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How Accounts Payable Process Can Benefit From The Application Of AI And RPA

One of the most important processes in any organization is the accounts payable process. The accounts payable department is responsible for maintaining the cash flow of the organization, preventing any risks and fraud, and keeping vendor relationships healthy.

While it is largely an area of extensive manual work, advancement in Artificial intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has made it possible for businesses to automate and streamline the process. The advancement of robotic process automation in the supply chain has made it possible for companies to keep track of systems and tasks.

This is crucial for time-extensive procedures that can hamper the efficiency of the entire organization.

A report by Kofax states that automation in this process can reduce costs by 81% and improve overall efficiency by 73%. This article discusses the impact of automation on the Accounts Payable process.

Understanding the Accounts Payable Process

  • The team designated to procure a product or service will create a purchase order, which is a contract between the business and the third-party vendor.
  • The order details the basic information about the purchase.
  • The team then examines the shipment to compare it to the original purchase order so a receipt report can be generated.
  • The vendor shares the invoice that shows what they have delivered and at what price. The invoice is then verified/approved by 2 or 3 signature authorities in the organization.

The overall time and cost involved in these steps are why the process requires automation. The manual entries and approval of invoices take up a lot of time, and the variety of formats that invoices come in often causes a lot of issues for the Accounts Payable team as well. In such situations, AI and RPA can largely reduce these time delays and speed up the process significantly.

Apart from the accounts team and departments, the tasks carried out manually by the HR team in the offices are also automated by the RPA. Integrating RPA in HR can help in bringing down manual tasks and ensure efficiency and speed.

The Effect of AI and RPA

On average, it takes anywhere from 4 to 16 days to complete an accounts payable cycle, while manually invoicing and approving payments costs about $23. RPA and AI can help in streamlining these workflows as they can replicate human tasks within a digital environment, which in turn, reduces the cycle time significantly.

In fact, in terms of money, processing one invoice through the use of RPA and intelligent systems only costs $4. In addition to bringing considerable cost and time savings, there are a plethora of other very significant benefits that automation and artificial intelligence can get to the entire accounts payable department.

Here Are Some Of The Significant Benefits:

  • Scanning and converting invoices from different formats to capture the data. This includes physical copies, scan copies, PDFs, emails, and faxes.
  • Classify and sort invoices automatically
  • Check for duplicate invoices and send alerts to relevant departments
  • Validate invoice data
  • Route invoices for fast approvals
  • Automated actions and reminders for payments
  • Reporting and analytics
  • Reduced human error
  • Improved process control for better compliance
  • Enhanced process transparency
  • Improved relations with vendors and increased customer satisfaction
  • Accuracy of data

Your Accounts Payable process needs to be robust and secure in all aspects, which is why it needs the boost of AI and RPA in the system. It can transform how you see your AP process by making it a quick, agile, and efficient process that is less laborious and costs you a fraction. Just like RPA in the supply chain, RPA can automate and fasten everything while minimizing errors to a great extent.

You can get the power of automation through the leading RPA and AI services provider, SVAM International. We have dedicated teams in the US, India, and Mexico alongside a global pool of talent to address all your needs at all times of the day. Book your consultation now.

Banking and financial services are the backbones of the economy. The human efforts in these sectors are approaching a point of being overwhelmed, and the competition from FinTech and other services is further putting a lot of pressure. These institutions are doing everything possible to optimize their spending while also boosting their productivity. The rising scarcity of skilled professionals and increasing costs of hiring resources have given birth to the need for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in financial services. And financial institutions across the globe are eying automation technologies as a next step in the evolution. But how has RPA impacted the sector and what benefits has it brought to the table? Let’s take a look.Benefits of RPA in Banking and Financial Services
  • Cost-Effective
    Cost-saving is one of the most important factors in any industry and for a financial service provider, it is monumental. Manually doing back-office work, fund transfers, claim processing, and so many similar tasks often take time. This is why such tasks are often outsourced. Keeping them in-house with RPA can save a financial institution time and money. In fact, small investments made into RPA right now will give immediate value benefits.
  • Risk and Compliance
    Auditing in banking and financial institutions is a critical aspect of operations. With RPA, it becomes easy to check the audit trails because they are digitized and cover almost every step of the way. In addition, it also reduces the risks in business while also increasing the level of process compliance.
  • Improved Productivity
    In the contemporary business environment, there are still a number of operations, transactions, and consumer interactions that happen beyond normal bank hours. RPA keeps working 24/7, completing tasks overnight without tiring. On top of that, it can complete more tasks with consistency in an hour as compared to a human while trying to maintain the same level of efficiency.
  • Zero Infrastructure Cost and Easy Deployment
    Implementing RPA does not require any significant changes in the infrastructure, especially if it is cloud-based. It is a program that automates according to the UI, reducing the hardware and maintenance costs. Moreover, deploying RPA is not difficult; all you need is one professional, and then it is simply just plug-and-play.
  • Reduced Human Error
    Businesses today need greater data security, least disruptions and quality work consistently. RPA is the best way to reduce human error from the equation and improve the overall accuracy of the process, while also ensuring compliance.
RPA is a novel innovation that has been transforming the domain of financial services. It has a number of applications and great benefits to offer. This is the primary reason why RPA in financial services has gained such a vast amount of popularity in the last few years. If you also wish to make RPA an integral part of your work, book your appointment with SVAM International Inc. today.
Great Neck, NY, USA – (24 April 2020) – SVAM International is pleased to announce the deployment of Robotic Process Automation technology (RPA) to accelerate the reporting of COVID-19 testing results across Suffolk County (NY). The application of this advanced technology benefited the County by dramatically reducing the delay in reporting test results as well as virtually eliminating the manual effort necessary to accomplish this process.Great Neck, NY — 04/27/2020 –Prior to automation, Suffolk County was limited to manually processing patient lab test data provided by New York State. At the current testing volume, this manual process required over fifteen full-time experienced nurses to handle the data transfer. The County projected the necessary personnel/ resources dedicated to this task to continue to increase in line with the volume of testing.SVAM was engaged by Suffolk County on an emergency project to make the data transfer process scalable and timely, while sustaining data quality. The SVAM team leveraged cutting edge technology (UiPath’s – Robotic Process Automation – RPA) to automate the end-to-end process improving the quality and availability of the data for the County in less than ten days.Scott Mastellon – Commissioner of Information Technology, Suffolk County“SVAM’s ability to quickly understand our problem, stand up a team of experts to design a solution and successfully implement that solution within 10 days was simply incredible. SVAM’s commitment to our needs and ability to execute was critical to County’s Covid-19 response efforts.”Manav Bhasin – Managing Director, SVAM International“The SVAM team took on this challenge and leveraged our RPA expertise to help Suffolk County. We worked tirelessly with the Suffolk County IT team to quickly develop a solution. From the onset of the project, as we analyzed their manual process, we were able to envision how their process could be automated with an army of “Bots” freeing up valuable personnel for more critical patient related tasks. The successful implementation of this project has provided a great deal of satisfaction knowing the impact on Suffolk County and its residents.”About SVAM InternationalSVAM International is a global Information Technology (IT) services provider that delivers value to clients by providing the people and solutions they need. Since its inception in 1994, SVAM has grown into a $50M global organization with over 700 technology professionals in the United States, Mexico, and India, with skills across a wide range of technologies.About Suffolk CountySuffolk County incorporates the easternmost extreme of the New York City metropolitan area. The largest of Long Island’s four counties and the second largest of 62 counties in New York State, with a population of almost 1.5 million peopleSource : click here
It’s not hard to develop a business case for digital labor and robotic process automation (RPA) that shows attractive returns. But will it be accurate? Often, many financial institutions don’t see the results they expect. Without knowing their true pain points or support requirements, companies will miss out on ways to scale the benefits, and they’ll leave money on the table. With a realistic roadmap, you won’t be surprised by hidden costs, and you’ll apply digital labor where it can have the greatest effect.While financial institutions are attracted to appeals of digital labor from software providers and business process outsourcers, many financial institutions are facing an unpleasant reality: the savings they’re seeing are nowhere near the savings they’ve budgeted for.There are two complementary factors at work here:
  • Budgets were unrealistic, because financial institutions didn’t adequately address digital labor’s cost drivers
  • The value from digital labor inevitably comes from applying it strategically and consistently, rather than rushing into a narrowly defined technology implementation
Know your costsDigital labor projects are likely to face a variety of contingencies. They’re all solvable, but they all involve additional cost and overhead. Digital labor projects include a mixture of costs whether you own the tools or you outsource the operation. By setting appropriate expectations at the start of your digital labor projects and having a clear-eyed assessment of what your costs will be, you are in the best position to make better decisions as the project proceeds.Getting the most value from digital laborBased on our experience, you can use a general ratio of 2-2.5 full-time equivalent (FTE) per robot, depending on scale. This being said, you won’t see an adequate return on investment if you merely free up a few hours in a person’s week. If you can restack some activities across roles so they can be automated more consistently, you’ll be more likely to free up the FTEs you budgeted for. Furthermore, to scale a digital labor program you need to look at it in the context of your overall operational strategy. Otherwise, you can get stuck with antiquated processes or systems that you’ve intended to phase out, which can kill your ROI.Developing the business caseMost large financial institutions we know have implemented one or more small proof-of-concept projects, but they typically haven’t made the jump to broader adoption. So how do you develop a realistic business case? By understanding the reasons why companies don’t see full savings from digital labor and implementing a realistic roadmap, you’ll be able to apply the technology where it can have the greatest effect.
2018 was the year of GDPR. The General Data Protection Regulation not only became visible to everyone using the internet and suddenly having to agree to lots of data privacy declarations, cookie consents and opt-in modalities. Even more importantly, GDPR affected businesses and how they handle, delete and store data.As organizations prepared for the GDPR to be implemented in 2018, data governance was already a trending topic in last year’s edition of the BI Trend Monitor, and it remains among the top trends due to the many remaining open questions regarding the implementation of sustainable data governance, covering topics such as data access, privacy and security but also roles, skills and processes. Although most of the other trends within the IT landscape are not so directly connected to a specific regulation or law, their impact can be equally powerful and decisive for future business success.BARC’s BI Trend Monitor 2019 focuses on the main drivers within the BI and data management market. Gathering experience from 2,679 participants, we asked users, consultants and vendors to assess the most important BI trends. These trends are compared by industry, regional and company-specific variables and provide insights into the latest developments on the BI market.With the rising complexity of the business intelligence environment, the identification of trends and market developments is a key factor in effective decision-making. It is increasingly important to use the latest technologies and approaches in order to cope with digitalization and market competition.The Most (and Least) Important BI Trends in 2019We asked users, consultants and software vendors of BI and data management technology to give their personal rating of the importance of twenty trending topics that we presented to them.Data quality/master data management, data discovery/visualization and self-service BI are the three topics BI practitioners identify as the most important trends in their work.At the other end of the spectrum, cloud BI/data management,  visual design standards and IoT analytics were voted as the least important of the twenty trends covered in BARC’s survey.Our View on the ResultsThe three most important trends remained the same as last year with master data and data quality management in first position, data discovery in second and self-service BI in third. While master data and data quality management builds a strong foundation for handling data, the significance attached to data discovery and self-service BI shows that the empowerment of business users is a consistently strong trend.This impression is also backed up by the newly introduced and fifth ranked topic “establishing a data-driven culture”, which depends on greater inclusion of various business departments (aside from IT). Data governance, which remains in fourth position is still seen as an important trend. Here, again, GDPR comes into play. Although data governance covers a much wider spectrum than ‘just’ providing data protection, the rising significance of data governance can also be traced back to an increase in data security awareness.The lack of interest in IoT analytics, which features in last place in its debut year in the BI Trend Monitor, leads to the assumption that businesses are neither prepared nor really focused on implementing this special kind of analytics at the moment. With IoT itself just emerging in importance, it will probably take some time before the potential added value of IoT analytics begins to unfold.Trends that have clearly increased in importance compared to last year include agile BI development and advanced analytics and analytics teams. While agile BI development is connected to a revolutionized cooperative approach between lines of business and IT, advanced analytics expresses the need for businesses to use data in a more beneficial way. Also, advanced analytics includes machine learning, which is tightly interconnected to many hyped use cases in the sphere of artificial intelligence.Conversely, topics decreasing in importance include real-time analytics and mobile BI. It seems that the perceived practical benefit of these trends has not become as obvious as expected to most BI practitioners yet. Either their current tools and systems are not able to provide these kinds of application, or priorities have changed and other trends have become more appealing.In the next few weeks and months, we will post and update a series of articles looking at each BI trend in more detail. You will learn how different regions, industries, user types, company sizes and best-in-class companies rate the various trends and how their views have changed since last year. Sign up for our newsletter below and we’ll keep you informed about the latest articles.Source : click here
With robotic process automation (RPA) becoming a prominent topic of discussion, financial institutions are thinking of ways to integrate digital labor into operations. While swift results can be enticing, firms should identify relevant risks and ask the right questions before diving into implementation. By doing the initial legwork, firms can position themselves for success. Streamlined processes and effective controls can help pinpoint issues early and ensure a positive return on investment.Don’t wait for it to breakImplementing new technology is often a long and tedious process. This is why it’s so important to get all the steps right. RPA requires a structured controls approach to effectively address new issues that a financial institution may not have encountered before. Honing your focus on relevant risks and asking the right questions will ensure a successful RPA investment.Risks to keep on the radarThe following five areas of risks are important to address:
  • Executive: Have the right people bought in?
  • Technical: How will testing work?
  • Change management: Who manages communication?
  • Operational: What controls exist to monitor performance?
  • Functional: Who designs controls?
Questions to considerDoing the initial legwork can save additional effort later. As you implement your RPA control framework, we encourage you to ask the following questions:
  • How will you choose your projects?
  • How do you configure robots?
  • Who’s in charge?
  • Are you in compliance?
  • What about cybersecurity and data privacy?
  • What’s the backup plan?
  • Are you ready for change?
While controls may come as an afterthought in new process implementations, financial institutions can greatly benefit from effective control structures. Starting early ensures that implementation goes smoothly, and your business gets the most out of RPA.

An electrical power management system (EPMS) is an electronic system that provides fine-grained information about the flow of power in an electrical power generation system or power substation.

What is an EPMS System?

EPMS record and provide data about power systems and power-related events. That information is used to manage power generation efficiencies, batteries and capacitor banks, gas or steam turbine relays, and other systems in power generation stations and power substations. EPMS systems can visually display real-time or historical data. The system ties together the essential data that formerly had to be checked on numerous readouts and gauges by equipment operators. Supervisory control and data acquisition systems (SCADA) systems often use EPMS ERP software, especially those used in power plants.

Besides power generation stations, electrical power management systems can be found in manufacturing plants, on large ships’ generators, and in similar high-power demand locations. Some EPMS are their own systems, while others integrate with supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), and yet others are hybrid systems.

EPMS that include generator protection and control (GPC) relays and those that are integrated with SCADA can automate many power-related relays. This control helps increase power efficiency, especially in times of high draw. Some products claim they can help reduce peak power draw by 50%. Applied to the power grid, this reduction could theoretically alleviate concerns of a power crisis resulting from peak demand.

Better power management is helpful in terms of smoothing power demands. Smoothing out peak and low demand is often very beneficial and lower in cost as the problem in energy systems is often not that overall average power is too high but that peak draw times exceed momentary power production.

Having EPMS ERP software will help in determining the usage in various countries like North America.

Get the SVAM Support

The subject matter at SVAM can help you in defining the needs of your business and give you the right EPMS ERP software to integrate into the system. At SVAM International, we employ the best practices in the industry, combine them with the latest technology of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and provide our clients with improved visibility, efficiency, and overall intelligence across their organizations.

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