Author: Sridhar Potladurti

In modern ERP systems, invoice creation and processing is a well-defined process and automated to an extent across organizations. Despite that, every organization has its own set of standard operating procedures that require tweaks/enhancements. There are intelligent document recognition software like Kofax, Oracle Intelligent Document Recognition (IDR), which offer the built features using AI and ML capabilities to identify the text and images on the invoices sent by the vendors to be paid, which are usually in the pdf format. There is no specific invoice layout or template that is followed, which leads to multiple variations in terms of layout and template differences, adding up the complexity for the built-in features not able to identify certain fonts, data inside the HTML tables, etc., leading to partial data entry causing the invoice entry operator to manually review and update the missing fields for each invoice. 

Invoices are emailed as PDF attachments to a dedicated Inbox setup to receive the incoming invoices from the vendors directly. It is advisable to segregate the inboxes based on the geographic location of the vendor and business units so they can be scheduled to auto-import and create invoices with the invoice details auto-populated.

Cloud technologies have revolutionized the software application development and delivery process. As more and more companies are realizing the benefits of reduced infrastructure costs, automated production deployments, and increased security in the cloud, commercial off-the-shelf products are on the rise to provide business-ready solutions to the customer. The products that were traditionally developed, bundled, and deployed on the premises of the customer or hosted in-house to provide the applications and services are on the transformation path to the cloud. These Prem applications always have challenges as the customers are on different versions of the product, on different infrastructure versions, and specific customizations for the customer need more maintenance; scaling the applications based on the usage is often more a reactive approach than a proactive approach.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications alleviate the vendor selling the product from the above challenges as all its customers are on the same version of the cloud infrastructure through patches and upgrades, which the customers can’t avoid. The ability to scale up or down depending on the customer's requests is proactive. Also, it provides enhanced customer experience by releasing new features regularly without the customers having to wait long for their favorite features.