Once a company realizes the need for the Accounts Payable department to become more efficient through the use of a good invoice workflow tool, it is important that the implementation process of said solution is carried out following a route plan that allows for an easy and agile adaptation, without obstacles and which minimizes the impact on employees.
Invoice Workflow tool
If special attention is paid to this process, avoiding as much as possible incidents and rejection to the change, efficiency is achieved in a shorter time than when there is no well-designed change strategy.
Invoice workflow: Key points for your implementation
1. Think of the indicators that will allow us to measure the evolution and the reaching of objectives. In the majority of cases, these KPIs (key Performance Indicators) are useful even after the change, to give us the capacity to react to changes and evolution in the company or in the providers’ market. We have already spoken about the importance to choose the best indicators and metrics in the AP area.
2. Communicate adequately the benefits of the new tool horizontally, to other departments in the company, and vertically to management. To do this, the form in which the tool connects, in the different steps of the invoice processing or in the possible data extraction, to personnel from other areas must be well worked out.
3. Designate employees who are going to use the invoice workflow tool and involve them in the process. From the employees, who use it daily and have a deep knowledge of it, to the managers who are going to receive data or reports or the supervisors who only use the tool to give an occasional authorization for an invoice. All of them must experience from the very start all the steps to be taken and should receive the necessary training easily and practically for the new tool.
4. The knowledge to transmit to the company managers the strategic value of the solution in relation to visibility and control, as well as the capacity for savings and efficiency in invoice processing. The ability to count on their support in the push for and normalization of the new tool, is fundamental.
5. Connecting the new tool with the other software used in the company, guarantees adequate format compatibility and communication. The solution to be implemented should allow the most common standard formats, but a connective environment must be configured that contributes to efficiency and improving performance that the adoption of the new invoice workflow tool implies.
6. Scalability and flexibility. The implementation must allow for the adaptation to workload, according to the increase or decrease of it, within certain reasonable margins. It should be flexible and allow changes to configuration depending on changes in the company.
In general, it is necessary to evangelize and motivate, within the corporate culture itself, towards change and evolution. A company that instills in its employees an innovative and proactive attitude towards the improvement of processes and technology will be a dynamic and competitive company, alert to changes in the different aspects that affect it.
