The pandemic accelerated the need to optimize processes to protect margins, keep supply chains intact, and maintain business continuity in an uncertain world.
Compared to peers, aerospace companies that have automated accounts payable (AP) processes spend significantly less time and resources processing the hundreds or thousands of invoices their suppliers send each month. Before AP automation, most of these invoices arrived by mail or as emailed PDF files, requiring the AP team to manually input, code, and approve them in a slow, error-prone process that could take up 84% of their time.
This outdated, manual approach slows invoice processing and leads to undesirable outcomes. Not only do margins become thinner, but suppliers and employees must manually resolve invoice exceptions, resulting in inconsistent payment cycles and errors that frustrate both parties. Furthermore, in a COVID-19 world where a large part of the workforce is still remote, paper-based invoicing processes make business continuity difficult.