Deploying AP Automation in the Cloud

Cloud Meets the Immediacy & Cost Concerns, Typical of Growing Companies

The pandemic and ensuing social restrictions have accelerated investments in the cloud, no doubt, but the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of the cloud should have long made it a regular feature within organizations. The general reluctance to move critical business operations to the cloud may have been due to security concerns, especially when considering having proprietary software and critical data on the internet.

But for businesses wanting to cut down on the running costs of managing daily operations that usually take up a lot of capital, including hardware and other on-site resources, cloud is the more feasible option. Cloud meets the immediacy expressed by companies to deploy and run software solutions on the go, without having to shake up existing infrastructure or underlying systems and processes.

Why It Pays to Work in the Cloud

We’ll discuss the basics of cloud computing and why it pays to have a well-rounded cloud solution to take care of your mission critical operations.

So, what exactly is a cloud? Well, it is a fancy term to denote the delivery of computing resources and services over the internet. Everything that is needed to implement typical on-site computing such as servers, databases, storage, processing power, software applications, and networking is now available in the cloud.

How does that help, you ask? Well, for one, you don’t ‘own’ a lot of the resources you need to get work done, rather, you just ‘rent’ it out on a subscription basis. This saves companies a lot on capital costs and office space, not to mention the ease of accessing computing resources over the internet without worrying about maintenance and repair, the complexities of hardware and software setup, and storage limitations, typical of small and mid-sized companies.

Cloud computing offers cumulative benefits to growing companies wanting an IT setup that scales as their business grows, but of course, without having to deplete their cash reserves every time they need the latest IT infrastructure to manage a new project.

Hosting AP Automation Software in the Cloud

Instead of generalizing the viability of the cloud over on-site computing, let us look at an application area for the cloud, typically a manual, document-intensive function that requires a lot of computing power. The accounts payable function would be a good example that requires a lot of IT resources and is central to prudent financial management in any company.

Accounts payable is a manual, document-intensive task which, if done wrong, could result in overpayments or underpayments to vendors, and poor debt and cash management. A lot of the manual tasks like data entry, validation, verification and approvals of vendor invoices for use in an ERP system can be automated. Intelligent Process Automation, employing digital transformation technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA), AI, Machine Learning, and Intelligent Data Capture, performs straight-through processing of vendor invoices for use in ERPs and related business applications.

• Cloud hosted AP automation software eliminates the fuss around installation and maintenance, typical of on-premise software.
• The software can be deployed and run immediately compared to on-premise setup, which is time-consuming.
• Cloud AP Automation software is automatically updated with new upgrades and feature releases, which is convenient, compared to on-premise software where the users need to purchase the latest versions and update the software themselves. Cloud eliminates issues around software compatibility, downloads, and disk storage space.
• AP Automation software is often integrated with back-end systems and line-of-business applications to enable end-to-end process flows from invoice data capture to final reporting and analytics in say, ERPs and ECMs. Cloud makes it convenient to integrate with other applications in the cloud like accounting software, enabling faster payments to vendors.
• Cloud offers greater collaboration with vendors as all communication is conveyed over the internet. Also, centralization of services and resources like servers and databases makes it convenient to track, access, share, and distribute transaction data, AP files, payment information, and audit reports from anywhere.
• Access to on-premise software is limited to a company’s internal network, making it difficult to post or work on invoice processing outside the office. Cloud computing enables access to the internet, and therefore, computing resources on the internet from anywhere, allowing users to access and work on vendor invoicing at any time.

Subscription based purchasing reduces the overall cost of deployment and usage of cloud hosted AP automation software.

Want to get vendor invoicing right? Subscribe to Artsyl’s AP invoice automation software. The cloud hosted application integrates with ERPs, ECMs, and a host of other line-of-business applications. This makes it convenient to work on your vendor invoices from anywhere and export accurate AP data to back-end systems, without having to worry about installations, upgrades, data storage, and accessibility.

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