Almost three-quarters of senior finance officers have reported that supplier relationships are a corporate priority, according to a new survey by CFO Research Services.  73% of 168 senior finance executives at firms with average annual sales of $5 billion (£3.2 billion), agreed that supplier relationships were a main focus for them.

 The survey showed 81% are focused on working capital, and they recognised that the most effective methods of influencing this vital business metric are related to working with suppliers, especially in accounts payable.

 Having complete visibility and control of where supplier invoices are in your workflow, and whether you’re complying with those suppliers’ terms to avoid late payment penalties – or even capture early settlement discounts – is key.  Palette’s advanced workflow features, and online access for reporting and authorisations, makes it easy for distributed AP teams to stay in control, and stay in the best possible terms with suppliers.  As Miele found following their Palette deployment, which enabled them to cut invoice processing times by 75%.

Increasingly, organisations want to automate their processes without locking up their investments in new IT systems and solutions – which is why SaaS and cloud-based solutions are finding favour.  Transaction-based pricing offsets the upfront investment and lets organisations pay as they go along, while deriving full benefit from the service. 

 We recently posted about how UK document management specialist Cleardata is to power its new hosted invoice processing solution with Palette, and leading financial and business adviser Grant Thornton has been doing the same in its Swedish operations for some time now. 

 The company’s hosted EIM solution is again powered by Palette, advantage of our flexible, web-based architecture to offer users an automated, paper-light processing solution.  Users get quick, secure access in the cloud to their invoice workflows for checking, authorisation and producing detailed reports, with no need for client software to be installed on the PCs of EIM service users.

 More details of Grant Thornton’s EIM service are here:  http://www.grantthornton.se/Filbibliotek/Publikationer/2008/Produktblad_EFH_ENG.pdf

Cleardata, the leading UK document management company, is to deploy PaletteInvoice to power its new, hosted invoice management service. 

 Cleardata is one of the largest document scanning bureaus in the UK, providing services across the UK and internationally and handling over 2 million invoices per year.  The new service, to be launched in early 2011, will enable Cleardata to offer businesses of any size an automated, paperless processing solution, helping to improve customers’ accounts payable efficiency and reduce costs. 

 David Bryce, Cleardata managing director said:  “The Palette solution is specifically designed with finance departments in mind, with features that set it apart from other solutions.  These include the ability to split invoices by line item, so that costs can be allocated to the right areas of the business, and its advanced cloud-based workflow and analysis functions.  This flexibility makes it the ideal backbone for our new managed service.”

 http://www.sharedserviceslink.com/file/93028/palette-and-cleardata-partner-on-invoice-management.html

The European Commission has announced that it wants to see e-invoicing as the predominant method of invoicing in Europe. In its Communication ‘Reaping the benefits of electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) for Europe’, the European Commission identifies a set of tangible actions to make the uptake of e-invoices in Europe easier.

It’s great to see the EU endorsing the benefits that we, and other vendors, have been promoting for many years. The move to e-invoicing will allow businesses to benefit from faster payments, fewer delays and errors, and reduced printing and postage costs. Critically, structured e-invoices facilitate business process integration from purchase to payment, meaning that invoices could be sent, received and processed without manual intervention.

The Commission has decided to set-up a European multi-stakeholder forum on e-invoicing. Michel Barnier, Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, said “E-invoicing has the potential to make a big difference, for businesses, consumers, and European trade as a whole. The benefits in terms of saving time and money are fully in line with our Europe 2020 strategy and with the Digital Agenda for Europe in particular.”

Links: http://bit.ly/ejvy83 (press release)