OCR-backed invoice capture is being touted as a game-changer in invoice processing, accelerating data collection for faster approval and payment cycles.
However, while automated OCR or optical character recognition has brought about a revolution in the standard invoice management process, it’s not enough on its own to carry out a successful accounts payable operation.
For instance, while OCR can capture data from a standard format, any change in format or vendors requires that the new format be mapped out and tapped into the system for data capture.
While automation can definitely speed things up, human innovation and intelligence are still required to sort out the finer nuances of invoice processing.
Here’s why OCR data capture is effective yet not all you need for smarter invoice processing:
Eliminate the Errors of Manual Processing
One of the most tedious aspects of the entire invoice processing cycle is manually entering data from different data fields for every invoice. This dependence on manual processing is not just time-intensive and labor-consuming, it’s also prone to errors, delays, and careless mistakes.
Discover Advanced Analytics for Controlling Spend
Apart from accelerating your invoice processing and improving payment cycle times, automated invoice capture also lowers the cost of processing per invoice while also creating an accurate database for tracking payments.
This, in turn, improves visibility and access to daily, weekly, monthly, and even annual spending metrics that help identify wasteful and unnecessary expenditure. These metrics can further come in handy while creating and implementing a strategy to reduce expenses in the future.
Reduce Your Headcount Requirements
Automated invoice capture employs advanced character recognition software to achieve more with less. You can enjoy the benefits of immediate scalability, without having to undertake the hassle of hiring and training new employees every time you expand operations.
In fact, with an experienced team spearheading your invoice data capture and processing, you can reduce your overhead by over 50%. If you are curious to know more, get in touch with our team for a free consultation and some real numbers today!
How ARDEM Implements Automated Data Capture and Coding
At ARDEM, all invoices are scanned and run through OCR/ICR technology to create readable documents. Once they have been made searchable, the ARDEM Data Capture platform reads and maps specific fields of data to capture swiftly while ensuring the highest possible accuracy.
Employing Effort-Based Processing for Invoice Validation
Apart from deploying automated efficiency, ARDEM’s team of financial and accounting experts further cross-check and verify your data and custom-engineer a solution specifically for your processing requirements while resolving any errors or exceptions that may come up.
Using Human Intelligence to Eradicate Exceptions
Exceptions can arise due to several reasons: blurred invoices that cannot be interpreted accurately by machine learning or sometimes the invoice sent in by the vendor does not match the corresponding PO or purchase order.
No matter the cause, these errors or exceptions have to be tracked down and resolved in time. While data extraction can easily be automated, effort-based processing is required to identify the source of these inaccuracies and correct them.
Therefore, as we can see, in case of any errors in billing or duplicacy, automated OCR data capture is simply not enough to trace these errors to their point of origin and resolve them.
Mapping Out Hundreds of Invoices from Multiple Vendors
Every organization receives several different invoices from multiple vendors in varied formats, each template has to be mapped out and a corresponding OCR solution has to be formulated to read the invoice correctly.
As vendors change and even formats are updated, the human team behind the solution has to start from scratch and re-start the process once again. This is where deep-industry knowledge and industry expertize come in handy, the more experience your team has, the faster they engineer a solution to adapt to your changing needs.
Additionally, many firms may also receive one-off invoices where they may receive an invoice from a vendor once a month or even once a year. In such a scenario, it is possible to receive several such invoices from many such accounts per month, creating a fresh new challenge with every received invoice. For argument’s sake, let’s say that a company receives up to 100 such invoices in a month, this actually translates into mapping out 100 different invoices in 100 different formats in real-time for effective results!
Identifying and Resolving Suspects
Suspects in invoice processing arise as machine learning is often able to capture only 60% of the data fields in an invoice, leaving the rest to be deciphered by effort-based manual processing.
As the invoices need to be processed in real-time, our team of experienced analysts steps in to fill in the blanks and generate 100% accurate data in real-time.
Adopting a Holistic Approach for 100% Accuracy
While the solutions may be varied, the best practice is to adopt a holistic approach that combines the best of both worlds, i.e., OCR-backed automated invoice capture and effort-based processing that is guided by both expertise and experience.
The end result of this is a smarter, more adaptable, and most importantly, a more scalable solution that transforms and re-engineers itself to meet your changing needs.
How It Works:
- You can mail or upload any invoice of any format onto our cloud server via the ARDEM Invoice Manager (AIM).
- You can also have your invoices sent directly to us, whether in digital or physical format and we will receive, extract and deliver your data with 100% accuracy.
- ARDEM initiates its secure, cloud-based automated OCR capture.
- ARDEM Bots extract and normalize/standardize invoices from varied formats.
- The data is verified and compiled in a single usable format, ready to be downloaded into the client’s system.
In conclusion, switching to OCR-based invoice capture is definitely the need of the hour, yet it needs to be backed by human expertise to generate truly superior solutions for cost-savings and efficiency.
Are you curious to find out how ARDEM can help implement OCR-backed invoice capture and streamline your payment cycle? If yes, then you can get in touch with our team to schedule a free consultation today!
