Why OPInvoice?

Most finance organizations spend a large portion of their Finance budget on AP processing. This is largely due to the manual effort required to enter invoices into the accounting system and, if applicable, match those invoices to POs and receipts. While efficient AP processing is critical to ensure that authorized invoices are paid accurately, it is often not managed to world-class standards due to the time and expense required to implement best practices.

Is your organization utilizing best AP practices to stay in control? If you answer YES to the questions below, you are doing just fine:

We are well aware of the number of invoices we receive every month

• We have defined and well-documented business rules for matching invoices to POs and receipts
• We have a well defined approval matrix that is followed explicitly by Accounts Payable staff and Approvers
• We catch all duplicate invoices and have very small tolerances for invoices that do not match the PO or receipt
• We know the number and dollar value of outstanding invoices (liabilities) before they are approved or matched
• We have a clear idea of the number of invoices not matching the PO or receipt and the reasons for the same
• We can easily track which of our managers have invoices awaiting their approval
• We receive invoices centrally and route those invoices to all approvers automatically, no matter where the approver is physically located
• We have images of all invoices and can look them up on the web quickly and easily, eliminating time spent on filing and retrieving invoices
• We let our vendors look up invoice information and payment status on the web to reduce the volume of phone calls to our staff

If you answered NO to any of these questions, you should consider using the OPInvoice Accounts Payable Solution.
Some of the advantages offered by OPInvoice are highlighted below:

• 25% to 50% annual AP processing cost savings without capital investment
• Greater, centralized control over payables across the enterprise, irrespective of physical location
• World-class quality and accuracy from ISO 9001 and ISO 27000 certified service centers, ensuring accurate matching to POs and receipts and elimination of duplicate and erroneous payments
• Real-time tracking and reporting of all payables from the time they are received from the vendor through approvals and check payments
• Reporting of Invoice matching exceptions both by vendor and exception-type thereby streamlining the procurement process and improving vendor relations
• Automated routing of payables for approval by business unit managers irrespective of location, thereby enhancing control and manager productivity
• Elimination of the headache of recruiting, hiring, and managing clerical staff
• The ability to focus on strategic, pertinent finance issues instead of non-value added and time consuming activities such as AP processing
• OPInvoice combines high-quality automation with off-shoring to ensure that clients have a truly world-class purchase-to-pay process with substantial cost savings and competitive edge
• Implementation of the standard solution can be completed in days, which enables clients to quickly automate their AP process and streamline the review and approval process

Benefits

Purchasing
OPInvoice's purchasing solution has several benefits:

• Reduces requisition to purchase-order lead time
• Provides complete visibility of purchase order status
• Assists the Purchase Department's decision making process
• Significantly reduces paper and administrative costs
• Manages spend to the approved budget

Payables
With OPInvoice's Payables solution you could:

• Eliminate paper thru Electronic Document Management
• Automate the approval process with pre-defined routing, escalation and delegations
• Save time matching invoices with purchase orders and exception resolution
• Get early visibility into accruals thru centralized receipt and front-end data capture
• Track and audit anywhere along the process cycle
• Prevent duplicate invoice processing and identify potentially duplicate payments

• Manage printing and mailing of checks
• Handle ACH Debits and Credits
• Integrate all payment information with your accounting system

• Notifies vendors when a payment is made
• Shows invoice payment status
• Submit electronic invoices
• Submit Quote against RFQ
• Raise Help Tickets for interactive dispute management
• Reduces overall vendor support and administrative cost

Methodology

Implementation Methodology

Case Studies

Issues Faced

• The client was experiencing issues that affect most geographically distributed operations; poor data quality for invoices entered at various locations (10% of all invoices entered had errors); disappearing and reappearing invoices; a high level of duplicate invoices submitted by industry vendors; reliance on vendors for delivery of credits; a lack of well-defined business rules for AP processing and high turnover in their Accounts Payable department
• All of this resulted in late payment of invoices and multiple payments for a single invoice. Consequently, the cost to process all of these invoices and manage this process was very high
• The client’s management team wanted a fully compliant process so that they could focus their activities and capital on more critical issues facing a public company in today’s post-Sarbanes world<

Solutions Offered

• EXL worked with the client and implemented the OPInvoice tool utilizing best AP practices
• Detailed business rules were developed for AP processing to ensure consistency of outcome and quality
• The client also utilized EXL’s offshore processing centers to manage the process, providing greater control, three-sigma quality per invoice, and much greater levels of efficiency for client employees
• EXL also helped the client to implement a new credit process, ensuring that all credits due were taken

• With the implementation of the solution, the client got a Sarbanes 404 compliant process, full management control over each and every AP transaction and complete accountability
• EXL was also able to significantly improve the quality in AP processing, resulting in the elimination of errors, including payment of duplicate invoices worth thousands of dollars annually
• Our client was able to streamline their Accounts Payable function, saving significant additional dollars in reduced processing cost

Issues Faced

• The client processed a large volume of APs, approximately 20,000 invoices per month. Given the complexity of their operations, they had a high percentage of exceptions, with over 30 employees involved in the AP process and multiple information systems 
• This also made it difficult to maintain management and financial controls over all of the invoices currently in process. Resolving all the exceptions was proving to be a time consuming task, taking too much time from all of the process stakeholders 

Solutions Offered

• The client approached EXL to help them implement a new AP process. EXL spent several months in understanding the different issues and types of exceptions. EXL implemented the solution in the following phases
• Documented the entire set of business rules for the process and recommended changes to internal controls and how exceptions were resolved
• Implemented state-of-the-art imaging and workflow solutions to route, match, manage, and approve each invoice with six-sigma quality
• With this implementation, invoices were sent by the vendors to EXL ISO 27000 certified, centralized imaging centers, where they were scanned, coded, and entered into appropriate systems, reviewed for quality, and matched appropriately
• Exceptions were electronically notified to buyers and others in their electronic inboxes. They were also updated on important vendor management issues

• With the implementation of the solution, the client decided to outsource most of their Accounts Payable activities
• Managers in the client’s AP process team got complete, real time visibility into all AP transactions
• Approvals and exceptions took less time to get resolved
• Consequently, the client was able to invest more time into core issues impacting the business and increase focus on growing their business

FAQ's

Necessity

Why should I use OPInvoice?
OPInvoice provides best of breed features to fully automate your procure to pay processes and achieve more output with less effort. It provides efficient automation to significantly increase efficiency and cut costs. Moreover, with delivery teams operating from multiple offshore locations like India/Bulgaria and the flexibility of choosing between transaction based or FTE pricing, the best possible cost advantages can be achieved.

What are the typical cost gains that can be achieved?
50 to 60% of your current costs can be saved by using OPInvoice along with delivery from an offshore location like India/Bulgaria.


Implementation

Is OPInvoice an off-the-shelf product or would there be scope for customization?
OPInvoice has been developed considering the best practices and industry standards. We aim at benchmarking your processes to these standards. While we strongly recommend using our standard off-the-shelf product, we would carry out a requirement mapping during our due diligence phase and customize critical/non-standard requirements exclusively for you if it is absolutely necessary.

How long does it take to implement OPInvoice and what is the implementation methodology?
Time-to-implement would depend on the critical success factors, such as complexity of existing AP process, approval matrix, ERP integration requirements and additional customization required (if any). At OPI, we understand these critical success factors and using a hybrid of project-based approach and operations excellence implement OPInvoice seamlessly once the client requirements are accurately captured. Implementation timeframe is further elaborated under the Implementation Methodology menu option.

Please provide the pricing details?
We offer flexible pricing solutions. For further details on pricing, please write to us at apinfo@opiglobal.com

Can I buy one module of OPInvoice or do I need to buy the whole tool (Purchasing/Payables/Payments)?
You can buy one module or whole of the product depending on your needs. However, the Purchasing and Payments module will be available in the 2nd quarter of 2011 whereas the Payables module is available for implementation currently.

How do you cater to the training needs?
OPInvoice comes with a detailed user manual as well as recorded video material that would assist you in training. Further, we have a dedicated help desk team that would handle all your queries related to OPInovice.
8. What type of organizations are the best fit for OPInvoice?
OPInvoice can be deployed for organizations of all sizes and across various industries requiring an efficient and seamless invoice approval process. OPInvoice can also elegantly suit the requirements of small and mid-sized companies requiring a cost effective procure-to-pay solution.


Deployment

What IT infrastructure do we need to implement OPInvoice within our organization?
OPInvoice is a cloud based web application offered in the SaaS (Software as a Service) model. Hence your organization can access this application through the internet using a web browser without purchasing any additional IT Infrastructure.

Can OPInvoice application be installed within our organization’s IT Infrastructure, instead of being accessed over the internet?
No, at present OPInvoice is hosted within OPI’s network and available only in the SaaS model. This ensures that all new future versions and its associated features are easily and transparently made available to all our client users without any additional effort from their end.
Security and Availability

How Secure is our organization’s data within OPInvoice?
OPInvoice implements strict authentication and role based access for all users. Hence, a user can access only the data for which she has been granted authorization.

What is the availability of OPInvoice? Will it be available 24x7?
OPInvoice will be available 24x7 on all days except for few days on weekends when it could be brought down for maintenance and/or upgrades, typically once in a month. However, such maintenance / upgrade downtimes will be notified in advance to the client users. Also, care will be taken to avoid / minimize any unplanned downtimes that may be required to fix any critical maintenance issues.


ERP Integration

Can OPInvoice interface with my existing ERP?
Yes, OPInvoice can integrate with all standard ERP’s. Most of the standard ERPs available in the market provide APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for seamless integration with third party applications like OPInvoice. If the ERP used in your organization provides market standard APIs, there should be no problem in integration with OPInvoice.


Invoice Approvals

Will the approvers from our organization be able to see the invoice images before approval? If so, how?
All invoices sent by your suppliers to OPI either through mail, email, fax etc are scanned as images into OPI’s document management system. OPInvoice fully integrates with this document management system & all document images can be viewed from OPInvoice by clicking the image link.

How will the approvers come to know that there are invoices pending for their approval? Do they have to keep checking OPInvoice all the time?
Approvers are notified through automated emails whenever there are invoices pending for their action – either approval or some clarification. Approvers can login into OPInvoice upon receiving such notifications and carry out their tasks. Moreover, OPInvoice can also be configured to send reminder notifications for invoices that are pending for a long time.

Our organization works with suppliers from various countries and we receive invoices from all over the world. Can OPInvoice handle multiple currencies? If yes, How?
OPInvoice can support entry of invoices in multiple currencies. It then transfers the invoice amount along with the currency information to your organization’s ERP. The currency conversion task is handled by your organization’s ERP, since it is best equipped to handle currency conversions at the time of posting.