Visualizing
Better Business Outcomes
By Ed Pearce
Cash is king, as the old saying goes. And that’s never been truer than in today’s
business environment, where the combination of volatile financial markets and a
slowing economy has created a new push to preserve working capital and streamline
corporate cash management.
Key to meeting these objectives is the ability to improve visibility into, and control
over, accounts receivable (A/R) and accounts payable (A/P) interactions across the
enterprise and within departments. With this visibility, organizations can accelerate
their response time to changing business conditions, save money, and ultimately,
deliver better business outcomes.
With over $19.4 trillion in businesstobusiness
spending via paper check expected
this year, there are enormous opportunities to reduce invoice processing costs for
buyers, accelerate collections for suppliers and cut the time required to resolve
disputes and reconcile payments.
Financial Insights, an IDC company, says to achieve this visibility, and impact the
financial supply chain, vendors and banks alike must be willing to develop a common
shared platform with security, authentication, and identity verification as a standard.
Standalone solutions ignore the fundamental requirement for interconnectedness and
ubiquity, making it difficult to realize the benefits of an integrated financial supply
chain, Financial Insights notes.
To create this common platform, and bridge the gap between legacy financial systems
and processes, more companies are implementing hosted image and data archives to
help drive cash management. Today, hosted image archives are supporting cash
management functions by storing images of outbound statements and incoming
vendor invoices; supporting lockbox, remittance, and explanation of benefits (EOB)
processing applications; facilitating intraday
exceptions management; driving
payments processing tracking and reporting; and more.
The visibility and control of a hosted image archive addresses common cash
management issues by providing an efficient and costeffective
means for
organizations of all sizes to:
· Improve visibility and control over financial interactions across the enterprise
· Use images and data to drive more intelligent financial decisions
· Address issues before they have an impact on the business
· Speed reaction time to shifting financial opportunities or threats
· Accelerate the resolution of payments exceptions
· Streamline regulatory compliance and control
An enterprise with a comprehensive view of its financial supply chain has a distinct
competitive advantage. With a comprehensive understanding of its financial
position, a company that adopts a hosted archive model will best be able to