Electronic invoices as a means of reducing costs
No business can escape billing. Indeed, regardless of the sector you specialized in or what type of product or service you sell, you have to issue daily, weekly or monthly invoices. Of course, the billing process is far from being simple and involves costs for instating an efficient management system which allows your clients to receive their invoice on time, in accordance with standard practices.
As a firm specialized in business process improvement, our mission is to help you make sense of your management systems and to suggest practical solutions that will help reduce costs, better manage your resources and maximize the value of your investments.
For example, did you know that putting an electronic invoice management system in place could help you achieve significant savings by reducing management costs considerably?
While invoicing systems can be costly upon implementation, it is preferable to invest in such a system, since your long-term savings on management costs can reach between 60% and 80%, after only 6 months to one year after the change is made.
Among the principal benefits of resorting to the automation of invoice management systems are the savings associated with suppressing the processing of paper invoices – hence eliminating the costs linked to the manual production documents –, the possibility of treating a higher quantity of invoices with less resources – reduction of the risk of human error – which can turn out to be very costly since they have to be corrected –, higher efficiency in data classification, better quality control, and finally, a better cash-flow controlling ability. Because the electronic invoice is sent and received almost instantly, it eliminates the issues linked to the time and delays related to the reception and the payment of documents, since the payment date is set as per the date of receipt of an invoice rather than its date of issue.
Of course, the automation of invoice management systems also provides companies with many other benefits, but despite those multiples advantages, the use of electronic invoices is not as popular as you would think.
The most recent statistics indicate that only 5% of B2B invoices issued in 2012 were in electronic format. That only goes to show how several companies are still hesitant to automate their management systems for various reasons. But even if automating invoicing processes can be costly on a short-term scale, it is still a safe and effective means of reducing the costs on a long-term basis.
The role played by the firms that specialize in business process improvement is precisely to provide advice and help you familiarize yourself with better management practices, and it may be advisable for your company to contact one of these firms to seek advice on what solution would be the best to suit your business’ needs.
Contact us today to find out more about our services and which automated invoicing systems would be more appropriate for you and your company.
