Palette is attending the IFO Fusion show 19-23th of May in Florida.  

Mike Cichy our Palette Country Manager in North America will be hosting an educational breakout session titled “Insource Outsource Cosource” at the event. Discussing the benefits and risks of deploying in house or outsourced AP automation projects.

Come and visit us
http://www.financialops.org/web/conferences/fusion-2013

             

A recent study by market research organisation Wakefield Research into mobile usage trends in business found that 71% of companies surveyed had changed at least one of their business processes to support mobile usage. 

Where the consumerization / BYOD boom over the past couple of years has focused on giving employees access to front-end applications such as email, an increasing numberof organisations are linking mobiles to critical back-end processes – such as invoice processing, and expenses processing. 

It makes sense to give AP staff the ability to access and authorise their invoice workflows wherever they happen to be working – especially in organisations with multiple offices spread across different territories.  With a cloud-based AP solution, staff can access their workflows from any device with web access, and approve or query invoices accordingly.  As the workflow is cloud-based, security is maintained as potentially sensitive documents are not stored on users’ devices. 

This flexibility enables staff to manage their workflows in the way they want to,and crucially allows them to continue to process payments even in the event of contingencies, such as local power outages or offices being out of action –helping business to keep flowing.  Why not find out more about how more flexible, mobile working could streamline your accounts, by investigating the rich features of PaletteOnline?

 

A new survey has shown that the drive for e-invoicing is picking up momentum, with over 70% of respondents across multiple industry sectors recognising the technology as being key to boosting efficiency and adding value in finance departments. 

Aberdeen Research shows that 75% of businesses still process invoices manually, and that for these organisations invoice costs can range as high as €1.29 per invoice –meaning significant extra annual costs for firms handling high invoice volumes.  It’s calculated that an organisation that processes 6,000 paper-based customer invoices per month can save up to €76,000 a year by moving to e-invoicing. 

The fullstory is here:  http://www.sharedserviceslink.com/file/95795/new-survey-reveals-accelerating-demand-for-electronic-invoicing.html

We’ve blogged before about how negotiating early settlement discounts with suppliersand partners can help companies to better manage their cash reserves and cashflow, and how it’s better for relationships and finance than delaying payments – especially when interest rates are low. 

How ever, an umber of international retailers are starting to demand, not request, discounts for early payment.  One retailer reportedly wrote to its suppliers saying it expected incremental discounts on invoices in return for faster payment, while simultaneously increasing its standard payment terms.  Asan example, for settlement within 60 days, which were the standard terms before they were increased to 75 days, the retailer demanded a 3% discount, with higher discounts required for shorter payment times. 

These demands for discounts while extending standard terms at the same time have been strongly criticised by several business consortia, as giving smaller organisations no options but to either wait longer for payment, or receive less.  Certainly, one of the points of early settlement discounts is to negotiate with suppliers for mutual benefit, using the intelligence that can be gathered from an efficient invoice processing system.  You can read more about this emerging trend here:

http://www.supplymanagement.com/news/2013/selfridges-asks-suppliers-for-payment-discount/

It’s been a long time coming, but AP Automation’s time may have finally arrived.  This is one of the key findings of a recent survey by the American Productivity & Quality Center(APQC), which provides expertise on business benchmarking and best practices.

A recent survey by the Center found that just over 50% of respondents said they were targeting core transaction processes, including AP, for a major overhaul in 2013 – which may involve process automation, systems changes or outsourcing. 

While respondents were interesting in saving costs, the reasons for considering AP go some way beyond this, including greater visibility into invoice flows, improving cash management, and automation and streamlining of processes to boost efficiency and traceability.  These benefits are made easily accessible to almost any business, thanks to cloud automation solutions like our own PaletteOnline. 

You can read the full article here:   http://searchfinancialapplications.techtarget.com/news/2240180788/Save-money-go-green-with-AP-automation

A new report from TechNavio's analysts indicate that the global E-invoicing market isset to grow at a rate of over 24% per year to 2016, driven by the business demands to automate invoicing processes and reduce overall operationalc osts.   

The reporthighlights that e-invoicing and automation technology is being increasingly adopted by SMEs, and notes that but for concerns about the complexity involved in deploying these solutions, growth could be even higher. 

As we’ve blogged before, we believe that cloud solutions like the PaletteOnline family could help to address these concerns, by enabling companies of any size to deploy invoice automation with zero disruption and minimal set-up. TechNavio's report, the Global E-invoicing Market 2012-2016, is available from here:  http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/dfzxtn/global

Our latest article from Palette Sales Director Lucy Beck has been published on the business news portal, BDaily.  In ‘Making Painless Paper Cuts’ Lucydiscusses how businesses can benefit from cloud applications in theirday-to-day operations, and use them to migrate from paper-based invoicing to boost efficiency.

The article focuses on the ways in which automated invoice processing solutions can cut paper and deliver savings, and highlights the advantages of new, cloud-based financial automation applications. Lucy also discusses how companies can quickly benefit from the flexible infrastructure of cloud applications and pay-as-you-go pricing.

You can read ‘Making Painless Paper Cuts’ here:  http://bdaily.co.uk/opinion/21-03-2013/making-painless-paper-cuts/

As you may have seen on our news page, we’ve appointed a new US-based partner, the fast-growing business process outsourcing (BPO) and enterprise mobilization specialist, Cogniserv.  

Cogniserv will use our PaletteArena suite to power cloud-based invoice automation and management services for its clients. These services enable Cogniserv to offer companies of almost any size an automated, paperless processing solution, helping to improve customers’ accounts payable efficiency and reduce costs.  

As well as using Palette to automate handling invoices, purchase orders and expense claims forms, Cogniserv plans to integrate PaletteArena with FormServ, the company’s mobile forms solution.  This will enable users to complete invoices, POs and expense sheets through smartphones and tablets and seamlessly feed into Palette for processing, helping to enable mobile processing, giving end-users real added flexibility.  Visit www.cogniserv.com  to find out more about how our combined skills can help your accounts payable operations run smoother!

From this week, all 27 European Union countries will have to apply a Late Payment Directive intended to helpSMEs as mounting unpaid bills put jobs and businesses at risk.

Under the directive, Government and public authorities in EU countries must pay for goods and services within 30 calendar days or, in very exceptional circumstances, within 60 days.

Businesses have 60 calendar days, unless agreed otherwise and "if it is not grossly unfair to the creditor," a statement said.  To encourage compliance, companies can automatically claim interest on late payments, set at not less than 8% above the European Central Bank’s benchmark rate, it said.

It said public authorities must apply the new rules but companies still have the right to make their own arrangements if they wish to do so.  "Late payments mean SMEs lose time and money, and disputes can sour relations with customers. This damaging late payment culture has to end," EU Industry Commissioner Antonio Tajanisaid in a statement.

This is certainly a strong move bythe EU – and it will be interesting to see how the directive will be received in business life.  It is a useful reminder of the need for close control over accounts payable processes, for any size of business.

 

                                                            
A new report by research organisation Paystream Advisors has indicated that 2013 will see a significant global shift towards e-invoicing. According to the research, 60% of AP departments get nine out of ten of their invoices on paper, with just 16% getting the majority of invoices electronically.  

However, half of survey respondents said that they plan to implement e-Invoicing in the coming year.  The top three drivers for e-Invoicing revealed in the survey were reducing the overall processing cost (56%), removing paper from the Accounts Payable Department (43%) and speeding up invoice approval cycle times (38).

Of course, the availability of cloud solutions, such as our own PaletteOnline, make realising the benefits of invoice automation easier and faster than ever before. So perhaps this year, the predictions of going accounts payable going paperlight may be realised.

The leading fashion brand Filippa K is streamlining its invoice-handling across its organisation using PaletteOnline.   The company has seven offices, including its Stockholm headquarters, with over 200 employees, and will deploy PaletteOnline to automate checking, authorisation and processing of the 10,000 invoices it receives across its retail and wholesale businesses annually. 

Filippa K evaluated several solutions, and selected PaletteOnline because of its user-friendly interface and its rich functionality, allowing electronic archiving and simplifying workload for employees. 

SusannaLiljeqvist, IT manager, Filippa K, commented: “If we were going to make the transition from manually processed to automated invoicing, we wanted to eliminate any paper and have the system hosted for us. PaletteOnline provides this service as well as being a flexible yet functional solution that supports our many requirements.” 

You can find out more here:   http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/2013/Feb/25/fashion-company-automates-global-invoice-processing-with-palette.html

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are adopting e-invoicing technology, according to a new survey by the Forum of Private Business (http://www.fpb.org/).

A survey involving 4,000 of its members showed that 47% said they would use e-invoicing by the end of 2013, with the main reason being that they believed it would shorten payment cycles.  In addition, 35% of respondents said they were looking to invest in systems to help them work more efficiently.   

Of course, the use of cloud solutions – like PaletteOnline – means that virtually no investment is needed to deploy advanced invoice processing solutions, even for organisations handling just a few hundred invoices per year.  This adoption model allows firms to simply pay per invoice processed, which could help to further accelerate the take-up of invoice automation.

We have just launched PaletteExpense, to help companies automate and manage processing of employee expenses.  It can even enable staff to handle their own expense receipts and claims, within pre-defined limits, to take some of the burden of expense handling away from accounts staff.

PaletteExpense is part of PaletteArena, available as a cloud service or as an on-premise solution, and gives finance staff flexible control over all expense-related parameters, and an easy-to-read dashboard overview of expenses claimed and owed to employees, together with cash advances and reconciliations.  

Finance staff can use PaletteExpense to set up profiles for individuals, which include limits for different types of business expense, exchange rate variations and workflow rules.  Employees then build their expense claims by taking a picture of receipts using their smartphone or tablet, and emailing the details to a single dedicated email address at their company.  PaletteExpense matches the sender’s email address to the relevant employee profile, and automatically populates an expense line together with the submitted images of receipts – saving time for finance staff.  

Receipts can also be scanned using a multifunction device and sent by email, or saved locally and uploaded directly to the expense claim when the user returns to the office.  

You can find out more on our product pages, or here:  http://www.thepaypers.com/news/default/palette-launches-new-expenses-processing-service-as-part-of-its-palettearena-suite/750102-0

 

We’ve posted previously about the drive for e-invoicing in EU member countries. It seems that the drive for e-invoicing is now picking up speed in the UK, too.  Two Conservative members of parliament recently published an article on The Guardian newspaper’s website, calling for its widespread adoption to‘revolutionise public procurement.’

 

The two MPspoint out that the UK lags behind European counterparts (especially those inScandinavia) and say that “not only would e-invoicing save huge amounts of taxpayers' money, it would, if implemented properly, stimulate the almost instantaneous emergence of online services for e-invoicing and the adoption of electronic open standards.”  They suggest full adoption of the technology by the UK Government could result in economic benefits of £22bn-£28bn per year:  colossal savings which are around 30% of the UK’s total health budget.

 

The full article is here:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/2013/jan/14/e-invoicing-public-sector-procurement-civilservice

Inalfa Roof Systems B.V, one of the world’s leading providers of vehicle roof systems to manufacturers including BMW Group, Ford, Land Rover and Volkswagen, has deployed PaletteInvoice to automate processing of the approximate 30,000 invoices it receives annually, and PaletteBuyer to create controlled and automated audit trails at its headquarters and its factory in Slovakia.  

The solution was supplied and configured by Palette partner Simac Document Solutions, a leading integrator and service provider in Benelux. Inalfa evaluated several suppliers’ solutions to determine which would automate and manage procurement processes to drive efficiencies across its business. Inalfa selected Palette because of its comprehensive user-interface, the software’s flexibility, and because it was the most user-friendly system.

Noud van der Locht, CFO Europe at Inalfa Roof Systems B.V. commented: “There was a clear requirement to establish electronic procurement processes, to improve efficiency in the company through managed, visible audit trails of our invoicing and purchasing processes.

“There were a number of factors to consider in choosing an appropriate system: software flexibility and capacity to adapt in future, a cost-effective solution for our business, local partnership with the provider and last but not least, ability to integrate with our current ERP system.”

Around 90 staff in Inalfa’s management and accounts departments use Palette to generate purchase orders and process invoices.