Posts from February, 2010

Sacramento IAPP Chapter Meeting. Networkers Wanted!

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Thursday saw a very dynamic and interactive session for a small but passionate group of Accounts Payable professionals. 

Gail K. from UCSF (who is now one of my favorite AP networking buddies) led an informal discussion about filing 1099′s.  She used a narrative approach and talked about evey step in the process including vendor setup, how P-cards payed into the scenario/headache, the process she inherited, and her constant negotiations with IT.  She was stopped several times along the way with very thoughtful questions.  The group would scrum on the topic and then Gail would pick back up where she left off.  With a strong “project management” background Gail made really good points throughout about learning from mistakes, training her staff the “right way” and about empowering her people on a go-forward basis.

The group was small, but represented a number of big companies and unfortunately I do not believe today’s meeting attendees will be traveling to Dallas for tha annual IAPP conference.  This saddens me, because I can clearly see that there is a huge need for more networking. 

This is a very difficult landscape for Accounts Payable and I think the need to connect with with peers has grown in parallel with constantly expanding job duties.  In my opinion it is more necessary now to force the time into your schedule to attend chapter meetings or webinars or even to log on and follow a LinkedIn conversation.  You will not only benefit from the information that is circulating, you will be suprised by how much other people need to hear what you have to say.

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Posted in IAPP, Industry Associations | No Comments »

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Accounts Payable Departments Using Social Media

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Tomorrow I will be presenting a workshop on the use of social media in the Accounts Payable (AP) space at the Sacramento chapter of IAPP.  This is a presentation I have given several times before and I am always curious about the many mis-perceptions of the business application of social media tools.

Too often, professionals in the AP community (as well as many other communities) assume that social media sites are inhabited only by young people with nothing better to do than “tweet” about what they are having for lunch.  Although there is an element of that…  that is not the prevailing application of social media.  I have seen many incredibly powerful instances when people that would otherwise not communicate have been able to connect and collaborate over an internet connection.

As a great example of this… I have been following a fantastic string on IAPP’s LinkedIn board:  http://tinyurl.com/ygfjx3n please take a look.   Much like trade shows and trade association chapter meetings, social networking tools enable a dialogue between multiple people.

Please comment or contact me for any questions about the application of social tools in our industry.  This is a subject I care deeply about and something that I hink we can all benefit from.

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Posted in AP Industry | No Comments »

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Lavante highlighted in “The Future” of AP Automation Article.

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Fantastic edition of AP Matters Magazine arrived in the mail today.  Lavante was feature in the AP Automation article quite a bit.

Here are a few of the words about us from the “Future” of automations section…   “Lavante, which operates in a paperless environment…has grown rapidly since the development of its on-demand strategic recovery portal and is now expanding to offer a self-service vendor portal that enables vendor on-boarding, updating of critical data, and uploading of documents for shared visibility across a client’s entire enterprise; and TIN management services, which automate the process of collecting and matching a vendor’s W-9 form and its tax identification number, or TIN, with the IRS. The company is developing additional portal-based features for future release.”

Read the entire article: http://www.iappnet.org/ViewItem-1502.do

Posted in IAPP, Recovery Audit, Supplier Information Management | 2 Comments »

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Taking Pride in your Organization

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

I was in LA early this week and at the National Association of Payables and Procurement and I gave a case study presentation with my client Ellen from Holland America Line.  Ellen and I had gone through a couple dry runs of the presentation and we were pleased with how it had come along.

The information and the story were great, but I am no graphic designer and the powerpoint graphics left a little to be deisred.  Not wanting the presentation to be too dry, I added a few images of the Holland America Lines cruise ships.  These are very impressive and majestic vessles, and the images were very striking.  Ellen and I hunched over my computer for a last review before our case study and she saw the photos for the first time.  Out loud, she said almost wistfully, “what a pretty ship” and then she took another moment and spoke again, “it really is gorgeous.”

Ellen has worked for HAL for 26 years, she has been on her share of cruises and she has seen the entire fleet in photos and in person more times than she can remember, but after all of this, she is still moved to the point of calling her ships “gorgeous” when presented with their image.  I hope everyone reading this blog can feel as proud of their company as Ellen feels for hers.

Everyone of us deserves to be as impressed with the product that their company produces.  I understand that we are not all in the cruise line industry and falling in love with our product may not be as easy for us, but we should always seek to find some part of our work that makes us proud.  In my own situation, I work for a company that performs profit recovery and optimizes vendor data for Fortune 10o0 companies.  It is not always the most glamorous work, but it is wonderful work when I see how much we deliver to our clients and how they feel about working with us.

At the end of  the case study Ellen produced a stack of business cards and held them up in front of about 50 people.  She offered to hand out a card and have a conversation with anyone in the room that was planning a recovery audit in the next year.  As she put it, She “loved working with Lavante.”  In all her 26 years she said that she had never  enjoyed working with recovery auditors until engaging with us.  I guess her comments are something that I can be proud of.

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Posted in Industry Associations, Recovery Audit, Supplier Information Management | 1 Comment »

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Poor Vendor Data Impacts Your Bottom Line

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

While it may not be obvious at first glance, your vendor files offer more than information on contacting your firm’s suppliers – they are also a resource that can be used to cut expenses and boost your firm’s bottom line. To take advantage of the opportunities to do this, however, you need accurate data that is continuously maintained.

For all firms, this presents an ongoing challenge because data becomes outdated almost as soon as it’s captured. As Bill Swanton, vice president and research fellow with AMR Research says, “Data quality is an elusive goal for most companies because it’s treated as a one-time event. No matter how well they do it, the data begins to decay immediately.”

As Swanton indicates, data accuracy is a moving target. Maintaining accuracy is complicated by the fact that it’s often difficult to dedicate the resources needed for a solid, ongoing data management program. After all, it’s one item on a long To-Do list within most accounts payable departments. Often, it’s bumped aside by other responsibilities that have greater urgency. What’s more, it’s easy for data to accumulate, which increases the difficulty of managing the files.

However, failing to proactively manage your vendor files will result in extra work, which ultimately costs money. In addition, it means foregoing opportunities to reduce expenses and make money.

Posted in Supplier Information Management | No Comments »

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“Days Credits Outstanding,” the New Killer Metric

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

DSO and DPO are common, yet important concepts in  accounting. Most companies know to measure these stats and regard them as key performance indicators. Through our work with our clients’ vendors we are beginning to understand the importance of another key metric, DCO. “Days Credits Outstanding” measures the amount of time that credits are open and available on your vendors AR records before you are able to verify the open amount and take it back to your bottom line. When we begin audits for our clients we see unchecked DCO at upwards of 1000 days. Through our efforts we are able to drive our clients’ DCO down to as close to day one as our clients’ audit scope will allow.  Conceivably your DCO could be less than one month.  The introduction of this indicator is significant because it adds a new measurable element of profit recovery. Not only is it important to recover the maximum amount of available credits, it is also important to recover these dollars in the fastest time frame possible thus maximizing cash flow.

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Posted in AP Industry, Recovery Audit | No Comments »

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NAPP Presentation: Unlocking Hidden Value Levers in the P2P Process

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Bill Dempsey, Director of Procurement and Strategic Sourcing – Miller Coors, opened up the 2010 NAPP conference in Marina DelRey with a great Keynote address talking about some strategic efforts currently underway at MillerCoors.

In addition to providing some great insights into the synergies that were achieved with the merger of Miller and Molsen Coors, Dempsey outlined the 5 areas of improvement that are currently underway in the P2P related departments at Miller Coors.

The presentation also gave great insights  as to how MillerCoors has been able to look at their procurement department in 3 major categories: Strategic Sourcing, Supply Management and Operational Procurement.

Dempsey also led an insightful discussion related to the challenges of today’s procurement leaders who have to communicate the savings they provide their companies. In many cases the efforts of the Procurement departments can be seen directly in the bottom line and in other cases the savings are identified in the budgeting process and do not really show up in a ledger.

It is clear that MillerCoors is on a path to have their Procurement department function as a collaborative partner with their finance department.

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Posted in Industry Associations, NAPP | No Comments »

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Vendor File Webinar

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

I was impressed with the level of participation in Thursday’s webinar on leveraging you vendor file to maximize profits.  Karen Kroll and Sherry DePew are experts to be sure and I thought their content was great.  What was most impressive were the emails that followed.  Many of the attendees sent follow up questions and inquired about downloading the webinar for their personal archive.  I asked one of the attendees what was so compelling about the webinar, vendor file management or profit recovery?  I found the answer very interesting…  She said it was relevant that there was a way to manage the vendor file and rather than costing resources to perform that function a company could actually derive ROI from the process.

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Posted in AP Industry, Recovery Audit, Supplier Information Management | 2 Comments »

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