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:
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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.
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A 360 Degree Perspective of AR
- Presented by Michael Alfonsi, BancTec
- Tuesday, May 15, 4:15 – 5:15 p.m.
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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.
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.
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BancTec’s Michael Alfonsi describes the risks in payment processing in the featured article “10 Risks Buyers Face in Outsourcing Payments” on Outsourcing-Center.com.
As vice president and managing director of financial services, Alfonsi knows the risk factors to consider and how to optimize the payments side of a business through outsourcing.
He addresses the impact of the recent changes at the U.S. Postal Service and what they mean for payment processing — both outgoing and incoming. By honestly evaluating the risks, a company can effectively outsource its payments.
To see the list of 10 risks buyers face when outsourcing, read editor Beth Ellyn Rosenthal’s full article here.
Coley Clark, CEO, BancTec
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.
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Michael Alfonsi, BancTec
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.
To learn more, read Alfonsi’s article on page 16 of “Strategies for Success: Alternatives to In-House Processing.”
BancTec is showcasing its Intelligent BPO, the smarter way to outsource financial and back-office processes, this week at the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) Annual Conference in Boston.
Intelligent BPO moves beyond simple, labor-arbitrage-focused outsourcing to help businesses automate and truly optimize their business processes. BancTec experts help our clients identify the root causes of process inefficiency, then address these issues systematically in making the transition to outsourcing.
This year’s AFP Conference kicked off Sunday evening at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center with a keynote address from former President Bill Clinton.
Visit BancTec at Booth #1030 through Wednesday to learn more about iBPO services benefiting treasury and finance professionals.
For more information on the conference, visit http://www.afpconference.org/.
About 80 percent of invoices are still on paper, and it’s estimated that U.S. companies spend tens of billions of dollars every year on paper-based invoice processing.
By automating AP invoice processing, businesses can enjoy reduced cycle times, increased visibility into the process, improved vendor relationships and more.
Here are six reasons to consider automating your AP invoice processing:
1. Accelerate Cash Flow
The average Accounts Payable department makes 19 copies of each document, spends $20 in labor to file each document, loses one out of every 20 documents, spends $120 in labor searching for each misfiled document and spends 25 hours recreating each host document, according to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers study.
With AP automation, you can reduce document storage and transmission costs, and take advantage of early payment discounts when your invoice processing is streamlined and automatic.
2. Improve Visibility and Planning
Visibility is a critical issue, especially with paper-based invoices. Replacing manual processes with automation prevents delays and unnecessary rush invoices. Lost or misplaced invoices become a thing of the past when you have easily accessible digital archives. Greater visibility also improves planning by allowing for more accurate budgeting and forecasting.
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BancTec has been validated compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), with our payment processing operations achieving organization-wide compliance for our BPO service offerings.
Maria Allen, BancTec Executive
Said Maria Allen, senior vice president and president of the Americas for BancTec:
Achieving PCI compliance affirms BancTec’s commitment to the most stringent standards of security in handling payment data for our clients. Clients know that they can depend on BancTec to deliver reliable, secure, and consistent performance across our BPO operations in the United States and worldwide.
PCI DSS is the payment card industry security requirement for entities that store, process or transmit cardholder data, and has been endorsed by all the major card brands: Visa Inc., MasterCard Worldwide, Discover Network, American Express and JCB. Validation involves verification of the implementation of a number of mandated control objectives that are specific to technology design, network and physical data security.
Trustwave, a leading provider of information security and compliance solutions, performed the validation.
PCI DSS is among a growing number of regulatory and compliance requirements that organizations face today. Others include the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), UK Data Protection Act, Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and the US-EU Safe Harbor Agreement.
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.
