“The joint seminar presented by Lavante & Basware, The Future of AP, was one of the most popular session at our national AP industry conference, Fusion 2011.  The speakers detailed the five changes coming to our industry, receiving rave reviews from the standing-room only audience.  The content was timely and provided valuable insight about how AP can become increasingly efficient and relevant in our challenging economic environment.”

The popularity led us to develop the content and present as a lunch & learn seminar series which we rolled-out last fall in Chicago, Dallas, NYC, Philadelphia, Costa Mesa, and St. Louis.  Again, we heard from the attendees that not only did they find the content relevant, but that they welcomed the chance to network with their colleagues and peers.

The seminar covers the following changes:

- More Importance Will be Given to the Quality of Supplier Information
- Supplier Networks Become a Reality
- Technology Provides New Ways to Automate AP Systems & Processes
- Buyers & Suppliers Collaborate
- More Cooperation Between Finance & Procurement

The 2012 series kicks off in Houston on Feb. 16 followed by Atlanta on Feb. 23.   In March, we will be going to Boston, Seattle and San Jose, with Detroit and Toronto in April.  Stay tuned for more information about the entire series.  And, click here for more details and to register for the Houston and Atlanta events.

We hope you will be able to join us at one of the sessions.  If you are not near one of these cities, you can also access the content by reading the related white paper report, available by clicking here.

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.

Procedures and Fixes for Vendor File Management,  AP Journal Online, January 2012.
Sherry DePew, Lavante’s vice president of product management, outlines the value of vendor files and an ongoing process for vendor-file cleansing.

Best Practices for Ongoing AP to AR Reconciliation in the Supply and Demand Chain, Accounting Software 411, January 2012
In this piece, Lavante CEO Joe Flynn shares valuable best practices to help companies drive a successful statement audit with their supplier base.

Finding the Dollars in the Haystack, Institute for Supply Management, December 2011.
Here, Henry Ijams, an analyst at PayStream Advisors, offers real world advice on statement auditing, with best practice methodologies in selecting a technology solution to conduct a comprehensive recovery audit that maximizes results. He outlines effective methods to uncover missing credits while reinforcing positive communication and liaison with valued suppliers.

Creative Credits – How Vendors Can Use Your Credits to Their Benefit if You’re Not Looking, Financial Operations, December 2011.
This article, written by Lavante’s vice president of product management, Sherry DePew, gives readers a unique view into the risks associated with leaving vendor credits on the books.

In addition to these resources, you’ll find a wealth of best practices and real-world guidance by joining an upcoming Lavante event or on-demand webinar.

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, a company had to send a letter to all vendors updating them of the changes; unfortunately, a staggering 80% of the letters were returned due to bad information.

• At another organization, increased banking charges were addressed by bringing remittance advice routing in-house. The most expensive and time consuming part of the project was acquiring correct email and fax numbers, which took inordinate amounts of time and money.

• After purchasing a comprehensive e-invoicing solution, one company took more than two years to clean up their vendor information so they could take full advantage of the new technology, resulting in much delayed ROI for the project.

• A group of advertisers placing orders with various media companies started requiring diversity information reports. In order to prevent a significant drop in revenue from these advertisers, one media company had to immediately engage their 30,000 vendors and rapidly find a means of collecting basic supplier diversity information to avoid losing business.

• As a check-fraud-prevention measure, one organization required all suppliers to receive ACH/EFT payments. This requirement cost untold dollars and the company took more than a year trying to contact their suppliers about the policy change due to incorrect, missing and out-of-data supplier contact information.

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.

Consider the various ways that a company names can be constructed.  The screen shot below how the Lavante Recovery™ solution has located potential duplicate vendors based on phone and fax numbers matching for variously-named suppliers.

From inconsistent naming conventions, to the same vendors located at different addresses, the potential for errors are vast and the impact of this bad data can be dramatic.

Based on a recent research report by Jason Busch and Thomas Kase of Spend Matters, here are the top seven areas to focus on to avoid the costly impact of bad supplier data:

1. Create an undisputed single point of reference – With processes to automate the supplier registration process, to collect supplier communications in a common repository and to assure data entry accuracy, organizations and dramatically eliminate costly errors.
2. Adhere to compliance requirements – Technology solutions can build in flexibility to support new compliance requirements by dynamically engaging with vendors around business changes, reducing compliance turnaround.
3. Assure security and privacy – In partnership with the Information Technology organization, Finance and A/P need to have strong adherence to security and privacy governance for data security, IP protection and information privacy.
4. Eliminate payment errors – A focus on processes to eliminate payment errors will reduce expenses around reissuing checks, late payment penalties and reduce over-payments and duplicate payments which can occur whenever a vendor is set up twice in the system.
5. Establish business continuity dependencies – Often owned by the Procurement team, business continuity impacts areas including material costs such as wrong parts, the cost of product or service disruption when stock runs out, operational overhead. It is also important to evaluate sales-side impact prior to making buys-side decisions, especially if a vendor is also a customer.
6. Minimize overhead for supplier management – By implementing supplier self-service maintenance functions, organizations can minimize internal staff resources for data maintenance activities
7. Automate using technology – Investments in technology will greatly improve your overall ROI as well as improve a company’s procurement professional utilization which can result in substantial savings.

The full white paper,  Developing and Maintaining Accurate Supplier Data – Overcoming Dirty Supplier Information in Finance and Procurement, includes much more about the importance of keeping vendor data files clean and up-to-date, along with a case study that details how one Fortune 500 Pharmaceutical company used Lavante Recovery to solve the problem and improve its recovery processes.  Click here to download the report.  Or, click here to read more about how Lavante Recovery helps cleanse vendor contact records.

Lennox selected Lavante, in part, because of our ability to deliver: comprehensive statement audit process;  patented, SaaS technology allowing seamless access to all results through a web-based portal;  speed and ease of deployment which delivers fast, continuous results, and; vendor file management and data cleansing as part of the recovery process.

Lavante’s patented SaaS technology continues to drive a differentiated offering for companies looking to maximize recovery dollars.  Because of our automated processes, Lavante Recovery is able to reach out across the breadth of a company’s supplier base vs. a small sampling which manual process-based services are limited to.  Our web-based portal also provides our users with seamless access to real-time reports and a view of every aspect of the recovery process.

The speed and ease of deployment are other important criteria to Lavante customers.  Our solution does not  require on-site personnel nor extensive, complex data collection procedures, making it fast and easy to deploy.   And in today’s business environment, where companies are forced to take on more and more task with fewer resources, our customers recognize that Lavante Recovery deployment has minimal impact on both AP and IT staff.

Another important feature noted in this announcement is the inclusion of vendor file management and data cleansing as part of the entire recovery process.  Our outreach to the majority of suppliers combined with over 2  million suppliers in the Lavante Supplier Network means that we update and cleanse your vendor contacts, which also helps to identify potential duplicate vendors.

We are excited to be working with Lennox Industries, a leading provider of customized home heating, cooling and indoor air quality products.   Click here to read more about this recent announcement.

We were happy to see that our recovery process was clearly differentiated from both internal review and traditional, manual audit processes. Before bringing Lavante in for a trial, the global cruise line had used in-house processes to track duplicate payments and unclaimed credits before trying two different traditional AP recovery audit firms. The later proved to be too invasive with too few results, and they decided to try Lavante with a small scope.

Based on the results of this smaller project, after a short time the audit scope was expanded to include more recent credits – from a initial 180 days down to 120 days old, and now working on 90 days. This “rolling” time frame is an important part of the statement audit process, as it gives the client’s internal AP process to catch many of the credits. We sit in the background as a safety net, continuously connecting with the company’s suppliers to ensure that credits on these older statements are caught. And, Lavante delivers these credits via our online web portal on a weekly basis.

As the manager of Cash Disbursements stated:

“[Lavante’s] job is to get out there and identify where people owe us money. They let us get this money faster and equally as important, quickly recognize potential errors. They are helping us collect with is due to us and most likely, a lot of this would be missed.”

To read the entire case study, please click here. And, to read the larger white paper which outlines the best practices for a comprehensive statement audit, click here.

His next post, Lavante Recovery – A Risk-Free Way to Segue Into SIM  expands the conversation to discuss Lavante’s Recovery Audit solution, which has built-in SIM-type capabilities.  And, the article continues to cover how Lavante works to “identify omissions, errors, and inconsistencies in your supplier data.”  What I saw as the vision of the two posts is the clear connection Michael makes between clean supplier data (and the ability to keep it updated on a continuous basis) and the ability to drive the maximum recovery effort.

“The benefits of good supplier data and multi-channel reach-out cannot be underestimated where recovery audits are concerned…. With respect to the former, cleaner supplier data makes for more complete transaction data, which not only increases the chance of finding a duplicate, incorrect, or fraudulent transaction — but improves your follow-on spend analysis efforts (and results). As a result of its supplier data cleansing effort, Lavante is typically able to process at least 95% of spend through its recovery audit solution, which maximizes the chances that it will find the majority of your recovery opportunities.”

Our company’s founders, Joe Flynn and Tom Flynn, saw the connections between clean supplier data and maximum recoveries when they built out Lavante’s solution set.  Our SaaS-based solution set starts with an automated outreach to the breadth of our client’s suppliers, and then continues to update records through our supplier network database, now with over 2.3 million suppliers.  The continuous communication with suppliers results in very high compliance, which keeps our client’s vendor records current, driving the maximum amount of credits possible.

Michael is very astute in his observations and analysis.  I have been in supplier management business for 25+ years and very few are able to connect the dots between Supplier Audit Recovery and Spend Analysis.  In a future post I will dig further into Doctor’s comments on how Recovery leads to cleaner supplier data resulting in improved spend analysis, which in turn provides better sourcing and more effective supplier management.

If you are interested in this connection of vendor file management and data cleansing processes, as well as statement audit please visit our website.  And, click here to read more about Michael Lameraux and his Sourcig Innovation.  The two blog postings referenced here can be found at: Recovery Audits – Are they Worth It, Lavante Recovery – A Risk-Free Way to Segue Into SIM .

Statement Audits: There was considerable interest in the presentation by one panelist who presented how automating the statement audit process using Lavante Recovery has delivered a steady stream of credit recoveries, beyond what was anticipated – in the first year over 1% of auditable spend was recovered. He covered how his company had moved from an inherited manual/paper based system to Lavante’s automated, web-based solution, which has provided seamless access to results through the online web portal. Lavante’s ability to automatically connect to and audit the breadth of suppliers vs. a smaller subset that a traditional recovery process would target, had an added benefit of improving communications and the overall relationship with vendors.

This focus on the importance of supplier relationships spilled over into the next hot topic the panel uncovered:

Supplier Management Portal: The need for an easy, transparent way to connect with suppliers and improve the supplier service function was another hot discussion topic. There were several presentations focused on this topic. One presenter focused on the process now underway to implement a vendor portal to the organization, leading with the findings that internal development of a supplier management portal would be cost prohibitive. Important issues in selecting a vendor were identified as: data integrity, eliminating duplicate vendors, and maintaining an accurate active vendor file. Ease of use, workflow approvals, and an increased turn-around time for approvals were also important elements cited. Questions about what incentives would drive vendors to join the network centered on the benefits vendors would enjoy and the possibilities of customizing the approaches for different types of providers.

I applaud the conference organizers (this was the first IFO conference in Toronto) in including this along with many other technology-oriented sessions at the event. Thank you to all of the panelists and audience members for a thought-provoking session. And, please check our website for more information about Lavante Recovery.

I base this on my 15 years experience as Director, Shared Accounting Services for Boise Cascade, and most recently four years as VP of Account Management at Lavante.  In both roles, I’ve learned the critical role that a comprehensive statement audit plays in assuring that you have full transparency into all credits due your company – from vendors representing the highest to the lowest spend.

Here are a few examples of the creative ways suppliers can use your company credits to their own advantage.

Example #1:  In the first example, a supplier took a portion of a larger credit, $392.83, and rather than returning the entire amount to the company, notes on the credit verification form that some of the funds were applied to cover an “outstanding finance charge. “  Not only is paying finance charges against that company’s policies, applying funds to an outstanding invoice poses other problems for AP.  If it is a real liability by that company, the PO and receipt will continue to accrue on a monthly basis if no invoice is presented.

Without a comprehensive statement audit, this creative credit application would have been missed.  And while $392.88 may seem like an insignificant amount, multiply this by thousands of other potential invoices, and these missed costs add up.

Example # 2:  Another instance where you are unaware of how suppliers are using credits involves using a known credit to pay a completely unrelated, and often disputed, invoice.  The typical scenario is when a credit is identified by the supplier and there is an unpaid invoice outstanding.  The supplier simply applies the credit to that invoice rather than refunding the dollars back to the company.  This second examples shows a supplier has done just that.  Applied a portion of a credit to another invoice, which in this case, was in dispute.

This credit verification shows that the supplier has applied to cover an unrelated invoice.

In both of these examples, it is highly unlikely that a traditional AP audit would find these credit anomalies, and the monies would be lost to the company.  Using a comprehensive statement audit process, which focuses on vendor statements rather than internal AP records, and that looks across the breadth of a company’s supplier base, is the only way to find many hidden credits which either go unresolved or applied to the benefit of the supplier.

For more information on how statement audits work, download the white paper, Statement Audits: An Untapped Source of Dollars for Your Company.