement process, the opportunity for improvement will remain elusive.

The Benefits of E-Invoicing

Already companies that have adopted e-invoicing are identifying compelling benefits. Hewlett Packard sought to reduce the touch points, cost, cycle time, error rate, and environmental impact of their procurement function, and they selected vendor OB10 as a solution for the U.S. and Europe. Einvoicing increased data quality, reduced cost, and eliminated scanning for 81 percent of their U.S. invoices. It has since been rolled out to eight E.U. countries, and OB10 is now embedded in the standard terms and conditions for new suppliers, who also benefit from lower costs, reduced errors, and more reliable cycle times.

Similarly, the global engineering and technology corporation Metso adopted e-invoicing to optimize the benefits of their regional Shared Services Centers by introducing a scalable extendable solution that would integrate with multiple ERPs and enable interaction with suppliers, customers, and business partners. They automated the P2P process using Basware’s invoice processing and matching solution, which integrated with their technology. After a pilot, they launched a phased implementation that now processes close to one million invoices each year with key customers and suppliers.

Companies that adopt e-invoicing will experience a spectrum of significant tangible benefits, including:  

• An Increased Volume of Straight Through Processing, Reducing Manual Effort. E-invoicing enables automation of customer invoicing and accounts payable invoice entry. Benefits will also be felt in other departments that would have been affected by the earlier errors and were obliged to contribute to the resolution.
• Reduced Need for Expensive Equipment and Staff. Scanning operations can be downsized if appropriate or repositioned to support alternative processes and functions.
• Error Elimination. The limitations due to the quality of source documents are bypassed.The translation of images to text is eliminated from the process and replaced by direct data transfer.
• Extending Investments in Document Management Assets to Facilitate Enterprise Content Management. Since early adopters of large-scale invoice scanning might be reluctant to write-off investments or see successful projects prematurely axed, scanning and document management can be refocused on other areas such as content management and smaller-scale, higher value processes.
• Focus on Process Management and Resolution of Exceptions. Implementing the process for e-invoicing will shift management focus to process design and exception control. These techniques can be reused in other processes within the organization
• Continuous Refinement of Rules-Based Process Model and Governance/Policy. Interim stabilization periods can provide opportunities to fine-tune the controls and tolerances embedded in the process and predict how these controls and tolerances should be set for subsequent segments.
• Virtualization of AP. Automating Accounts Payable includes the consolidation and codification of all the rules for policy and governance, often in a single system.This is a key enabler for virtualizing the Accounts Payable function. The remaining key functions will focus on exception resolution that can be managed regionally to accommodate language requirements.

There are also some intangible benefits, which include reduced paper consumption, postage, and transportation; a reduced footprint due to reduced scanning accommodation, staffing, and paper storage requirements; and an elimination of waste in the form of reduced non-compliance, checking, and remediation. Of course, you may bump up against some resistance. One of the key concerns that tends to come up is the perceived loss of control. By enabling all invoices to pass through an automated system there are always worries that that no manual checks will increase the risk of fraud.

In reality, manual checks are unlikely to uncover anything significant—but they invariably consume a lot of time and effort. People get distracted and make mistakes. Checking invoices is less useful than regulating transactions at the source by embedding automated compliance controls to reduce maverick spend and errors.

For example, you can limit the resources you typically spend manually checking all invoices and payments by cherry-picking from among suppliers and purchase categories you already know tend to have issues or those that are especially high-value. With e-invoicing you can build in controls that are specific to your business concerns. Externally, some partners may be reluctant to make technology investments or have already made investments in an alternative approach. And, culturally, there may be resistance to change in regions such as the Far East, due to local customs and practice. 

It is inevitable that e-invoicing will challenge and eventually overshadow the use of scanning and automation in Accounts Payable. The benefits are just too compelling for any other scenario. Yes, the implementation of e-invoicing as a collaborative solution is complex and requires careful planning and execution, but today’s technology has made this process far easier to implement and with greater benefits.

Already we’re seeing best-in-class companies—the leaders in this area—cut processing time and increase productivity while saving money. At a time when competition is so keen and so much is at stake, e-invoicing is another differentiating tool that can aid in your organization’s success.