Posts Tagged ‘AP Industry’
Monday, November 21st, 2011
Earlier this month we announced the addition of a new Lavante Recovery™ customer, Lennox Industries. I’d like to share with you some of the compelling reasons why they chose our solution over other traditional, manual services. Not only do these reflect what I see as the key strengths of our technology-driven recovery solution, but they underscore what we continue to hear other companies describe as critical needs in the recovery audit industry.
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.
Tags: AP Industry, Audit Recovery, Lavante, Profit Recovery, recovery auditing, Statement Audits, traditional recovery, vendor file cleansing, Vendor File Mgmt
Posted in AP Industry, Lavante, Recovery Audit, Supplier Information Management, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
As part of a larger report published by PayStream advisors earlier this year, PayStream also interviewed a Lavante customer to verify the comprehensive statement audit best practice approach covered in the paper. The findings of this interview are now available, which validates Lavante’s approach to applying technology to help our clients drive a continuous stream of credits to their bottom line, and uncover the root cause of trouble areas so AP departments can work with their counterparts throughout the P2P Process to take quick corrective actions.
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.
Tags: AP Industry, Lavante, Lavante Case Study, Profit Recovery, recovery auditing, Statement Audits
Posted in Lavante, Recovery Audit, Shared Services, Technology, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011
I was happy to see the article by Diane Sears in the latest issue of Financial Operations Matters, Is 1099 Issue Dead or just Resting? which focused on the continuing 1009 reporting dilemma. Although the heated debate over this issue has died down after the repeal of the reporting requirements tied to the health care legislation, Diane brings up critical issues that every enterprise should keep in mind about this continuing challenge. She notes in the article: “Industry watchers say financial operations professionals can expect to see expanded 1099 reporting requirements pop up in other bills designed to raise federal tax revenue – and soon.”
One of those industry watcher’s advice comes from a Lavante’s partners, Convey Compliance Systems, a firm that provides tax reporting software and services. Their spokesperson, Troy Thibodeau, noted that the entire 1099 reporting process had largely been overlooked by many organizations, leading to low adoption of the automation that would deliver added efficiencies and cost reductions. This attention deficit all changed when the healthcare reform act shined a very bright light on the operational and process problems that organizations face in the 1099 reporting area.
My colleague at Lavante, Sherry DePew added her expertise to the article, noting: “The majority of the people we talk to say this has given them time to get prepared. Everyone pretty much knows this is coming.”
The article expressed complete agreement that the expansion of 1099 reporting is inevitable. To best prepare to meet future requirements, companies should look to automate the process and to implement repeatable processes, both as a way to effectively manage the entire 1099 reporting process now and in the future.
For more information, click here read the entire article by Diane Sears. And, let us know what your thoughts are about this issue and how you are planning to prepare for possible changes.
Tags: 1099 Reporting, 1099 Reporting Changes, AP Automation, AP Industry, Institute of Financial Operations
Posted in 1099 Reporting, AP Industry, IAPP, Lavante, Shared Services, Tax ID Numbers, Technology | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011
In my last post, I focused on how our customers have reacted to SAP Ventures’ investment in Lavante. Here, I’d like to present why I think this move offers very good news for the financial/AP audience.
The recovery audit industry has increased the demand for real solutions that move beyond the manual processes of traditional recovery solutions. There is a critical need to incorporate advanced technology that will invigorate and reinforce these more traditional approaches to recovery audit offerings.
At the same time, the supplier information management market has not yet taken off in the manner the industry expected. Quality supplier data is absolutely critical to companies and enterprises feel the pain of dirty supplier data on a daily basis, but the market has yet to explode. Click here to read Jason Busch’s Spend Matters article about the market for more information.
At Lavante, we think we’ve cracked the code by combining the two markets and providing an integrated, on-demand technology solution for both recovery auditing and supplier information management. SAP Ventures funding in Lavante validates a vision that Lavante has long championed – where on-demand solutions enable companies to tap into previously unavailable recovery resources while automating and streamlining the entire supplier communications processes. Consider a key reason SAP Ventures gave for investing in Lavante:
“Lavante’s supplier information management solution, combined with its recovery auditing solution, is the killer application to drive rapid adoption of the Lavante Supplier Network. SAP Ventures sees a massive market opportunity for Lavante.” — Andreas Weiskam, partner, SAP Ventures
Killer apps rise to the top because they answer a critical business problem and solve real pain points. The first killer app was produced in the late 1970s as VisiCalc* gave the finance community a revolutionary electronic spreadsheet (soon followed by Lotus 1-2-3 and finally Excel), dramatically propelling the nascent personal computer market forward. Lavante’s ability to leverage the benefits of recovery audit together with a comprehensive supplier information management within a single on-demand platform, like a killer app, will deliver remarkable power to today’s enterprises and solve immediate pain points for enterprise finance departments.
Lavante is committed to delivering on this vision, delivering technology solutions that can scale to meet today’s enterprise needs for seamless connections and transparent access to all supplier information.
Be sure to subscribe to The Hub and receive email alerts when we have posted new blogs to The Hub. The next topic will look at the, statement audit recovery process, and how technology can help deliver continuous dollars to your company’s bottom line.
* Click here to read for more information on the VisiCalc story
Tags: AP Industry, Audit Recovery, SAP Ventures, Venture Funding
Posted in 1099 Reporting, AP Industry, Lavante, Recovery Audit | No Comments »
Thursday, November 25th, 2010
It is hard to take one day of the year and squeeze in all of the “thanks” that we have built up over the other 364 days. But it is nice for us to at least give it a try.
Lavante and all of our employees have much to be thankful for through the first 11 months of 2010. We are enjoying a string of record quarters and we are constantly building up the team with great new personnel.
As a demonstration of our appreciation we set the Turkeys loose this week! No! That doesn’t mean we locked our management team out of the building. It means we bought a ton of Turkeys (nearly a ton) and gave one out to every employee that wanted one. Of all the team building and employee recognition we’ve done, I think this got the best response. The Pilgrims had it right – there is just something about Turkeys at Thanksgiving.
What’s more is that we took the extras and donated them to Second Harvest Food Bank. I was informed that we donated a couple hundred pounds of turkeys to those in need.
I am getting used to leading our industry… I am sure we are the fastest growing firm in our space, I strongly suspect our customer satisfaction scores rank up at the top and most assume that our recovery dollars outpace all other competitors, but I am impressed to think that we now lead the league in poultry donations. It feels good!
Happy Turkey Day Everybody!
Tags: AP Industry, Lavante
Posted in AP Industry, Lavante | No Comments »
Monday, September 20th, 2010
AP Matters Magazine highlighted Lavante in a recent article in their September/October edition.
The Article features conversations with executives from Lavante and Ariba discussing how their firms are creating new cash flow metrics that are helping financial executive watch there bottom line a little more closely.
Joe Flynn, CEO of Lavante discussed how Lavante’s DCO metric (which measure the weighted average of days that a credit is outstanding until it is collected by an enterprise) has become an important tool for companies to maximize the cash flow associated with recovery auditing. The article includes the following quote from Flynn, “Everyone’s saying, ‘Wow, I didn’t know you could actually track that. There’s a whole host of line items of credits you’re not aware of out in your supplier population. It’s like your working capital trapped in your supply chain.”
The article also highlights a conversation with Peter Lugli, senior director of working capital management and business development with Ariba. Lugli discusses the “cash conversion cycle” in depth and adds, “There’s this renewed emphasis on the cash conversion cycle. The CFO and controller are looking at their operations through the lens of cash flow more than they did before.”
READ MORE HERE
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Tags: Accounts Payable Software, AP Industry, ariba, benchmarking, cash conversion cycle, CFO, Controller, Lavante, Profit Recovery, recovery auditing, Shared Services, Technology
Posted in AP Industry, Lavante, Recovery Audit, Shared Services | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
Last week Lavante got some excellent coverage by AP Matters editor Diane Sears about Lavante’s Supplier Information Management product, Lavante SIM. Sears makes a number of very compelling observations about the need for SIM in the current corporate environment and she does a great job explaining how corporations that are faced with increasing TIN collection demands can achieve a complete and immediate solution through Lavante SIM.
I’d like to use this format to repeat a few of the Lavante SIM features called out by Sears in her article.
1. It drives compliance from suppliers. It automates the process of gathering information that would cost your company money, time, and resources if it were missing. Perhaps most importantly this year, with the 1099 tussle, Lavante SIM performs an automating taxpayer identification number (TIN) match to ensure quality data. In addition, it automates the process of collecting data and documents by pinging suppliers when their expiration dates are approaching. Lavante SIM also offers an out-of-the-box solution for new supplier set-up and data collection, taking note of details such as the supplier’s status as woman- or minority-owned.
2. It’s affordable.Lavante SIM is a software-as-a-service (SaaS), so organizations don’t have to invest their IT time in setting it up in-house. Also, organizations can start with one or two components and add others as they go. Known for its high-yielding audits in the profit recovery space, Lavante offers a unique solution for keeping the cost of its vendor portal product low. Lavante’s recovery services can pay for the project.
3. It‘s scalable. Charges are based on the application’s ability to get suppliers to comply with data requests. It’s a subscription model based on the number of suppliers per month per tier.
Check back for more links to media coverage of Lavante SIM.
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Tags: 1099, 1099 Reporting, AP Industry, IAPP, Lavante, Technology
Posted in 1099 Reporting, IAPP, Recovery Audit, Supplier Information Management, Tax ID Numbers | No Comments »
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
In part one of this blog we discussed how the traditional approach to vendor statement auditing recovers only up to $100,000 per every $1B audited annual whereas a proper statement audit should recover 5-10X that amount. In this blog I would like to discuss how and why Lavante is able to hit those much higher numbers.
Lavante Recovery is the industry’s premier statement audit product. The Lavante Recovery application and services are built on the industry’s most powerful platform for communicating with suppliers, collecting AR data, discovering credits and delivering recoveries to clients. Lavante Recovery targets the entire addressable supplier population without bias and commonly achieves compliance rates above 90%. It is systematically impossible for any other competitive statement audit process to out-recover Lavante’s process.
Lavante’s outreach includes initial and ongoing requests for AR data as well as follow up requests for non-compliant suppliers. Follow-up requests alternate by email, fax, mail and phone to maximize exposure and response rates. Lavante electronically archives all incoming documentation and data per supplier per client for retrieval at any time. Dedicated auditors review all documents for potential credits and communicate directly with the supplier to secure written verification of all claims. Recoveries are delivered to clients via an on-demand application in weekly batches accompanied by supporting documents and communication detail.
Based on ten years of benchmarking, Lavante has determined that 61% of credit-generating suppliers are distributed throughout the lower 80% of a company’s addressable vendor master file. Through their expansive review, Lavante delivers clients between $600,000 and $900,000 per every $1 Billion audited. In addition, Lavante delivers a complete suite of supplier reports and best practice recommendations for vendor file management.
Tags: Accounts Payable Software, AP Industry, Profit Recovery, recovery auditing, Shared Services, Vendor File Mgmt
Posted in Recovery Audit, Supplier Information Management, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »
Thursday, August 19th, 2010
Since the beginning of the recovery audit industry, traditional firms have focused their attention on client AP data to perform recovery reviews. Statement auditing (the practice of collecting and reviewing supplier AR records) required a different process than a client-side review. Due to manual labor and outreach requirements, traditional firms review only a small subset (the top 5-20%) of the addressable supplier population. As a result, traditional firms report that statement audit claims comprise only 5-10% of their total recovery effort. These firms also report overall recoveries of approximately $1 Million in annual recoveries per every $1 Billion audited, which means that traditional firms are recovering only up to $100,000 in statement audit claims per every $1 Billion audited. This total is a very small percentage of the true opportunity of a properly executed statement audit.
A statement audit, done correctly, should include a review of all addressable suppliers and will uncover 10–20 times the statement audit claims of a traditional recovery audit. A specialized statement audit firm focuses their attention on nuances of the vendor master file as well as the AR records of the individual supplier. A proper statement audit includes a thorough review of supplier relationships and should also provide some mechanism for patching the missing and/or inaccurate data that commonly plagues a company’s supplier records.
Specialized statement audit firms must perform two-way communications with a massive volume of companies and should demonstrate an automated method for soliciting, tracking, re-soliciting (if necessary), collecting, archiving, retrieving, and performing workflow for supplier AR records. An ideal system will also include consideration for leveraging many different forms of outreach (email, phone, fax & mail) to maximize compliance.
Considering the communication and work flow demands of a proper statement audit, it is understandable why traditional firms cannot perform the large scale review. Traditional methods for reviewing client-side data simply do not translate into a successful statement audit. Only a firm specializing in statement auditing should perform the review.
Tags: Accounts Payable Software, AP Industry, benchmarking, Profit Recovery, recovery auditing, Technology
Posted in AP Industry, Recovery Audit, Vendor Statement Audit | No Comments »
Monday, July 12th, 2010
Supplier information is integral to optimizing your relationships with your suppliers and for maximizing the value from your ERP system and other automated solutions. Used correctly, a well kept supplier master data file is a strategic asset that can be leveraged into time savings, resource savings and dollars to your company’s bottom line.
The biggest challenge to maintaining the quality of your supplier data is its near immediate decay after being recorded. Suppliers constantly undergo mergers, purges, acquisitions and employee churn that challenge the integrity of their data. Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) reports its database of businesses experiences annual changes of 20% for addresses, 17% for business names, and 18% for phone numbers underscoring how quickly and frequently supplier data decays. ERP systems perform some data quality measures at the time a supplier is set up, but they do little to preserve the integrity of the data over time. ERP systems are reliant on quality data, but they do not ensure it.
Allowing your supplier data to decay over time is very costly to your enterprise. Inaccurate data delays implementation of ERP systems and other automated solutions and can prevent those solutions from achieving their optimal ROI, effectiveness or their value over time. Failure to identify overlaps or relationships within your supplier population can lead to missed volume discounts or rebates as well as an increase of duplicate payments by up to 300%. Poor supplier data quality is also very costly in terms of lost efficiency and time. Bad addresses alone can lead to miss-sent shipments and checks. Quality supplier data is also vital to stay in compliance with various external regulations and internal controls. Failure to achieve this compliance can be both disruptive and very costly while causing great exposure and risk.
Collection and management of supplier data is more important now than ever. New 1099 tax legislation included in the funding provisions of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (March 2010) requires companies to collect valid Tax Identification Numbers (TINs) on a much larger scale than pre-legislation levels. Today most companies are expected to perform 1099 reporting for less than 10% of their supplier population. When the new law takes effect, companies can expect reporting levels to rise above 90%. Companies will need to implement new policies and potentially even new systems to manage supplier information more accurately in pursuit of staying in compliance.
The question arises: How are you going to ensure the ongoing quality of supplier information to achieve optimal project ROI and on-going efficiency while maintaining compliance with controls and regulations?
Check back for part two.
Tags: 1099, Accounts Payable Software, AP Industry, benchmarking, Lavante, Shared Services, Tax ID Numbers, Tax Legislation, TIN Management, TIN's, Vendor File Mgmt
Posted in 1099 Reporting, Supplier Information Management, Tax ID Numbers, Technology | No Comments »
Earlier this month we announced the addition of a new Lavante Recovery™ customer, Lennox Industries. I’d like to share with you some of the compelling reasons why they chose our solution over other traditional, manual services. Not only do these reflect what I see as the key strengths of our technology-driven recovery solution, but they underscore what we continue to hear other companies describe as critical needs in the recovery audit industry.
