Category Archives: Purchase order

Business Processes, Business-to-business, Electronic Data Interchange, Purchase order, Retail, Supply chain, Supply Chain Management

GXS Ups Retail Supply Chain Efficiency with Catalogue-Based Web Ordering

GXS, a  provider of B2B integration services, today announced that GXS Intelligent Web Forms (IWF) allows manufacturers to quickly and easily enable their smaller retail customers to issue purchase orders electronically. IWF creates forms to digitise the full lifecycle of supply chain transactions with the customer community from purchase orders and order changes to electronic invoices and remittance advices. By integrating directly with GXS Catalogue, the retail industry’s leading data synchronisation application that supports product, price and image information, web forms ensure that retail buyers can only select valid, preauthorised SKUs for inclusion on purchase orders.

Most large retail chains issue purchase orders to their suppliers electronically using EDI (Electronic Document Interchange) but smaller, independent store owners often lack the budget, resources and expertise to support these B2B integration technologies.  As a result, a high percentage of the purchase orders issued from smaller retailers are transmitted via fax, email or spreadsheet, creating an efficiency drag on the operations of large suppliers.  Using GXS web forms, suppliers of food and beverage, apparel and footwear and other consumer products can offer their customers the option to issue purchase orders online. As a SaaS offering, GXS IWF does not require small retailers to license, install or maintain software. The web-based forms mimic the paper equivalents making the application easy to use without training or technical expertise.

By integrating with GXS Catalogue, the web forms can present users with a preloaded list of available and authorised items for each customer.  Catalogue integration ensures that users do not mistakenly request SKUs that are unauthorised, discontinued or non-existent.  Retail SKUs consist of long alphanumeric strings which can easily be transposed or mistyped in an electronic ordering system.  Some SKUs have special characters such as hyphens or spaces which further complicate the order entry process. Catalogue-based web forms reduce the amount of exception processing and order handling expenses for suppliers.  Higher quality purchase order data also reduces the likelihood of shipping delays and out-of-stocks for the retailers.

“Leading suppliers of consumer products and general merchandise have automated many of the order-to-cash and demand planning processes with their larger retail customers. These large suppliers have struggled to gain the same efficiencies with smaller retail chains and independent stores,” said Melanie Nuce, director of retail industry marketing for GXS.  “Catalogue-based web ordering offers a cost-effective approach to quickly achieving supply chain efficiencies with small retailers and opens up the opportunity for better customer service.”


Accounts payable, Business Processes, Invoice, Invoice processing, Iron Mountain Incorporated, Purchase order, Workflow

Iron Mountain Takes Paper Out of Accounts Payable with New Electronic Invoicing Solution

Image representing Iron Mountain as depicted i...

Iron Mountain Incorporated today announced a new service for streamlining the way organizations receive, process and manage their accounts payable (AP) invoices. The Iron Mountain Electronic Invoice solution digitizes paper invoices and allows customers to manage these bills via an online tool that automates basic AP tasks like matching invoices to purchase orders and routing them for approval. By digitizing a traditionally paper-heavy process in accounts payable, Iron Mountain’s invoice-processing offering frees up AP departments to focus on higher-level activities and enables organizations to run their AP process faster and with fewer mistakes.

Most companies still receive mostly paper invoices. With paper, accounts payable teams must manually check invoices against purchase orders and receipts, and they must manually seek payment approvals, passing invoices from reviewer to reviewer. In this model, the process moves as fast – or as slow – as the person who currently holds the invoice. This wastes time, leads to errors and, worse, doesn’t allow the organization a holistic view into its cash flow or spending levels. Moving to electronic invoice receipt and automated workflow accelerates approvals, improves accounts payable process visibility and increases customers’ ability to control spend and manage their cash flow.

“Waste Pro has grown rapidly since our creation in 2001, expanding both organically and by acquisition throughout seven southeastern states,” said Don Phillips, CFO of Waste Pro USA, Inc. “That growth has greatly expanded our network of suppliers and business partners and increased the volume of paper flowing through our accounts payable department. Our processes were becoming increasingly more complex, and we required enhanced ability to work with suppliers and vendors, manage our payment cycle, and support our next decade of growth. We required a solution that would help us streamline electronic invoicing, remove paper from the process for quicker reviews and approvals and ultimately enable faster payments. Iron Mountain delivered on that need with the added benefit of making the solution flexible enough to support a gradual rollout to the entire company.”

The Iron Mountain Electronic Invoice solution is powered by Corcentric’s COR360™ cloud-based accounts payable workflow automation platform. The online workflow tool makes it easier for organizations to access, identify and share invoices that require further review. By automating this part of the accounts payable workflow, organizations gain greater visibility to better capture supplier discounts, drive cost savings and meet compliance requirements for accounts payable. Organizations can further speed invoice processing times by using their mobile devices to access the solution. And, as a cloud-based offering, the solution integrates into ERP and payment-processing solutions, and can scale throughout the organization as needed.

“The sheer amount of information moving through accounts payable departments – much of it on paper – is slowing down payments and endangering supplier relationships,” said Chris Churchill, senior vice president and general manager, Document Management Solutions for Iron Mountain. “Because it is so paper-intensive, accounts payable is an excellent example of a new wave of information management focused on outsourcing and automating manual processes for cost savings and improved compliance. Our expertise in helping companies better manage paper and digital information, as well as supporting the transitional period when an organization uses both, made accounts payable a natural addition to our services, and we’re thrilled to help our customers improve this vital business process.”

The four components of Iron Mountain’s Electronic Invoice include:

  • Virtual Shared-Service Center – Customers can set up a secure
    P.O. box, managed by Iron Mountain, for their vendors and suppliers to
    send paper invoices for digitization. Options for fax and email
    transmittal are available as well. Organizations can also eliminate
    paper invoices by having their suppliers submit electronic invoices
    and purchase orders to Iron Mountain’s free self-service portal, in
    any file format (XML, ASCII, etc.);
  • Cloud-Based Workflow Automation – This feature automatically
    matches invoices to purchase orders, routes invoices for review and
    approval, and streamlines the overall process before advancing to
    payment;
  • Archiving and Destruction – Iron Mountain can store paper and
    electronic invoices or securely dispose of them depending on the
    organization’s business or compliance requirements;
  • Reporting & Dashboard Functionality – Reporting
    capabilities, coupled with real-time dashboards, provide greater
    visibility into spending and payment-cycle times, showing audit trails
    and workflow history to monitor discounts, identify cost-savings
    opportunities and support compliance requirements.

Iron Mountain will demonstrate the Iron Mountain Electronic Invoice solution at the Fusion 2012 conference in booth #225. For more on the new solution, visit www.storeaccessmanage.com/content/accountspayable.