ERP systems provide a platform for complete business management. Important departmental functions can be accomplished with ease and users have the advantage of coordinating and communicating inter-departmental and intra departmental activities for a more collaborative management of their business. But ERP systems also hold a lot of data and documents, and are more or less a central repository of all company information. This data may be part of task implementation or may be needed to complete jobs in your ERP system. Anytime your organization interacts with external and internal stakeholders, a lot of data is generated. Communication with vendors and customers, onboarding of new employees, inter-and-intra-departmental communication, meetings, note takings, payroll management, investor and media relations, etc. all involve interactions that lead to the generation of a lot of business data and documents. This data again, becomes useful to propel business forward. When it comes to your ERP system, a simple task like monthly accounting requires your staff to manually input data from relevant source documents like vendor invoices, receipts, credit memos, bills, bank statements, etc. Without transaction data, it is not possible for your staff to pay-off monthly expenses to creditors and reconcile payable and receivables. Basic accounting duties can come to a halt due to unavailability of data.
All the steps performed to secure the right data for your ERP system are typically done manually. An AP clerk will routinely collect and sort all incoming invoices. Then as a next step, he/she will perform data entry to get all the details into a company spreadsheet. After data entry, it is important to know that the data that has been entered is correct and reliable. This involves a lengthy and laborious data validation stage where your clerk will have to tally invoices with the corresponding purchase orders, and maybe perform other validation checks like checking the sum total on an invoice and corroborating the line-item details of an invoice with a purchase order. In case of any exceptions during the validation stage, the clerk will have to consult a verification manager, who will also either approve or reject the payments giants a particular invoice. Post approvals, payments to vendors can be made via your ERP system.
All ERP transactions must be recorded properly, which means your AP clerk will have to perform data entry again to get all the details in the ERP system. All the steps preceding data entry to your ERP are very time-consuming and laborious. Not to mention, in case of errors during the invoice processing stage, you will end up working with bad data in your ERP system, which leads to poor business outcomes. These business outcomes that we are talking about can prove very costly to your company — a wrong data entry or data validation step can result in you paying more to your vendor. ERP systems function well and optimally when there is timely access to data. Manual data entry to an ERP system is time-consuming and costly. Also, specific jobs that need to be completed in an ERP require timely access to data.
For instance, to address a customer issue, ERP system users need to be able to pull up current data on the customer immediately. This current data can be sourced from documents that show a recent customer transaction like a purchase order or receipt. These transaction documents must, therefore, be accessed, filed, and stored in your ERP database as soon as they enter your business environment.
Manual effort is erroneous and slow. Technology offers a better way to acquire, validate, and enter data in an ERP system. Intelligent process automation, which combines digital transformation technologies like AI, machine learning, robotic process automation, business process automation, recognition software like OCR/ICR, and intelligent data capture technology helps accelerate document processing and data capture. The result is a streamlined approach to data acquisition and data export to ERP systems, with as little manual intervention as possible.
Benefits
- Eliminate manual data entry errors and delays
- Accelerate data availability to ERP systems
- Work with unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data in ERPs
- Dramatically lower the costs and inefficiencies of bad data in ERPs
- Bridge the gap in automation from when data enters and oraxiation to when it is entered in ERP, and low data silos or instances of missing data
- Have a single view of document flows from capture of a document from the edges of your organization to export to your ERP system
By accelerating the pace and efficiency with which documents and data enter your ERP, you will be able to implement tasks quickly. By ensuring hands-free data entry and intelligent document processing, you will have the benefit of working with accurate data every time.
Intelligent data capture and document processing help elevate your ERP performance by making sure you work with accurate data every time. Working with accurate data ensures accurate business outcomes.
