10 Plus Benefits of Electronic Invoicing

I often focus on global e-invoicing on this blog, but I recently came across two good articles on general e-invoicing written by Steve Keifer with EDInomics. The focus of Part 1 is managing inbound supplier invoices.  To me, this is an interesting area.  There are many different names for these processes including transactional content management and vendor invoice management.  Much of the transactional content coming into an average company is still on paper, and these articles address the benefits of automating these processes.

The Ten Business Benefits of E-Invoicing – Part 1
The Ten Business Benefits of E-Invoicing - Part 2

In Part 1, point 4 - the topic is vendor self-service and I want to highlight this section.  If a company cannot efficiently manage, process and track the status of inbound invoices, then the cost of processing them jumps.  Why?  Because your call center begins to receive phone calls from suppliers wanting to know the status of their invoices.  Often it is more than one phone call.  If an answer is not quickly provided on the status of an invoice, it gets escalated up the chain, and the number of people involved and costs also escalates.  I know this from personal experience having been on both ends of this process.

There are many hidden advantages to automating your electronic invoicing systems.  Customer service, reputation, cost reduction, good will and professionalism are sometimes overlooked.

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Kevin R Benedict Independent e-Invoicing/EDI Consultant, Analyst and Blogger
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*Full Disclosure: I am an independent consultant that has worked with and for many of the companies mentioned.