Part 2: Paperless Automation as the Solution

In Part 1, we listed the most common challenges we hear from prospects when it comes to managing paper and financial processes. When we hear about the challenges that prospects are facing, our goal is to demonstrate how paperless automation can solve them. Read on to learn how MetaViewer Paperless Automation combats the problems that today’s businesses are facing when they’re burdened with paper.

Challenge 1: The AP staff is spending too much time doing manual data entry.

Solution 1: Robotic Process Automation (RPA) functionality eliminates the need for manual data entry by automating tedious, repetitive processes. MetaViewer captures information from virtually any document – digital or paper – and automatically pulls out the pertinent information, routing it to the proper approvers and indexing it without the need for human interference.

Challenge 2: We’re spending too much money on postage, printer ink, paper, toner and other paper-related supplies.

Solution 2: One stamp or one cartridge of ink may not break the bank, but years and years of toner, postage and paper storage add up. For example, a typical four-drawer filing cabinet takes up about six square feet of office space. Additionally, it costs a company $25,000 to fill a filing cabinet, on average, and about $2,100 per year to maintain it. When you eliminate paper, you eliminate the costs of paper storage and other paper-related costs, saving money that you can put toward other business needs.

Challenge 3: Our processes are inefficient and we’re losing time and money.

Solution 3: When processes are automated, you eliminate the inefficiencies caused by passing stacks of paper from desk to desk. According to research done by AccountingWEB, the average staff member or accountant makes 60 trips to a photocopier per week, and spends 15 hours per month printing documents. This adds up for companies, especially when you factor in that the average hourly rate of a working adult in the U.S. is around $25 per hour. Also bear in mind the fact that executives spend 150 hours per year looking for misplaced documents. These labor costs and the wasted time can be greatly reduced by automating processes.

Challenge 4: We’re losing track of invoices and paying them late.

Solution 4: According to research by the Aberdeen Group, companies without a document management solution averaged 14.4 days to process an invoice. Some companies took as long as 34.4 days. You may be paying excess fees due to late payments that continue to accrue interest. You may also be missing out on early payment discounts by not knowing the optimal time to pay. Paperless automation allows you to see where invoices are in queue and where bottlenecks and delays may be so that you can optimize your workflow and get payments out the door faster.

Challenge 5: We’re not meeting government record retention regulations.

Solution 5: As a business, you’re required to keep documents for a certain amount of time, as regulated by the government. Those documents also need to be referenceable and retrievable on demand. Storing information on paper makes it difficult to find documents when you need them and assure that you are keeping up with record retention regulations. However, when documents are stored digitally, you can keep them for as long as needed without taking up valuable office spare. Information is also keyword searchable for easy retrieval, just in case!

Challenge 6: Our documents aren’t stored securely.

Solution 6: Are you prepared in case disaster strikes? If your documents aren’t stored securely, you could lose a ton of valuable business information if there should be a fire, flood, hurricane or other natural disaster. Digital document management allows you access to information from wherever you are, whenever you need it, safe and sound.

Challenge 7: Our current document management system doesn’t integrate with our ERP solution.

Solution 7: If you’re using a homegrown document management solution, you may have trouble integrating it with your ERP, like Microsoft Dynamics. MetaViewer Paperless Automation integrates tightly with all Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions, as well as other ERPs, making it simple to route documents back-and-forth and to access all of your financial documents.

Challenge 8: We don’t know the status of invoices and the C-Suite doesn’t have any visibility.

Solution 8: Charts give you and the C-Suite insight into the status of invoices so that you can be sure that payments are going out on-time and the workflow is working as efficiently as possible. No mysteries, no late payments, no missing invoices!

Is there a challenge your company has encountered that we haven't covered? Shoot us a message at info@metafile.com to talk it through with out automation experts!