By Shan Haq, Transcepta, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Development

Businesses around the world face many serious challenges. Not only have organizations had to transition to remote or hybrid workforces, but they have also had to deal with numerous complex supply chain challenges, including staffing, raw materials shortages and steep price increases.

Unfortunately, many industry watchers don’t think these disruptions are transient. Instead, they believe that the disruptions we are currently experiencing are something closer to a “new normal” and will define supply chain strategies for several more years

Of course, efficient supply chains are the lifeblood of every business. When organizations optimize their supply chains, they often look for external bottlenecks and other physical and logistical impediments, such as which suppliers they work with and how goods are transported.

More often than not, they do this while ignoring potential inefficiencies and roadblocks that exist internally. Case in point? Inefficient accounts payable (AP) workflows compound supply chain interruptions, strain vendor relationships, jeopardize operations, and ultimately decrease revenue.

The inefficiencies evident in manual, paper-based workflows

When organizations still rely on old-school, human-driven AP processes, they can’t operate efficiently. Not only does every invoice need to be reviewed by hand, but members of the AP team also have to resolve discrepancies with complex two- and three-way matching whenever important information is missing from an invoice (e.g., a purchase order line number).

Due to the stretched staff, high volume of invoices, and intensive work required, manual processes also introduce more human error. Pay a supplier too little or too late, and they will be unhappy—perhaps to the point they put a credit hold on your company or even decide to stop doing business with you altogether. Pay them too much or too soon, and your finances take an easily avoidable hit.

Additionally, manual workflows waste your AP team’s time when suppliers call to track down unpaid invoices and request payment dates. This is wasteful for suppliers, who are busy and want to be paid predictably, and employees, who don’t want constant interruptions when focusing on higher-value work.

Luckily, there’s an easy fix to all these problems: AP automation solutions.

AP automation solutions give you more control over your finances

By automating people-intensive AP processes, organizations can take control of their finances. Simply put, AP automation enables you to digitize the entire invoicing process and other AP workflows, providing unrivaled visibility into cash flow, reducing costs, and eliminating errors and fraud. AP automation solutions enable you to achieve 100% digital straight-through processing with little to no manual intervention.

Complete visibility into cash flow delivers tremendous benefits. Depending on your organization’s unique needs, you can take advantage of early-payment discounts and stretch out other payments to their due dates to avoid any cash gaps, giving you the best of both worlds.

At the same time, leading solutions also automate the supplier onboarding process, enabling new vendors to get up and running quickly with no heavy lifting needed on your end. This ensures that new suppliers will be paid promptly when their first invoice is due, making a good first impression and starting your relationship off on the right foot.

Improve vendor relationships and secure your supply chain with AP automation

At a core level, AP automation enables you to establish direct digital connections between your organization and its suppliers. By providing complete transparency into AP workflows, you give all the vendors you work with the same level of visibility into their invoices and payment statuses.

As a result, suppliers you work with can obtain the information they need at their convenience, providing cash flow visibility. As a bonus, it also frees your AP team from responding to request after request that’s some variation of: “When can I expect to get paid?”

Put yourself in your suppliers’ shoes. Supply chain issues are challenging for your business, but they also impact each vendor you work with. When given the choice, vendors prefer to work with businesses that pay them on time, every time, versus those that are opaque and unpredictable. Wouldn’t you do the same?

In this light, failure to modernize AP workflows and embrace automation could very well result in suppliers dropping you as a customer for businesses that pay them like clockwork.

Solving supply chain disruptions with AP automation

We live in challenging times, with the future seeming more uncertain than it’s been in a long time. Although you can’t control what tomorrow brings, you can take proactive steps to build a resilient business positioned to thrive even during difficult times.

By investing in AP automation, your organization can mitigate supply chain disruptions and keep business humming along as close to usual as possible.

With happier suppliers providing the materials you need faster, you will end up with happier employees, happier customers, and a healthier business.

About Author:

Shan Haq is vice president of corporate strategy and development with Transcepta, the leading cloud-based procure-to-pay platform. Haq is responsible for shaping Transcepta’s strategy for new markets, products, and alliances. Through leadership roles in corporate strategy, marketing, and product management, Haq has successfully grown businesses within Microsoft, Deloitte Consulting, and Boeing Space and Technology. Transcepta, based in Aliso Viejo, California, is an intelligent procure-to-pay platform that enables accounts payable and procurement teams to achieve 100% straight-through invoice processing across their supply chains without scanning or OCR imaging.