Corporate downsizing is a post-pandemic reality that we cannot deny. In the new normal, many workers will likely come back to the office on a hybrid schedule. They may continue to work from home most of the time and come into the office a few times—probably when there is a specific need, such as an in-person meeting or conference. The ratio of remote work to office attendance is likely to differ for various organizations, and it may even vary across departments within an organization. Nonetheless, with remote work comes another reality—downsizing.
Hybrid workplaces & downsized offices: Our new reality
According to one survey, 96% of employees surveyed wanted some percentage of remote work after the pandemic. 65% wanted to work remotely all of the time, while 31% wanted a hybrid remote work environment—which means they wanted to work remotely for a certain percentage of the time and come into the office for the remaining time. An interesting finding is that some employees also expressed a willingness to take a 10% to 20% pay cut to avail the option of working from home!
The post-COVID workplace will also have to meet new hygiene and social distancing standards. Add to this other cost pressures on the business, and it makes downsizing or moving to less expensive premises an attractive option.
All said and done, the reality we must prepare for is clear—get ready for hybrid workplaces and downsized offices!
But are companies ready to face the challenges of remote work, smaller offices or less physical attendance in the office premises?
Getting ready for the hybrid workplace? Fix accounts first!
Business owners and stakeholders are sensitive about financial activities being affected by non-attendance and any resulting delays.
David Disque (President, Corporate Spending Innovations) said office shutdowns have “created a lot of havoc. It was delaying payments—putting pressure on buyer-supplier relationships.” He said that companies that formerly relied heavily on checks had no choice but to move to digital payments. Up to 40% of companies were still using paper checks and mail to deliver payments. These companies are now looking at automating activities like manual data entry of invoices, printing checks, and other manual tasks which employees cannot perform while working from home.
Are you still into manual AP processing?
AP and invoice processing procedures are the first stop when you want to improve business process efficiency and mitigate the challenges of having fewer employees in the office premises.
Even today, most AP departments process a combination of paper and electronic documents. The paper invoices must be entered manually into the accounts system before being processed for payment and sent for filing. You may say that you have trained and experienced staff to handle paper-based processes for AP. But has the COVID-19 pandemic prompted you to rethink this? What if your AP staff can’t get to the office? With the ongoing pandemic, your AP department may not be functioning on full strength.
Given this scenario, how do you ensure business continuity and give your AP team access to all information they need daily, even if they work remotely?
Some of the challenges in manual AP processing are:
- Slow processing: Paper-based processes lead to sending papers to and fro between departments, resulting in lengthy approval times and slower payments.
- Matching errors: AP teams manually check that invoices match the purchase order and the goods received. Any discrepancies or matching errors here are time-consuming to resolve.
- Lost paper invoices: Papers tend to get lost! When invoices are in paper format, losing an invoice creates friction with suppliers and accounting problems in audits.
- Payment delays: Manual processes are error-prone and may lead to delayed payments, missed payments, leading to penalties and loss of early payment discounts.
If your AP team is still processing a large amount of paper, you need to start digitizing those documents as soon as they are received—and that’s in the corporate digital mailroom.
Scanning invoices & checks and automating the mailroom
The pandemic brought home the value of document scanning and data
capture technologies. These help AP teams to get fast, digital access to documents for processing, starting with incoming physical mail. The concept of a digital mailroom is quite simple—all incoming mail is scanned as soon as it is received in a lockbox. Any paper mail is first digitized and then distributed electronically to the appropriate department or routed into the appropriate downstream process.
Adopting a digital mailroom brings many benefits for AP:
- Reduced need for document storage space: This is a significant benefit for companies that are downsizing or moving to a smaller office space.
- Improved searchability of business documents: Digital documents that reside in a document management system (DMS) are indexed to make search and retrieval easy and quick.
- Improved shareability of documents: When digitized documents reside in a central repository, employees in disparate locations can access them simultaneously and work collaboratively.
- Easier audibility and compliance: A DMS provides enhanced traceability of critical documents and makes it easier to adhere to regulatory norms.
Document digitization and mailroom automation enable remote working. Businesses that automate their AP systems gain significant advantages and savings. For example, automation removes the need to rely on manual intervention for scanning invoices, tracking delivery receipts, and even helps resolve disputes electronically rather than through manual follow-up.
AMI’s AP automation software increases the efficiency of your AP department
AMI offers business processes improvement solutions for AP departments.
Our highly experienced scanning and conversion service teams digitize all your AP documents. Scanned images are meticulously indexed so you can search and retrieve the information you need. Our PSIGEN data capture software integrates seamlessly with any scanning device, fax server, MFP or network folder. Once documents are processed through a workflow, PSI Capture automatically routes them to any of over 60 supported third-party ECM or document management systems.
Our end-to-end digital mailroom includes a lockbox pick-up and scanning service. AMI handles all your daily mail and processes the incoming items to your specifications. Even remote-working AP staff get real-time access to all incoming invoices, checks and other critical AP documents, ensuring your business runs efficiently despite pandemic restrictions. Talk to AMI for document digitization and AP automation solutions today.