AP Technology Innovation Posts

Benefits of Supplier Master Data Management | MDM Systems

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

Large Data systems these days depend on the quality of data we feed them. Optimizing supplier relationships and ERP system effectiveness ultimately rely heavily upon our ability to collect timely accurate information. Too many times across our businesses the data that has been received from suppliers decays and leaves us with useless information for us to look at when we are trying to make decisions.

Accurate supplier data drives system effectiveness and saves time, resource, and dollars. Large volumes of data across multiple systems and departments, along with data decay are challenges to maintaining quality supplier data. Up-to-date supplier information is critical for compliance with regulations and controls, such as OFAC screening, diversity tracking, and new tax legislation.

Lavante SIM: On-Demand Supplier Information Management as a Strategy.

Lavante SIM enables companies to proactively communicate with suppliers and gain real-time visibility into suppliers and relationships. Lavante SIM drives compliance across the supplier lifecycle–from initial vendor master file cleansing, to on-boarding, to ongoing maintenance. Set important Vendor Master Controls and let the Lavante software manage your communications.

: Lavante On-Demand Supplier Master Data Management

Drive master data compliance & insight across the supplier life cycle:

Core Supplier Data
Tax Information
Ownership & Diversity
Supplier Classification

Insurance & Risk
Financial Information
Contract Information

Create an enterprise-wide single source of truth for supplier master data:

Ensure quality of supplier data
Gain insight into your suppliers and relationships
Drive compliance with regulations and internal controls
Drive corporate compliance with new 1099 Tax Legislation
Reduce supplier risk
Reduce cost of managing supplier information

Why Lavante Supplier Information Management?

Quick Time to Value: On-demand, “out-of-the-box” with immediate results
The Highest Supplier Compliance: 8X results of alternative solutions
Ongoing Communication: Drives supplier participation and data quality
Funded by Recovery: Works seamlessly with Lavante Recovery

Benefits of Supplier Master Data Management | MDM Systems | MDM Strategy

Tags: 1099, Accounts Payable Software, AP Automation, SIM, Supplier Information Management, TIN Management, vendor file cleansing, Vendor Master File Management
Posted in AP Industry, AP Technology Innovation, Supplier Information Management, Technology, Vendor File Cleansing, Vendor File Management, W9 | No Comments »

Omnicare Executive Named AP Manager of the Year by the Institute of Finance Management

Wednesday, November 21st, 2012

Lavante, a key provider of supplier management solutions, announced today that Tina McGlasson, Director of Accounts Payable (AP) at Omnicare, a nationwide provider of pharmaceutical services and a valued customer of Lavante, has been selected as AP Manager of the Year by the IOMAs Institute of Finance & Management (IOFM), a leading industry association for finance professionals. McGlasson was selected for her strategic approach to AP, her focus on continuous improvement and her ability to collaborate across departments to increase the value that AP delivers to the overall organization.

McGlasson was instrumental in automating key financial activities, which drove money to the bottom line by providing insight into spend, uncovering potential discounts and recovering credits due to Omnicare from its suppliers. In addition to elevating the AP function to focus on more strategic processes, McGlasson has been working closely with other departments, such as Procurement, to more effectively manage the travel & expense (T&E) policy. She has streamlined AP processes by identifying pain points and bottlenecks, and implementing best practices.

“It is an honor to be chosen by IOMA’s Institute of Finance & Management for this award,” said McGlasson. “Automation has enabled us to work more efficiently and has freed up our AP professionals to focus on more strategic, value-added activities that can help our business, such as evaluating spend and identifying ways to save money.“

Key to McGlasson’s ability to improve the profitability of Omnicare was her implementation of Lavante’s solution, Lavante Recovery +, which enables Omnicare to identify hidden credits it is owed from its suppliers for a variety of reasons, such as duplicate payments, uncredited returns, or discounts.

“Tina McGlasson is the consummate AP pro and strategic leader,” said Joe Flynn, CEO & co-founder, Lavante. “She has elevated the AP function in her organization to focus on more strategic processes, inspires staff members, and collaborates across departments and outside the organization to mobilize everyone toward process improvement. We congratulate her on this well-deserved recognition from IOMA’s Institute of Finance & Management.”

About The IOFM Awards

The winners of IOFM’s AP Manager of the Year and AP Controller of the Year awards were announced on October 15th in Las Vegas at the 11th Annual Accounts Payable Conference and Expo presented by the Institute of Finance & Management (IOFM).

Competition for these awards was stiff as many nominations were submitted. The number of nominations submitted for 2012 greatly exceeded the number submitted in 2011, an indication of the increased awareness of the importance of recognizing outstanding performance in the field of Accounts Payable.

The IOFM is the leading source of information tools and resources for professionals across its focus areas. For over a quarter of a century, its newsletters, reference publications, online information services, and conferences have provided authoritative guidance to corporate managers across a wide range of disciplines.

About Omnicare

Omnicare, Inc., a Fortune 400 company based in Cincinnati, Ohio, provides comprehensive pharmaceutical services to patients and providers across North America. As the market leader in professional pharmacy, related consulting and data management services for skilled nursing, assisted living and other chronic care institutions, Omnicare leverages its unparalleled clinical insight into the geriatric market along with some of the industry’s most innovative technological capabilities to the benefit of its long-term care customers. Omnicare also provides key commercialization services for the bio-pharmaceutical industry and end-of-life disease management through its Specialty Care Group. For more information, visithttp://www.omnicare.com.

About Lavante

Lavante is the leader in on-demand supplier management solutions, including recovery auditand supplier information management applications. Built with advanced, patented-pending technology, Lavante delivers to the financial arena a new standard in efficient technology-driven solutions that allow companies to quickly drive dollars to the bottom line, improve supplier communications, and assure high supplier data quality. Lavante solutions are deployed across Fortune 1000 enterprises including the hospitality, retail, entertainment, manufacturing, and medical industries. Headquartered in San Jose, California, Lavante is privately held and was founded in 2001. For more information please visit www.lavante.com.

Tags: AP Manager of the Year, IOFM, Omnicare
Posted in AP Case Study, AP Industry, AP MAnager of the Year, AP Technology Innovation, IOFM | Comments Off

Lavante Is Honored to Receive Technology Excellence Award from PayStream Advisors

Thursday, October 4th, 2012

At last month’s PayStream Advisors Fast Track to P2P Automation Summit in Charlotte, NC, Lavante was honored to be included in the technology innovation awards which were announced at the event. The award was in the category of Purchase to Pay Automation for Leading Recovery Audit Solution.

I see this as a strong validation of what has been the cornerstone to our approach of building and applying advanced technology to automate and streamline what were highly manual, costly and disjointed processes in AP and finance. In this case, our patented technology and processes help AP to have in place an automated, ongoing recovery process that delivers continuous benefits, including dollars to the bottom line, dynamic reporting, and updated vendor data.

This was reinforced by Henry Ijams, Managing Director of PayStream Advisors, in the award announcement: “Lavante’s Recovery+ solution automates a traditionally highly manual recovery audit process, providing a comprehensive, automated, and continuous recovery solution. We are proud to honor Lavante with the award in this year’s Purchase to Pay Automation category for Leading Recovery Audit Solution.”

We are pleased to be part of this prestigious awards program and to share the stage with two other technology excellence recipients, Ariba and SciQuest, as well as the Corporate award winners, Graham Packaging Company, The American Red Cross, and Kaleida Health.

To read the complete award summary, please click here, and for more information about Lavante’s excellence award please read the full press release by clicking here.

Tags: AP Technology, Lavante, PayStream Advisors, Recovery Audit
Posted in AP Industry, AP Technology Innovation, Lavante, Paystream Advisors, Recovery Audit, Vendor File Cleansing, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »

Accounts Payable Acquisition Integration Part 2 – Managing & Integrating Multiple Vendor Master Files

Friday, September 28th, 2012

Last week I wrote about my past experiences with integrating the accounts payable functions of acquired companies into a service center environment, detailing the inherent difficulties and the ongoing search for solutions to help manage this complex process. In this blog, I’d like to focus on one of the major problem areas that is frequently encountered – that of managing multiple supplier lists from acquired companies.

In my current role at Lavante as a Sr. Solutions Advisor, I have been reminded of the trials of the integration process I experienced while leading the AP function at several fortune 500 companies when talking with prospective and current clients who are dealing with these same issues. One of the first inevitable difficulties they face is in combining vendor master files. The procurement function always began the process with the intent to “rationalize” the acquired file(s) with our own data, which meant eliminating duplicate vendors, selecting strategic suppliers to leverage spend, updating information, etc. In reality, the pressures of just reaching a functional level meant that little of this occurred and the files were forced together in the rush to issue purchase orders and maintain production. Many of the problems created were never addressed as we moved on to the next acquisition or other project.

Lavante’s solutions have always placed a high priority on vendor master integrity. The Lavante Recovery application was built to maximize the use of available supplier data as part of the process and allow clients use it to identify duplicate and related vendors and maintain current data. The Lavante SIM (Supplier Information Management) application takes that functionality to a whole new level. By establishing a comprehensive solution, that begins with a self-service supplier portal that enables a simplified, real time approach and eliminates the need to periodically do vendor master clean-up projects, which must be repeated after the same problems build up over time.

Having a clean vendor master file with current and accurate contact information that had been refreshed by direct communication connections with suppliers, as Lavante’s solution facilitate, would have given me a tremendous advantage in my past AP roles. If both vendor masters — acquired and acquiring — had been in that “cleansed” state, it would have eliminated numerous issues that necessitated considerable resources to rationalize and then combine the files. The ability to communicate effectively with the supply base alone would have saved time and staff resources, all the while eliminating problems downstream that are the result of bad vendor data.

Next week, I’ll go into more details about how bad data impacts an organization, and then discuss how Lavante SIM helps clients and suppliers simplify the many complexities of the supplier management process.

If you have any thoughts or issues related to your experiences consolidating acquired vendor files, or supplier management in general, please comment here.

Finally, we have partnered with IOFM to conduct a comprehensive market research project on supplier information management and we invite you to provide your input by taking the survey. Click here to add your perspectives. All contributors will receive the market research findings report produced by the IOFM (and be entered into a contest to win an iPad).

Tags: AP Industry, Lavante, Mergers & Acquisitions, Supplier Information Management, Vendor Master File Management
Posted in AP Industry, AP Technology Innovation, IOFM, Lavante, Supplier Information Management, Vendor File Cleansing | No Comments »

Notes from the Field: Presentation to IFO Chapter Meeting Focuses on Finding Lost Vendor Credits as Part of an Automated Statement Audit Process

Tuesday, August 7th, 2012

Last month I shared some thoughts about a recent trip to Minneapolis where we presented The Future of AP at an industry lunch & learn session. I’d like to spend a few minutes now with some ideas about a second presentation I made on this same trip, this one at the IFO Northern Lights Chapter meeting. This presentation focused on vendor credits and how to ensure that credits are identified and taken in a timely fashion. Attending the meeting were AP professionals from retail, services, and health care, and across the board, the entire group believed that they needed a process to identify and collect their post-audit vendor credits, as they do not presently have a method in place to ensure that all available credits are identified and collected.

The question of how credits that are over 90 days old have an increased chance of disappearing off the suppliers books began the discussion. This is due to many different issues which Mary Schaeffer, Editor and Publisher of Accounts Payable Now and Tomorrow addresses in her white paper report The Case of the Disappearing Credits. I had the pleasure of presenting with Mary at Fusion 2012 in Nashville earlier this year on this topic, and was able to share with the IFO chapter group a few valuable insights into where these credits go and how companies can mitigate the risk of losing credits that are due to them.

I found the most important finding Mary’s report revealed is that to ensure that you are getting all of your credits you must have an automated process in place that identifies credits on a continuous, timely basis. A periodic statement audit project — conducted once a year or every two years — will miss many credits. An ongoing process, however, will point out the root cause issues responsible for the missed credits – as they happen. If you receive root cause analysis two years after the fact, you will have two years of credits missing. Early discovery of why credits are happening is essential to conducting a best practice statement audit methodology.

I then gave an overview of the Lavante Recovery+ solution, which provides a technology-enabled, continuous recovery audit process. Because the solution is web-based and delivers results in real time, it provides the root cause analysis and vendor compliance statistics that enable our customers to immediately identify what is driving these outstanding credits.

Below is a good example of how customers have used the analytics provided by Lavante Recovery+ to fix process issues and reduce credits. This chart, from a global retail pharmaceutical organization, shows that the organization had an issue in 2010 with returns. Because the company could identify the cause of these credits using the drill-down access to all credit details, they were able to stem the credit tide and eliminate returns as an issue in 2011. Without a continuous process, discovery and resolution of the problem would have been delayed resulting in more return credits that disappear.

To assure that all credits are captured, Lavante Recovery+ performs automated outreach and statement requests to the entire vendor master file (excluding any do not audit vendors) and identifies outstanding credits across the breadth of the vendor population, not the typical top 10 or 20 percent traditional recovery solutions target through a supplier profiling process. This process ensures that the customer is obtaining a best in class solution to their open credits opportunity.

Many of the companies in attendance at both sessions were aware that opportunities existed in their AP processes. They realize that changes are coming their way and that being proactive in addressing the problems provides them the greatest prospect of success. Lavante offers tools and applications that assist in driving the success of our customers by providing them with real-time actionable data and control over the recovery processes.

In the coming months look for more information regarding our recovery and supplier information management solutions. I hope to see you at one of our events or seminars in the near future. In the meantime, please feel free to provide feedback and comments about how you are handling your statement audit process.

Tags: AP Industry, Lavante, Profit Recovery, statement audit
Posted in AP Technology Innovation, IFO, Lavante, Recovery Audit, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »

Lavante Recognizes AP Thought Leaders at Fusion 2012

Monday, July 9th, 2012

For those of you who were able to attend the IFO Fusion 2012 conference in Nashville, I hope you had a chance to stop by Lavante’s booth and have your “catch the wave” photo taken! Also, and more I hope you were able to attend one of Lavante’s five panel discussions that were headlined by some of the finest thought leaders in accounts payable today. We were so pleased to collaborate with so many experts in the AP field to develop and present these five very different, content-rich presentations. In an effort to recognize these individuals and their contributions to the AP industry, Lavante presented each panelists with a Lavante AP Thought Leadership Award.

We value the contributions made by these AP professionals. They not only spent considerable time and effort to create the presentations, but they were all willing to openly share their individual experiences and perspectives about their companies and departments. Ultimately, it is this type of interactive, open exchange that advances forward-thinking approaches and methodologies in the accounts payable field. It is an honor to be part of these discussions and to work with such an experienced and insightful group of AP professionals.

We wanted to take a few minutes to recognize each of these experts who contributed so much to these panels and the AP industry:

• Future of AP: Five Ways to Drive Excellence & Increase the Value of AP
Josh Morrison, Manager, Vendor Relations, C&S Wholesale Grocers, Inc

• Supplier Portals 101: What you Need for Effective Supplier Information Management Systems
Desiree Clayton, Director, Nordstrom
Tina McGlasson, AP Manager, Omnicare
Jennifer Barnett, Former System Manager, Accounts Payable, Summa Health

• Transforming AP through Technology & Automation
Kathy Sharp, Executive Director of Accounts Payable at MGM Resorts International
Terri Dunn – Operations Manager, Transactions at Jones Lang LaSalle
Jennifer Barnett – Former System Manager, Accounts Payable, Summa Health
Fran Hammer, Manager, Disbursements & Travel, Hershey’s

• Case of the Disappearing Credits
Mary Schaeffer, Editorial Director and Publisher, Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow
Sharon Warmboe, Manager, Accounts Payable, Gilead
Patty Gustaveson, Assistant Manager, Audit & Controls , Nordstrom

• Cool Tools in AP
Tom Lyman, Director of Accounts Payable, Saftey-Kleen
Josh Campbell, Senior Finance Manager, Disbursements, Humana

If you want more information about the presentations and the Lavante AP Thought Leadership Awards presented at the conference, please contact me directly at joe.flynn@lavante.com.

Lavante Connect

Tags: AP Industry, AP Technology, Lavante, Recovery Audit, vendor file cleansing, Vendor File Mgmt
Posted in AP Industry, AP Technology Innovation, Lavante, Recovery Audit, Vendor File Cleansing, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »

Lavante Recovery+ Leads the Way in On-demand, Automated Recovery Processes

Wednesday, June 27th, 2012

Last month we announced the release of our latest version of Lavante Recovery+. Plus because this release packs a lot of power into the recovery process, giving users tons of added value and benefits ranging from a new, intuitive user interface and on-demand interactive reporting dashboards to streamlined workflow processes.

Because the new features and functionalities were all based on feedback received from our customers as well as other AP and finance professionals, we are receiving strong reviews about the many benefits Recovery+ delivers. For example, one user from Arkansas Best Corporation (ABF) stated:

“I especially like Lavante’s redesigned application. The new design makes it easy to update claims and to keep track of how the audit is going. The graphical dashboard is particularly useful in getting a quick visual view of the overall audit numbers.”

The dashboard, shown below, is a key part of the new interactive interface, by providing a snapshot of how the recovery is performing – from root cause analysis to the total dollars recovered, across user-defined time periods. And, all of the date is presented in real-time, so results are always up-to-date. This makes it easy to manage the audit process, as well as report the status over time to others in the organization.

Here are a few areas we focused on with this new release:

• End-to-End Visibility — for Complete Understanding & Accountability
Lavante Recovery+ delivers unprecedented visibility across the recovery program’s results and processes, enabling users clearly demonstrate to different audiences the multiple benefits delivered to the organization. We do this by tracking all transactions over time, making the results available through an array of interactive trend reports and dashboards, customizable to the needs of different groups and management levels within the organization. This flexibility makes it easy to prove the continuous value and benefits received over time. The results also enable users to identify problems with AP processes in a timely manner. Lavante’s built-in flexibility to configure recovery results, combined with click-through drill-down for full review of transactional details, means users can quickly identify problems and take corrective actions.

• Real-time Interactivity — to Mange the Recovery Process
With Lavante, users have 24×7 access to always-current audit results and processes through the Lavante Recovery+ web portal. With the ability to interact directly with continuously-updated recovery results, users efficiently process and review claims in the same working environment as Lavante auditor. This unified enables a streamlined, interactive, and actionable workflow that speeds recovery results.

• Multi-level Connections & Collaboration — Between All Suppliers and Clients
Connecting suppliers and clients is a critical part of a comprehensive recovery process, and at the core, Lavante’s Recovery+ facilitates this process — in real-time, through a unified web-based platform. With an automated outreach process, Lavante Recovery+ easily manages the massive volumes and extreme complexities involved with multiple outbound connections and inbound documents—across all business units and supplier locations, over time. Our technology-enabled recovery system means there are no theoretical limits to the number of suppliers or the volume of documents that can be processed for any one client. This process drives many significant benefits to the client and the suppler, including: data cleansing & enrichment of supplier information across all suppliers; the ability to recover dollars from the full range of suppliers, from the lowest to the highest spend levels; full communication and collaboration between suppliers, the client and the Lavante audit team. And, this is done in real time through one single portal.

• All-inclusive Recovery Tracking — Past, Present & Future
True peace of mind only comes when you are assured that all recovery dollars, past, present and future, are covered. For a true safety net to be established, technology must be present that tracks transactions into the future. And Lavante Recovery+ excels at this critical function. With a database the tracks the millions of transactions from every document, (invoice, statement, etc), our system constantly compares current vs. past transactions, with proprietary software that quickly identifies possible credits — in real time — tracking these changes over time. This automation and the sophisticated technology that manages these potentially millions of transactions means our clients can be fully confident that credits are not falling through the cracks.

I’ll be back to provide specific examples of how Lavante Recovery+ operates in real organizations. In the meantime, please feel free to read more about it by visiting our website or call us at 1-888-LAVANTE to schedule a demo. We think you’ll like what you see.

Tags: AP Technology, Lavante, Profit Recovery, recovery auditing
Posted in AP Industry, AP Technology Innovation, Lavante, Recovery Audit, Vendor File Cleansing, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »

How One Healthcare Provider Applied Lavante to Clean Up Vendor File and Drive Recovery Dollars – Recapping a Recent Industry Conference Session

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Last month at the IFO’s HPAS conference I had the pleasure of co-presenting a session with Jennifer Barnett, former AP Manager of Summa Health and current AP Manager for Walmart Foundation. The session, entitled Moving Beyond Manual Processes to Improve AP Efficiencies, focused on how while at Summa Health, Jennifer had worked to move away from manual recovery and vendor master file cleansing processes to Lavante’s automated solution.

We began the discussion with a review of the challenge health care providers face in keeping the vendor master files up-to-date. Not only are suppliers constantly changing, but as with any company, there is a constant shifting of individual contacts at each supplier. Jennifer noted that at Summa Health System the vendor master file was split between AP and Supply Chain. When the decision was made to merge all files together, they looked at how to best perform this function and update records at the same time.

As Jennifer recalled: “We met Lavante at IFO’s Fusion conference, and while we weren’t looking for a recovery provider at the time, when I saw that the recovery process included vendor data file cleansing, I knew we needed to learn more. After returning from Fusion, we worked with Lavante to do a cost comparison between using the Lavante Recovery solution and using contractors to manually go through our master vendor records, and there was just no real comparison.”

As Jennifer and her team had just concluded a 3-month recovery audit with a traditional recovery service, spending three months on-site combing through hundreds of boxes of historic invoices, physically touching 95% of all payables, she didn’t expect Lavante to find any credits. “I was astonished at the immediate credits that Lavante was able to uncover. They found credits that the other service never found, in spite of the fact that they had physically gone through all of our payable records for the previous 7 years. Lavante found sizable recovery dollars from as far back as five years ago.”

Lavante works with many health care providers and finds that not only can we find credit dollars that traditional firms will miss, but we can easily identify root causes for these credits. Because Lavante Recovery assigns a “type” to each credit identified by the supplier, our clients can quickly identify problem areas.

Jennifer brought up several examples of how Lavante was able to identify process improvement areas. The first related to rebates. Lavante was able to find rebates that they simply never knew were out there. Once identified, Jennifer’s team was able to work with the supplier to recover dollars due them from years back. Another example focused on identifying that many invoices were paid without the proper discounts being applied. “These both represented what would have been missed money that our organization would never have recovered without Lavante’s automated recovery audit solution,” Jennifer noted.

Returning to Jennifer’s original issue – vendor master file cleansing – Jennifer recalled that Summa took a phased approach to deploying Lavante, bringing in separate hospitals one at a time. After the first year, over 80% of its vendors had been updated, a rate that continued to improve. And, because this update process is ongoing, they don’t need to do an end-of-the-year vendor master file update process. It’s always ready.

I thoroughly enjoyed working with Jennifer at the conference! It was good to hear more about how Lavante has made a difference at Summa Health Systems.

The session will be repeated as a live webinar later next month, so stay tuned for that announcement.

Tags: AP Industry, Credit Recovery, Lavante, Lavante Recovery, Vendor Master File Cleasing
Posted in AP Case Study, AP Industry, AP Technology Innovation, IAPP, Lavante, Recovery Audit, Vendor File Cleansing, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »

Benefiting from a Prescription for Clean Data: A Case Study

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

A recent case study developed by Spend Matters details how a North American and global procurement organization for a top five pharmaceutical company applied a defined exercise and solution implementation from Lavante to discover where it had excess risk exposure, lack of policy compliance, over payments and other cost driving issues. The procurement organization, which primarily focused on order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, credit and collections was ultimately able to trace all of its challenges in these areas back to weak or missing vendor data.

As the case study details, the company already had some of its vendor data under active management, but many vendor data points required enhanced management. Critical data with inaccuracies included: remit-to addresses, parent child connections, duplicate vendor entries and incomplete fields including TIN, email and fax numbers.

If the organization had embarked on its data cleansing efforts internally, the benefits would not have cost-justified the task. As such, it decided to work with an external partner. After evaluating a number of providers, this pharmaceutical company selected Lavante based on the power of its underlying technology and the portal it offers to access it. Lavante also offered a breadth of coverage to reach the majority of the pharmaceutical company’s vendors rather than just the top 10-20% of its vendors.

The company implemented the change process by centralizing data quality through one common channel in order to ensure accurate books. To achieve this, the solution was integrated with the pharmaceutical company’s vendor outreach and registration process through four key components: validation, updates, augmentation and de-duplication to primarily find duplicate payments.

To read more about this process, download the full case study by clicking here.
It clearly demonstrates how this global pharmaceutical company was able to recover $5MM in credit opportunities based on a total spend of $10 billion. In order to have the same EPS impact, the organization estimated they would have needed to generate between $50MM and $100MM in new sales.

An underlying platform for credit recovery proved to be the key success factor. Previous, largely manual consultant-led activities focused on only top vendors and their “statement reviews” and led to a lower recovery rate. In contrast, the Lavante platform cast a wider net, and this broader reach resulted in additional recovery opportunities that had been previously overlooked. This was critical for this pharmaceutical company as the top 10-20% of vendors were already “over-farmed” and the next tier down was where the most significant potential for recovery was found.

Tags: Lavante, Lavante Case Study, Profit Recovery, Recovery Audit, Supplier Information Management, vendor file cleansing
Posted in AP Case Study, AP Industry, AP Technology Innovation, IAPP, Lavante, Recovery Audit, Shared Services, Technology, Vendor File Cleansing, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »

Inaccurate Vendor Data Impacts Multiple Departments and Can Jeopardize Critical Corporate Initiatives

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

Without current, accurate vendor data, a long list of corporate initiatives can be rendered unmanageable or even impossible to execute. From procure-to-pay, supplier diversity and tax compliance to strategic sourcing and social responsibility, supplier data touches multiple processes and can have a dramatic impact on priorities throughout an organization.

In my professional career, first as Director of Global Shared Services for Boise Cascade, and most recently as VP Account Management at Lavante, I’ve experienced some real world examples that highlight how critical accurate vendor data is to any organization.

Here are several examples:

When introducing new terms and conditions

At another organization

After purchasing a comprehensive e-invoicing solution

A group of advertisers placing orders with various media companies

As a check-fraud-prevention measure

Because bad data can trickle down your supply chain, it is important to solve issues upstream before the impact becomes contagious. A lack of good vendor data can have a dramatic impact on your organization – from exposure to vendors with credit issues, to reliance on proprietary suppliers for critical components, to the more pedestrian (yet costly) issues that can arise from using vendors not in compliance with your terms and policies.

Good data housekeeping is not only a best practice, it can have a long term positive effect on your company’s overall performance across every department.

To read more about the impact of bad supplier data, take a look at a recent Lavante webinar, hosted with Jason Busch of Spend Matters. You can also find out more about how Lavante Recovery helps to not only speed dollars to your bottom line, but also automatically handles vendor file cleansing. Click here to find out more.

Posted in AP Technology Innovation, Lavante, Recovery Audit, Shared Services, Vendor File Cleansing, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »