Did you know that invoice automation can lower processing costs by about 60 percent? In this blog we describe how you can benefit from ‘smart invoicing’ through the Ariba Network using only one digital channel for all your invoices.
The Ariba Network is the linking pin between you and the supplier. The Ariba Network is a business network. A business network is different from EDI or 1:1 connections. Establishing 1:1 connections with suppliers is very complicated and time-consuming, hence why many organisations only realize this with their key suppliers. With the Ariba Network you connect once and collaborate with many using standardized processes and business logic. It makes the process of connecting and collaborating with all of your suppliers much easier, especially when we talk about invoices.
SAP Ariba offers smart invoicing. The Ariba Network contains business logic (network business rules) that alerts suppliers about incorrect invoices. Effectively this means that the Ariba Network is a filter for your incoming invoices and it prevent incorrect invoices from entering your process workflow or back-end system. Imagine if you could process all your supplier invoices this way?
For the supplier there are many connectivity options on the Ariba Network, from ‘light’ to advanced system-to-system integration scenarios. The following overview presents the many ways in which the supplier can connect to you and how the invoices are processed. Below we briefly touch upon the ‘PO-Flip’ and the new ‘PDF Uploader’ features – filling the gap for suppliers that prefer to use their own invoice processing tools.
Light Accounts are free of charge to the supplier. This is ideal for your low-volume, fee-sensitive suppliers. It’s easy using e-mail and web browsers. You can send any supplier your purchase order and upon registering they can do a few things including flipping orders into invoices with a single click. This means that the supplier uses the Ariba Network portal to create the invoice – which will be checked against the network business rules to make sure that you receive correct invoices. Read more about Light Account in this blog post.
A new addition from SAP Ariba is the PDF Uploader feature. The PDF Uploader is a new channel for suppliers that enables them to send digital PDF invoices created in their ERP or accounting systems to the Ariba Network. Invoice data will be extracted from the PDF and this data will be transformed to a full cXML document in the Ariba Network and sent to you. The supplier only has to change the e-mail recipient and basically that’s it.*
Reach out to us if you would like to know more about invoice automation from SAP Ariba and how you can connect your ERP system to the Ariba Network.
* Please contact Compera or SAP Ariba to check for the local availability – depending on SAP Ariba’s release schedule.