However in many company, the Accounting department is challenged to deliver value to the bottom line, creating conditions for revenue generation rather than serving as a cost center. Those challenges include:

• P2P function efficiency – Are all transactions process accurately and on-time? Eg. invoices and purchase orders, accurate payments.
• Prioritizing visibility – Do you know exactly what task are assigned to your accounting staffs and how long it takes to complete?
• Generating cost savings – Are you able to capitalize on early‐payment incentives and avoid late‐payment fees, or is your organization paying more than it needs to by missing these opportunities?
• Allocating talent – Are the talents of your organization’s P2P stakeholders aligned with their roles in the process? What is your cost if the two are misaligned?

These challenges are eventually rooted in the paper and process. Overflow of paper that are not being able to be organized, reviewed, and shared efficiently, creates a barrier to an organization’s success and profitability.

Examine the Paper and Process Cost Through the 4 key criteria:

1. Time – Follow a single invoice as it makes its way through your department. How long does it take? Where are the bottlenecks?
2. Priority – Do invoices with the shortest turn‐around times or that offer early‐payment incentives get paid first?
3. Costs – How much is spent on postage, courier services, and the like? What are your department’s overtime expenses? If an invoice gets lost, how long does it take before it is found?
4. Vendors – Compare the number of calls to and from suppliers and customers against invoices that are actually processed. A significant difference can mean major inefficiency. Are your vendors generating timely invoices for your payment?

Assessing these four factors puts P2P and information technology in the best position to wisely evaluate the technology available to address paper and process challenges.

Fostering Intelligent Automation Technology

Intelligence Automation Technology can help organizations to reduce paper from the P2P processes and also eliminate process challenges, that is from tracking the flow of an invoice, to identifying underperforming employees, to determining the number and prioritization of invoices requiring action. This technology enables right data appears at the right time after the first data input, and new information is continually added along the way.

Microsoft Dynamics ERP solution features technologies like this that enable visibility help to make accounting an important role for C‐level leadership. The visibility enables C‐suite to make real-time decisions refer to the realistic operations information and accurate forecasted information that are available.