Payments are a constant focus for CFOs, CIOs, controllers, purchasing managers and treasurers because inefficient payment processes inhibit supply chains, cash flow and profitability. The need to optimise cash and working capital, combined with the increasing threat of cybercrime and payments fraud, amplifies the need to centralise and standardise invoice capturing and corporate payments.
To manage these risks in the payment cycle, one should start from receiving the invoice and follow the invoice with straight-through processing until payment is completed at the bank with as little as possible human intervention.
How can technology help to reduce risk while detecting fraud before payment processing?
The combination of robotic process automation (RPA) technology with the Kyriba corporate payments hub, that acts as a group-wide payment control centre, provides visibility so that you can gain real-time insight into payables while knowing that the accounts payable bot have significantly reduced the errors in invoice processing.
Adding a digital worker to your AP team
Digital workers (bots) work alongside your AP team and take over the mundane invoice capturing function. This important but known to be an error-prone task is something that bots excel at. Bots read and extract the information from PDF invoices, validates against a purchase order, vendor number, VAT number, bank details etc. and captures all information into any ERP 100% error-free 24/7/365 days of the year. Up to 80% of invoices can be processed with straight-through processing and no human intervention. Want to see an AP bot in action?
Digitising corporate payment policies
Ensuring that all payments activity, including manual payments, are governed by digitally-enforced payment policies and standardised controls across all entities goes a long way in addressing payment risks. Because the payments hub centralises payments before final transmission to the bank, the CFO can ensure that all payments are the responsibility of a single team — regardless of amount, location or who requested it.
Upfront fraud prevention and sanction screening
Realtime, upfront fraud detention rules such as first payment to a beneficiary, duplicates payments, amount breaches, as well as bank detail changes are some of the alerts that the fraud module create. Company-specific fraud detection rules are also supported, and any suspicious payments are handled in a separate queue for resolution. By utilising machine learning payments are ranked according to their normality and anomalies are identified triggering payment alerts.
Automated and digitised bank detail verification
All bank detail changes or new supplier bank details are automatically verified against the respective bank information. Verification results are digitised and act as the first verifier of changes in bank details before submitting for further approval.
Reducing the burden on IT
With the payment hub hosted in the cloud that features bank-format generation and integrated bank connectivity via Host to Host with local SA banks, internal IT resources are no longer needed to build and maintain bank connections. This offers finance teams the freedom to change existing bank relationships, enables scalability to add new banks and gives finance teams the flexibility to update bank formats.
Global visibility
Centralising all payments allows for complete visibility of all outgoing cash flows so that Treasury can optimise cash balances and making effective decisions on where to deploy cash and liquidity. Thus, running leaner, minimising excess balances so that cash can be more efficiently used where it is needed most.
Conclusion
The TreasuryONE PROCURE TO PAY SOLUTION, results in faster ERP payment projects, cost savings and risk reduction, while increasing security, visibility and scalability.