Today’s post is from Lori Messana, Managing Director, P2P Portfolio, at BancTec.
A common mistake during the transition to AP automation is thinking you can do it all. So be realistic and prioritize what your business really needs when it comes to accounts payable.
And while it’s natural to explore the “what-ifs” with potential BPO vendors during the evaluation process, take the time to determine your goals and objectives for AP automation. Also remember that vendors will want to say “yes” to everything, and don’t get starstruck by flashy demos with functionality you’ll never use.
Prioritize Your AP Automation Requirements
Sure, your key stakeholders will want to provide specific business requirements that cover all possible scenarios, with everything being “top priority.” But determine which requirements will get you the biggest bang for the buck.
Go for quick wins to establish momentum, and divide the AP automation project into phases. Add in the nice-to-haves only after you’ve capitalized on the low-hanging fruit.
Make sure all of your listed requirements tie back to the original objectives for the project, and don’t put up with scope creep. With the right BPO company, you can maintain control and watch your business grow.
BancTec will be heading to Nashville this weekend to talk business process outsourcing (BPO) at the Fusion 2012 conference that opens Sunday at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center.
A BancTec team will be at Booth #927 to discuss BPO services specifically designed for financial transaction processing and document management. During the conference, BancTec will present three educational sessions:
Lies My P2P Automation Vendor Told Me
Presented by BancTec’s Lori Messana and Tami Kight, AP Manager with BMW,
Tuesday, May 15, 3 – 4 p.m.
A 360 Degree Perspective of AR
Presented by Michael Alfonsi, BancTec
Tuesday, May 15, 4:15 – 5:15 p.m.
The Challenges of Inbound Mail Processing, Are You Ready?
Presented by Pamela Wu, BancTec
Thursday, May 17, 9:15 – 10:15 a.m.
These sessions will lead conference attendees through the common struggles businesses face when managing P2P automation, accounts receivables and inbound mail services.
In the face of these challenges, BancTec’s Intelligent BPO (iBPO) services can enhance a variety of business processes, including invoice processing, AP automation, remittance processing, inbound mail services and image archive.
Michael Alfonsi describes Intelligent BPO, or iBPO, and walks viewers through the four steps of BancTec’s proven business process outsourcing methodology.
As the United States Postal Service closes facilities and scales back service, there is no shortage of companies looking to keep money moving with electronic transactions. Banks have been especially active in this area as they look to cut costs and adjust to new business realities. Many companies will address this situation by employing business process outsourcing.
Electronic transactions are a third the cost of processing checks, for example, and the savings grow with the volume. Another savings stems from time. If the Postal Service eliminates Saturday delivery, many invoices and payments will be delayed a day or more. Again, considering the volumes of transactions involved, the situation simply has to be addressed. If to make up for a slower Postal Service a company has to put in $4 million in additional working capital borrowed at 6 percent, that’s a $240,000 added cost.
Making the Case for BPO
The natural next question is whether a solution is available in-house or is more effectively achieved through business process outsourcing. There are established processes for making the right decision with respect to outsourcing. One consideration here that may not be so obvious: It is more advantageous than ever for businesses to work with a BPO company with locations near the operations the USPS will keep open to ensure prompt payment processing and the processing of other inbound mail.
Today’s post is from Coley Clark, BancTec’s chairman of the board and chief executive officer.
This year marks BancTec’s 40th anniversary, and I would like to take a minute to recall how our company’s beginnings can be traced to torn checks.
It was 1972, the year President Nixon started the space shuttle program and Elton John topped the charts with “Rocket Man.” HBO launched its first subscription cable service as the BBC introduced the legendary quiz show Mastermind, known for its challenging questions and intimidating set.
Advancements in technology were taking hold, and automation was mastering any number of business tasks, among them check processing. But checks mutilated by machines couldn’t be quickly processed, and in that problem Merle Volding saw an opportunity. For less than $10,000, he purchased a stake in a Dallas company that had been unable to capitalize on its patent for repairing a damaged check by attaching a strip of paper to it using heat-sensitive adhesives.
Soon that company was BancTec, whose name highlights its technological expertise in the banking industry. And just a year after Volding founded BancTec, its first CheckMender system was installed in the Republic Bank of Dallas. The product proved successful, in part because it used a heat-sensitive adhesive that dried in milliseconds.
BancTec’s Intelligent BPO (iBPO) does more than just outsource an ineffective process. BancTec uses its proven expertise to address the root causes of process inefficiency in a four-step methodology, detailed in the infographic below.
The approach includes four basic stages:
Envision – BancTec offers process optimization consulting to thoroughly evaluate which financial and back-office processes will benefit most from outsourcing.
Design – Redesigning processes is a daily project for BancTec engineers, but every client is different, and all decisions are based on industry best practices.
Transition – The process is migrated carefully to a BancTec iBPO Center of Excellence. This can happen all at once or in stages, depending on the circumstances and desired outcome.
Optimize – The final optimization stage is ongoing; BancTec continues to manage the process and make improvements.
By choosing the smarter way to outsource, companies realize lower costs, reduced risk, better service and improved intelligence.
BancTec offers Intelligent BPO to enhance a variety of financial transaction processes and document management processes across the healthcare, banking, insurance, manufacturing, government and utilities sectors.
Today’s post is from Lori Messana, Managing Director, P2P Portfolio, at BancTec.
When it comes to automating your accounts payable, change management plays an important role, so it can’t be an afterthought. Automating AP affects a large group of stakeholders, and for some of them, change can be intimidating. Change management has to focus on countering resistance that can impede the project.
It is best to acknowledge both the positive and negative impacts of transitioning to business process outsourcing, and then communicate the ultimate benefits of an improved business process to your employees and customers. Affecting change at an emotional level is important. After all, if you change people’s feelings, you will change their behavior.
Outsourcing Accounts Payable, the Right Way
Once you and your BPO company identify all the procedural changes, change management should begin with communicating to the team what’s going to change. Discuss the benefits to employees, and include some of your “tough customers” in the early discussions. Your biggest critics can become your biggest fans.
It is also important to communicate to vendors before, during and after the BPO transition stages.
Communicate twice as much as you think is enough. And make doing things the right way easy, even fun.
BancTec’s Michael Alfonsi is featured in “Strategies for Success: Alternatives to In-House Processing,” a recent publication of TransactionDirectory.com. BancTec’s managing director of financial transaction processing services and finance transformation solutions discusses industry best practices in his article titled, “Rethinking Insourcing, Outsourcing and Co-Sourcing.”
With the continued growth in business process outsourcing, firms are looking to outsourcing strategies as they move toward specialization. BPO helps them reduce business risks by optimizing business processes and transforming documents electronically.
Alfonsi describes the “Great Outsourcing Business Case” as one that brings awareness to not only the most likely results for the business, but the best-case and worst-case scenarios too.
The 16th Annual North American Shared Services & Outsourcing Week is happening this week in Orlando, Fla., on the heels of a new report on the increasing use of outsourcing.
Produced by the Shared Services & Outsourcing Network, the conference is designed specifically for peer collaboration and provides industry experts and organizations a place to share their experiences, knowledge and tools. It is being held at the Hilton Orlando, and BancTec will be at Booth #31.
A recent State of Outsourcing Study by HfS Research found that, “Today’s buyers are getting a lot smarter at figuring out how they can improve their organizations by using the resources and knowledge available through third-party relationships.” It concluded that, “Outsourcing is entering a new era – one where organizations can no longer afford to ignore its benefits. As these radical and secular changes to many of our core industries take hold, business leaders simply cannot overlook the competitive advantage outsourcing offers: enabling them to focus on developing competitive advantage.”
BancTec provides outsourcing solutions to businesses across the financial services, insurance, healthcare, utility, transportation and government sectors. Companies facing industry changes can take advantage of BancTec’s Intelligent BPO (iBPO) methodology, which addresses the root causes of process inefficiencies.
