Posted by Rakesh Shukla on Thu, Jul 30, 2009 @ 12:46 PM
12 months or so ago when I was approached to do an AP Blog for 170 Systems, my initial reaction was, "Who would want to read a Blog about AP???" After all, what could be said in a blog that is not already being said in newsletters, webinars, e-mail alerts and updates, etc.?
But then we realized that a blog allows us to take a fresh approach (and a few risks) highlighting key AP issues in a fun, creative and more personal way. The blog takes some very different perspectives on critical AP matters ... and is anything but boring -- at least according to the feedback we have received.
To my pleasant surprise, our thought-provoking posts have generated thousands and thousands of visits. To date, here are the 10 most popular:
- A Cell Phone for an 11-year-old?
- What is the NFL''s 2nd Highest-Paid Position? The Immensely Important Role of Accounts Payable
- The Best Excuse Ever ... Babysitting Invoice Approvals
- A plague o'' both your houses! The Ancient Feud of AP vs. Procurement
- A Tale of 2 Grocery Lines ... Understanding AP Bottlenecks
- The #1 Accounts Payable Headache is ...
- Segregation of AP Duties, What''s the Best Approach?
- Lies, Damn Lies and Stupid AP Metrics
- How to Earn 37% on AP Invoice Discounts ... Despite the Lowest Interest Rates Ever ...
- 5 Reasons E-Invoicing & Supplier Portals Have Failed
Please let me know what you think by posting a comment.
-Rakesh Shukla
@rakesh170
Posted by Steve Wilcox on Wed, Nov 19, 2008 @ 11:04 AM
Ok, I'll admit that the functional requirements for a critical financial function such as AP dwarf the functional requirements for an iPod or a search engine but the point is clear ... ERP AP products are complex. The installation, maintenance and upgrades are complex. The user interface for AP products is especially complex.
And yet, AP touches so many other business functions and business users outside of AP from line-of-business users that need to approve & code invoices, to procurement that needs to help resolve PO holds, to finance managers who want to track key metrics, to suppliers who want status information on their payments. The dilemma is that you just can't expect these users to sit down and figure out how to navigate complex ERP AP screens. The learning curve is just too steep. If you want the most efficient and accurate AP process, you NEED to seamlessly include these users.
And this is one of the major flaws of AP Automation products including imaging and workflow products. For non-AP users that need to approve invoices, help resolve PO holds, provide account coding information for NON-PO invoices, track & manage metrics and trends, retrieve payment status information in a self-service fashion etc. ... these users need something simple ... really simple.
A good AP Automation solution should provide a simple, intuitive, web-based interface for approvals, coding & hold resolution, an intuitive "at-a-glance" AP dashboard for managing day-to-day operations and a simple supplier portal for payment status inquiries.
When you see an approval interface, an AP dashboard or a supplier portal ... ask yourself this critical question:
How simple is this to learn and use?
-Rakesh Shukla
@rakesh170
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Posted by Rakesh Shukla on Fri, Sep 12, 2008 @ 01:37 PM
221 Days, 16 Hours, 23 minutes ... that's how long it has been since the Patriots lost the Super Bowl and I am still crying over that loss. Did they really lose the championship game after going 18-0?
I am still in denial.
Unfortunately, denial is only stage 1 of the "5 Stages of Grief." The "5 Stages of Grief" is process by which people deal with tragedy and grief and was introduced by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book "On Death and Dying."
The stages are:
- Denial: "It can't be happening."
- Anger: "Why me? It's not fair."
- Bargaining: "Just let me live to see my children graduate."
- Depression: "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"
- Acceptance: "It's going to be OK."
These stages can be applied to any form of catastrophic personal loss ... a loved one, job, freedom, a Super Bowl loss ... Tom Brady getting injured for the season ... and even Accounts Payable!
With some help by some great illustrations by Steve Greenberg (http://www.greenberg-art.com/), here is a tongue-in-cheek look at "The 5 Stages of AP Grief":
The 5 Stages of AP Grief
Stage 1: Denial
"There is just no way that there could be anything wrong with the way we process invoices around here. Whatever frustrations business managers, suppliers, auditors and my AP staff say they are experiencing must be bizarre delusions caused by impaired reasoning."
Stage 2: Anger
"I am SOOOO furious! WHO'S TO BLAME? I'm not gonna stand for this!
Why can't those lazy business managers send their invoice approvals in on time!
Why can't those incompetent suppliers send invoices that actually match the POs we send them!
Those @#%*! auditors found another control deficiency! Those pointy-headed, bean-counting suits are just too picky!
Those procurement boneheads are no help in resolving holds"
Why can't my AP work more efficiently with less errors?!"
Stage 3: Bargaining
"If we can just survive this quarterly close, I promise to do away with the manual, paper-intensive processes that are causing such long work hours. If this all goes away, I will simplify and automate our processes ... I PROMISE."
Stage 4: Depression
"This job is so hard and nobody appreciates all the hoops we have to jump through to get a stinkin' bill paid."
Stage 5: Acceptance
"It wasn't supposed to be this way... but I guess this is life. It is what it is. And, hey, if paying a bill was as easy as it sounds, I wouldn't have a job."
Again, thanks to Steve Greenberg for the great illustrations!
Illustrations by Steve Greenberg, Ventura County Star, Calif.
Posted here with artist's permission.
http://www.greenberg-art.com/
-Rakesh Shukla
Posted by Rakesh Shukla on Mon, Jul 07, 2008 @ 11:10 AM
This summer, I volunteered to be a camp counselor/coach at a basketball overnight camp for inner city kids.
After 5 days and 4 nights with wakeup calls at 7:00am and "lights out" at 11pm, I was completely and utterly exhausted. My "team" consisted of 10 fifth and sixth graders -- each one was a good kid but a few had very little respect for authority, most had very short attention spans and all of them had extraordinary excuse-making abilities.
(In hindsight) there were several amusing incidents. One of my kids (let's call him D) was a chronic liar. One morning during our dribbling drills, for no apparent reason, D smacked a teammate on the head. Almost everyone saw him do it.
"Why the heck did you hit Mark?" I asked as Mark was rubbing his head and crying.
D threw up his arms in disbelief. "What?!? Why do I get blamed for everything! Coach, I didn't do anything. I swear."
No number of pushups could extract even a half-hearted apology from D. Instead, D concocted one of the best excuses I have ever heard - "Coach, I could tell that Mark was thinking of hitting me first so I HAD to defend myself." Now, even with my patience running very thin, I had to admire the creativity of that excuse.
I had another kid (let's call him O) who came to this 5 day overnight camp with ONE pair of shorts and ONE pair of underwear.
O's "dirty laundry" solution?
Steal other campers' shorts and skivvies, of course! It was hard not to chuckle dealing with the "daily undie theft" but the sad part was that Oliver really didn't understand that "borrowing without permission" was wrong.
This is how my week went - it was truly an exercise in patience as the kids always had some excuse for their (mis)behavior. Yes, we actually played some basketball, learned some things and had some fun -- but managing and supervising these kids was an all-consuming task from the moment I woke up to the moment I put my head down on my pillow. A co-worker here at 170 Systems joked that my experience with these kids sounded similar to babysitting invoice approvals from business managers in the field. It's actually a pretty good analogy. How much time do AP Professionals waste chasing down approvals? How many paper invoices have really been "lost?" How many lame excuses can field approvers fabricate for procrastinating on approvals?
We all know that accurate approvals and authorizations are a critical internal control. A robust approval process should ensure that accurate approvals are obtained in a timely manner with accountable audit trails that are tracked in real-time. From a bottom-line perspective, late approvals also cost money in missed discounts, late fees and productivity-sapping "where's my payment" inquiries.
To minimize the amount of time you have to spend babysitting approvals, you HAVE to do approvals online. If you are still signing things on pieces of paper, making copies, mailing stuff, matching with signature books, etc. ... then a significant part of each AP Staffer's day will be wasted babysitting approvals and enduring excuses. To free yourself from approval "daycare," the approval process must be systematic, on-line and have full security controls.
Let me ask you this: How many times have invoices been paid late because of tardy approvals and then AP gets the blame! Automating AP through technologies such as workflow and imaging can encourage timely approvals with automated routing based on configurable business rules for appropriate spending levels, e-mail reminders and escalations. With escalations, if you receive an invoice and ignore it, you will get a reminder. If you ignore that reminder you may get a second reminder. Finally, if you procrastinate too long on the approval, the approval will automatically be escalated to your boss. It usually takes one invoice to be escalated once and then all of a sudden you have timely approvals. It's amazing to witness this change in behavior when approvers realize the process is systematic, controlled and tracked such that there are ramifications if approvals are not carried out in a timely fashion. With this type of visibility into the approval process, not even D could come up with an excuse!
So, if you have approvers named D and O who always have a "dog ate my invoice" excuse for late approvals and don't understand that overdue approvals are wrong and cost the company money, consider the benefits of automating the approval process.
-Rakesh
P.S. So what are the best excuses you have heard from delinquent approvers? Please let us know by posting a comment.