WEBINAR RECORDING

An Accounts Payable Efficiency Engine That Will Maximize Your Operations

Hear firsthand from Dakota Premium Hardwoods on how they have leveraged the WorldView and DMSi integration to reduce manual data entry, improve compliance, and simplify overall document approval processes.

WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT

And thank you for for joining this afternoon. I I certainly wanna be mindful of everyone's time. But today, what we're going to be discussing are the ways in which WorldView can assist your organization, with creating greater efficiency within your accounts payable processes and, really look at streamlining those processes and the and the variety of tools that that, we utilize to to help you do so. We have a a very special guest with us actually today. So as part of our agenda, what I wanted to do is is first of all, talk through our partner's experience as I just mentioned with the AP workflow and the other tools that they have in place.

So we'll start off with that, and then, from there, kind of jump into, the the various, automation tools that we have available.

And, of course, you know, this this is a this will act as an overview today, and, certainly, I'd be more than happy to, set up, separate discussions if if you're looking to kind of speak to more of of your, specific processes and and how we might be able to assist with that. And then, of course, you'll have my contact information here at the end.

Introductions

So if we jump right into it here, today we are speaking with Julie Mosley, the assistant controller from Dakota Premium Hardwoods. They've been a customer of WorldViews for a few years now, utilizing our document management solutions, which a lot of you are are familiar with.

But very recently, what they wanted to do was look at a way to create that efficiency within their AP process from start to finish.

And so we worked through them, worked with them through their current process processes to understand where those roadblocks were, where those frustrations, kind of lay there, and how we could resolve those with a with a workflow. So, Julie is going to take a few moments here to share, their experience thus far, having had a a few months, with the workflow under their belt now, and, give you a little bit of insight into, their process at this point. So, Julie, if you'd like, I'll go ahead and turn it turn it over to you, and you can give us a little bit of insight in in terms of, how the code has been able to improve their AP processes.

Dakota Premium Hardwoods Experience

Great. Well, thank you, Josh, for that introduction. As he said, my name is Julie Mosley, and I am the assistant controller here, for Dakota Premium Hardwoods. And, prior to looking into the AP automation process, our our AP process was very manual.

We hand entered invoices every single day, hundreds of invoices sometimes a day, and that can lead to lots of typos, errors, due dates being missed. Our company, we strive to, pay the discount pay before the discount due date for all of our vendors.

That's how we keep our suppliers happy, and we keep our customers happy by having that product on hand.

So it's very important that we have accuracy when we are entering our AP into our ERP system, which is agility.

So, we had already utilized like Josh had mentioned, we already utilized, WorldView for their documents, storing process, which we had to go in. And after we manually in entered all of our AP into our ERP, we then had to go in and invoice all of our images, or index them separately. And so we were kinda doubling up on entering it into our ERP and then also indexing it for the document software, which then, flowed into our ERP software. And so when Josh approached us or it might have been Jonathan, actually, I believe, who is our account manager with WorldView.

He had mentioned that there was this automation process that WorldView had rolled out, and so we looked into it. And, we were immediately in love and said, let's do it. Let's start it. Let's go.

We wanna get this onboard now. And so, all in all, the implementation process, I mean, maybe took three to four weeks. I mean, we gave them everything. They got started immediately.

We were very impressed with the timeline and the, the implementation team that they put together.

Once we got everything through the implementation part and we went live, there's always gonna be a few hiccups when you go live with any kind of implementation of any software. So, once we went live, it, they they were, I mean, emailing us immediately when we had an issue of, you know, hey. This is going into the wrong branch or this is getting, unfortunately, this this invoice is going to our Houston branch, and it should go to our Austin branch or vice versa. Just little little things like that.

They were able to to get in there, get everything straightened out. It was, it was pretty seamless on our end. And so, that was really nice when I'm sure a lot of you have gone through software implementations, and they can be really, really bothersome. But this one actually went fairly quickly, and it was fairly seamlessly.

So, now we have the automate automation. We have the approval, which our auditors love to go in and be able to see that all of these invoices are being approved by the appropriate personnel.

And now we're not hand entering AP invoices. We are not manually indexing the images as well because now they just all flow into, through the workflow all the way into our ERP. And so, it has really helped save our AP accountant a lot of time, a lot of headaches. So, it has been really great so far.

Well, I appreciate you joining us today, Julie, and and speaking to, the benefits that Dakota is kind of already seen in the very short amount of time, that they've experienced that workflow. And certainly, we expect those benefits to continue to increase in scale, overtime, even as Dakota's business continues to grow. So, again, thank you and and appreciate your participation today. And, so with that, we'll we'll go ahead and and kind of step through a little more information about some of the the tools that that Julie mentioned.

And, you know, one of the things that that she brought up was just like with any software implementation. Right? There's always a few few adjustments, a few things to to overcome to make sure everything's working, properly and and to make sure that the the team is successful.

Who is WorldView

And, so one of the things, more recently that we like to speak to as an organization is kind of how we've grown and matured over the years, since our inception over twenty one years ago.

And, so basically, what WorldView has done in the in that time and and especially more recently here is we've continued to refine our focus, to ensure we're delivering that value in the service that our partners, deserve and to ensure that our actions are continuing to drive that creative process and making sure that we're developing those tools that that really will increase that efficiency for our partners and really provide you with that competitive advantage.

So what you'll hear oftentimes, if you do work with me directly or even throughout the presentation today is, we view the the the folks that we work with as partners. Okay? Not clients. So our goal is to build those long lasting relationships with you and your teams collaborating together to really enhance and strengthen each other's, businesses.

And I think you'll see through some of what we talked through today how we can do that. And and, you know, we're focusing on the AP side of things this afternoon. But one thing to keep in mind is when we talk through these workflows, these are customizable workflows that we build from the ground up based on our discovery with your teams. So this can apply to any business related process that you have at your organization.

Right? It doesn't just have to be a transactional process like AP or AR, but think, organization wide, other departments, human resources, things like that as well. We work with a lot of our DMSI partners on workflows and and other tools and incorporate them within, a variety of of, departments. So keep that in mind as well, please.

So, just a a a small sampling here of of some of the benefits that our our partners have gained, in the years that we've been developing these workflows. And certainly, you know, the world has changed in the last two and a half years, and what we have found in that amount of time, we've certainly built more workflows in that short amount of time, than than at any other time in in at least my history here at WorldView, for the last seven and a half years.

And and, you know, part of that may be due to the pandemic and things like that, but also people, are really starting to realize in the industry, there's faster ways, there's easier ways to get things done, and they want to work smarter, not harder, and be able to allocate the resources internally to the most important tasks. Right? So if if we can put workflows and automation in place to take care of, you know, let's say, document capture and data entry into agility, voucher creation, things like that, why not let a a software handle that? Then as, again, your business continues to grow, our solution also scales and handles that growth and and you're not having to worry about hiring future employees to fulfill those needs.

So we'll you'll kind of understand a little bit more as we dive into, some of the features here of what I'm talking about. And, again, if you do have questions or come up with questions, please don't hesitate to click on that q and a. Throw them in there, and and we'll certainly answer those, towards the end here.

So one thing I always like to kind of start with is is a start to finish, look very quickly at the process of the AP workflow, just because, you know, sometimes we get caught up in in this the actual the features and and, you know, the the shiny bright objects of the workflow, but we don't think about, okay. Well, how do we even get to the workflow in the first place? So really the first thing to think about is, okay. How are we going to import the these AP invoices?

So we have a couple of different ways to do that, and these the the one thing to keep in mind, I would say, overall is any of these tools we talk about, are all, very beneficial and provide value on their own. So even if you don't have AP workflow or are not looking at adding AP workflow now, these import tools, the capture tools, anything like that, reporting, that we'll discuss today can all be used individually and and provide their own value. So keep that in mind. But if we are looking at getting those invoices in, typically today, right, a lot of folks were seeing, like, an EP specific inbox. We have tools that can actually extract those invoice attachments automatically anytime they're received within that inbox and pull them directly into the capture process.

So folks don't necessarily have to monitor their email, you know, save those attachments down, drag them out of the email, and and, you know, do something with them to get them into the workflow. We do have tools that can do that automatically.

Whether that's a mailbox importer or if there's, Outlook integration where you can actually route the invoices into the the workflow yourself.

There's a variety of options there and we just have to talk through which one works best for you. But, once those invoices are important, what we want to do is make sure we capture the data right off of that invoice. So really anything that that, you know, your teams would be entering into agility today to get that invoice set up for payment, we're going to set up a capture process to replace that data entry process. We're kind of flipping it on its head, so to speak, where we want those invoices to come in, get captured, and get into the workflow as quickly as possible, and then we'll worry about the data entry piece after the invoice has been approved.

So what we're doing is whether it's through intelligent capture like Dakota uses today, where we're reading the entire invoice and then pulling the keyword values, or if someone is manually keying in those values, one way or the other, we wanna capture that data and get it routed into the workflow.

From there, one of the the biggest benefits where we see the most value is really in the workflow checks that that our, workflow performs on every single invoice, whether that's PO based or non PO based. We have a series of workflow checks that we can perform against APRecon and Agility because of that direct integration that WorldView has.

We're doing those checks to determine whether or not that invoice, matches or is within your variance that you allow to see if those can be auto approved. Right? Because what we wanna do is we don't wanna spend a lot of time trying to match up invoices to get them paid. We have a tool as a fail safe that can do that through these workflow checks. So really the only things that are truly being reviewed by a human are those exceptions, those those items where, the invoice amounts don't match APRecon or or are not within that variance. So then the buyer or whom whomever you you have, can go into that workflow, review the exceptions, and make the proper adjustments. And we can kind of look at a an example of that as well.

And then like I mentioned, as part of that, the the workflow is fully customized. So when we're talking about routing, we work with you ahead of time to develop a flowchart of exactly how invoices should route through the workflow based on different scenarios.

So it's not a a one stop out of the box solution where we hand it off and and you work through that. We develop it, in conjunction with you. Like I said, we we collaborate with you to determine how that workflow should be built, and then we build it according to those specifications.

Pardon me.

And then the last step, basically, anytime an invoice is approved, then we have an API connection again, through that direct integration with Agility, where we can then ship all of that invoice data into Agility and have the voucher created for those invoices automatically.

So someone, in essence, just needs to go into Agility and then pay those invoices on the next check run.

So, again, whether you're a smaller organization or an organization that has, you know, thousands upon thousands of of payables per month, that data entry component that sometimes, you know, folks are are spending their entire, day doing, is fully removed, when you when you put this AP workflow in place. So that's certainly one of the largest benefits of of considering a solution like this.

So you may you may have heard me, mention the term earlier, intelligent capture. So I like to dive into this a little bit just so folks understand the the power and and how robust this capture feature can be for these invoices.

So, again, instead of worrying about entering that data into agility or even, you know, indexing these invoices with keyword values to get them into OnBase, the platform that WorldView uses.

Intelligent capture, utilizes optical character recognition or OCR to pull, the pertinent data from the invoices. And this is not set up based on templates or anything like that. It literally is a is a system that's reading the entire invoice.

So, again, we're we're removing that data entry component. We're improving the accuracy on pulling that information. And really more most importantly, we're trying to get those invoices into the workflow and approved so you can pay those as quickly as possible, so you can take your discounts and and not miss any due dates.

So a little more of a a visual here just to give you an idea. So, as part of that intelligent capture process, we're actually the the first step is is trying to, recognize the vendor. And and we actually do that by, looking for a few different components, whether that's a phone number, a vermit to address, something like that, and then matching it to the vendor record that's set up in Agility. So then we can pull back the vendor name and vendor number.

And then as I mentioned, the invoice header data, that's the information that's being pulled directly off of the invoice itself, and you'll note the required fields listed there. Those are the fields we we need to ensure that are on the invoice.

So then when it travels through the workflow, it knows exactly, how to route those invoices.

And then, really, the the one other component that that I find the most fascinating with this tool is, it it's called intelligent capture, and and it's called that for a reason. And that's the fact that in the background, there's a knowledge base. So what that means is when you have the system in place, the first time it sees an invoice for a a new vendor, it may not recognize exactly where a field is. Right?

So in this example here, let's just say oh, yeah. We've got it right here. So you see the PO number is blank. So this is the first time I've seen an invoice from this vendor.

Well, when we look at the invoice structure itself, we see the customer PO number header field is not really that close to the actual PO number. So there's a confidence level that this system utilizes. And if it's not, one hundred percent confident, it's not going to enter that value. Right?

We don't want errors. But the nice thing is what we can do is ensure that this system learns where that PO number is and retains that information. So when it sees future invoices for this vendor, it knows where to pick up that PO number. And that's basically just a point and click type of, scenario where we would click on the the PO number.

It's going to place that in the PO number field. And then when we click on it again, it retains that knowledge so that it knows next time, it'll pick up that information and then be able to route that directly into the workflow.

So certainly that's something that's very handy when it comes to, if you're working with new vendors and you're receiving invoices from them for the first time.

We do obviously train the system ahead of time with your most common vendors to make sure it's picking up the information, but just, another added benefit to that robust capture tool.

As I mentioned, this type of of capture, component is not necessary.

Certainly, it it becomes more advantageous the more, volume, that you have with payables.

So certainly a lot of our folks still decide to rely on on keying in these, keyword fields, manually and and moving those into the workflow. But, again, it just kind of speaks to, you know, the different options you have at each stage, depending on how robust you want the process to be.

So then let's say now we've captured the invoices. Again, that should be a very quick process, and now they're in the workflow.

So one of the things I mentioned earlier was the main value there is the ability to have these APRecon checks to potentially auto approve as many invoices as possible. Right? We wanna get those paid, and we want as few, hands in the pot, so to speak, as as possible. So it's going to go through those checks, and this is just a very, basic, flowchart, so to speak, of how these invoices route.

So if it passes all of those exception checks and AP recon checks, we have to support that data into Agility and have that voucher created.

But also, again, if it it doesn't hit, doesn't pass those checks, we set up, various exception, review queues based on who the buyer is for the vendor. So those folks can then go into the workflow, take care of those exceptions, and get those approved. And and we'll go into a little more detail on the, both of those here, momentarily.

So for the AP recon, a little more background on the three checks that the workflow actually does.

So first of all, when that invoice hits the workflow, we're comparing that invoice amount to the APRecon balance in Agility. And so the first check is simply to look at if that invoice amount is greater than that APRecon balance.

If it is, it will automatically fail and be routed to the appropriate individual for review and and adjustments.

Typically, we would expect that that invoice is going to pass that check, so it moves on to the second check, which is basically then comparing the invoice amount to a particular AP Raycon receiving line.

Now it can either equal that or be within a variance that you allow. We build the logic into the workflow based on whatever the the variance is that that your company allows. Maybe that's one percent up to ten dollars.

Well, if it's within that variance or it matches that line, we consider that auto approved. No one has to do anything. Again, we're creating that voucher then automatically in Agility, and the invoice is ready to be paid.

Let's say it doesn't pass that check.

The workflow will do one final check, very similar in nature where it's going to compare that amount to the overall AP recon balance. And if it matches or is within that variance, then it will be considered auto approved.

Now if it doesn't pass all of those checks, what it's going to do is is again, we're going to consider that a fail, and it's going to route to, the buyer or whoever you deem is the person who needs to review that invoice and make the adjustments so it can get paid. And what you'll see there is a red note, that tells us, okay, as an example, here's an invoice that failed and here's why.

This type of a note is actually placed on the invoice in the workflow automatically.

So then when the person is notified to go in and review this, they know kind of right from the beginning, okay, here's what's wrong and you need to find out or make the proper adjustments to make sure this can get paid.

And so, that's kind of the, again, the the meat of the workflow itself. Right? We're utilizing these checks to try and get these invoices paid or or notify folks if there's any exceptions so they can get taken care of.

But, again, kind of as part of that, there's some additional tools within the workflow that can help in terms of, really creating that framework and consistency in terms of getting these invoices taken care of.

So in managing those exceptions, what we do is set up email notifications, And we get those sent to the buyers, or or whoever needs to be reviewing these exceptions.

So anytime that an invoice fails within that workflow, the proper individual gets an email notification, and it has a lot of that same information like we just saw on that note. So it it'll tell us why an invoice failed. It'll actually attach a copy of the invoice itself to the email, and then it'll actually provide a link for the reviewer to get into the workflow, directly from this email.

So, again, we're trying to minimize the steps necessary to get those exceptions reviewed and get those adjustments made so we can get the invoices paid as quickly as possible.

The nice thing about these email notifications is just like the workflow itself, they're customized to be sent when you want them to be sent. So if the buyers are to receive an email each morning to say, hey. You've got invoices to review. We can do that.

If you want them to receive an email each time a new invoice hits their workflow queue, we can do that.

Taking that one step further is the ability to, have alerts sent as well. Right? So if if an invoice is sitting in someone's queue for a day or maybe forty eight hours and and nothing's been done, we can set up alerts to notify their supervisor, that these invoices are now becoming stale. And so then they can jump in and and, you know, reassign those to another person to review or even take care of them themselves.

But, again, part of the reasoning for the workflow is the consistency of the process, but also to provide that one hundred percent transparency and oversight. Right? So if a buyer is out of the office unexpectedly or someone doesn't know they're gone, and so these invoices are sitting, well, these alerts allow someone to at least see, hey. Here's what's going on, and then can take the proper action.

Kind of along the same lines, when we talk about, kind of a a real time look at any of the data within, workflow or or really any information in general, whether that's being reported on through agility or any documentation that's stored with WorldView.

Reporting dashboards have become a a a pretty popular and valuable tool for, a lot of our partners, to utilize.

And so, basically, if we kind of keep this in context of that AP workflow itself, excuse me, you would have the ability to see at any point in time the invoices that are actually pending in that workflow, and we can break it down just as you see here with graphs and and other detail.

But, really, the most important thing is these are real time views. So you're not running reports, you're not putting in criteria to pull up this information.

Once you go in the client, you pull up your dashboard, it's here, it's in real time, and then you can filter by various information. So if you wanted to filter by branch, you could see how many invoices are pending for a specific branch, and then even jump into the workflow from the dashboard in case, you know, there's something you want to to look into a little bit further.

You can export this data as well if you wanted that on an Excel spreadsheet. You can send it, via email directly from the dashboard as well.

So so it's a pretty dynamic tool and and again, provides you with that transparency, in terms of what's going on in the workflow at any time. But again, we have a lot of partners who utilize these dashboards for things far beyond workflow even if it's, for example, comparing, AR invoices, that were stored from agility, versus signed POVs that may have, been scanned in, to correlate with those AR invoices.

And then we build a report to show, okay, here's all the AR invoices that are stored that don't have assigned POD stored as well. So then if necessary, you can reach out to the proper individuals to make sure, okay, are you scanning in your signed PODs? Are you getting those stored and linked up with the AR invoices?

Just kind of like a POD reconciliation process.

So that's just one other example of a a of a useful report dashboard.

Questions & Contact Info

And just like that, we are at the end of the webinar. So, again, I know we've kind of covered a lot in a short amount of time here with this overview, and, certainly, what what I hope you glean most of all is that, regardless of of what you're looking for, there's a variety of tools we can offer to, assist your team, create that efficiency, and really ensure that, you know, you're getting those invoices paid on time, you're able to take those discounts, and overall, you're feeling confident that you've got a solution in place that will scale as your organization continues to grow.

So that being said, I'm just going to check to see if there's any questions.

So one question is, are there any other tools that would help with, EDI invoices?

EDI invoices. Absolutely. So, I hadn't mentioned this, yet, but, there is a a tool, an EDI processor where, if you have vendors sending in EDI invoices, we can actually have those processed in, just like any other invoice that would be coming in from email.

So, we would put that EDI processor in place.

The EDI invoices would go through that processor. It would the keyword values would pull up, on those invoices automatically. So, again, you're removing that data entry component and then, yep, they would route directly into the workflow and, go through all of those checks just like any other invoice, whether that's an emailed invoice or an email or a student invoice, anything like that. So that is an enhancement that that we can add on to the the front of the workflow as well. So that's a great question. We hear more and more these days about vendors sending in EDI invoices. So, that's always something we can talk through in more detail as well.

Got a couple of questions here.

What is the cost? Okay. Well, that's a great question.

We probably don't have the the time to talk about that, but that's also a a case by case basis, based on the size of the organization and and really the the complexity of the workflow that you're wanting to build. So my recommendation is, you've got my contact information here. If we wanted to sit down even for a brief time and and talk through exactly what you're looking for, we'd at least be able to get some ballpark pricing and then kind of refine from there just based on on the level of interest and and if it fits within your budgetary considerations.

So, yeah, certainly please feel free to reach out, and and of course, I'll be following up with everyone, as well that that attended today, just to to see if if there's, any further conversations that that you'd like to have.

And so let's see. Any other questions?

Someone mentioned both hard copy and electronic invoices will transfer.

So that's, if I think I know what you're talking about, basically yes. So whatever method you receive those invoices, right, whether that's email or maybe some even still like paper copy, we would set it up where someone on your end, right, would scan in those paper invoices, and then we would have those routed directly through that capture process and then to get to the workflow. So, by one way or another, any any means or methods of of how those invoices are being received, we can we can set up a process to get those into the workflow. So, no worries there.

Alright.

Alright. I'm gonna do one last check.

Otherwise, as a reminder, we are recording this webinar. So, in the next few days, maybe not this week, and and I'm not gonna hold anyone to that here on our side, We'll get this recording, cleaned up for you guys and and get that sent out. So then again, you can share that with with any of your your, colleagues there and, as well as a case study around, Dakota's experiences so far. So as soon as we have that ready to go, we'll we'll certainly send that out to everyone as well.

But again, my contact information is here. You can either give me a call on my direct number or shoot me an email, whatever you prefer to do.

I know some of you might be saying I just saw a video of you, Josh. This picture looks nothing like you, and that's accurate. I know this might look like my high school yearbook photo, but, anyway, I I digress. Please, please reach out. If you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to to speak with you and and certainly learn more about, how how your business operates today, and, certainly hope we have a chance to, work together in the near future.

So with that, have a great rest of your afternoon, and, certainly reach out if there's anything that you need.