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Digitalize your helpdesk to drive frictionless accounts payable

Mahalakshmi Ramakrishnan
14 Nov 2022

Implementing a next-generation, self-service accounts payable platform drives a faster, more transparent, reliable, and frictionless purchase-to-pay process that delivers increased customer and employee satisfaction.

Managing invoicing and accounts payable (AP) communication with your ecosystem of customers, vendors, and suppliers, while seemingly straightforward, can be a challenge. Indeed, establishing efficient supplier communication, payment reconciliation, issue tracking, and supplier payments often accounts for over 15–20% of an organization’s operating revenue.

In addition, process issues may be created if your organization has no established procedure for suppliers to share delivery information in real time. With thousands of transactions requiring payments and contacts with your supplier base at any given moment, bottlenecks during the process may result in a negative vendor experience and even financial issues. Common bottlenecks can include:

  • Communication breakdown – caused by poor manual processes, ineffective platforms or technology adoptions, and non-integrated technology
  • Delayed information – caused by a non-integrated application that produces incorrect and incomplete information, resulting in a dissatisfied client or supplier
  • Restricted access to information – that leads to a crippling business environment.

A self-service, one-stop shop for AP

One of the easiest ways of addressing these bottlenecks is to implement a next-generation, self-service AP platform – powered by Zendesk’s Digital Concierge or ServiceNow technologies – that provides a single-source of AP information in real time.

By delivering augmented, frictionless interactions and transparency across your entire P2P cycle, an AP platform maximizes the efficiency of your AP processes and significantly increases your customer and employee satisfaction. It also meets the needs of your ecosystem of suppliers, procurement, organizations, and service providers to drive value across your purchase-to-pay (P2P) cycle, including:

  • Deploying a one stop shop mindset
  • Putting business transparency at the center of your operations
  • Injecting automation into your assignments and workflow
  • Improving services, experiences, and productivity.

Increased transparency and satisfaction

Digitizing your core P2P processes and implementing a self-service AP platform enables you to shift focus from delivering transactional services to unifying communication channels – which provides the insight you need to make effective AP decisions in real time.

By leveraging autonomous updates, customer voice support, role-based approvals, and AI-based search capabilities, an AP platform can deliver a range of benefits to your organization, including:

  • Enhanced customer and employee experiences – that drive personalized, frictionless communications across channels
  • Better customer journeys – through AI-first assistance capabilities that increase first-time resolution and next-contact avoidance rates
  • Increased customer engagement – channel-agnostic, AI-led self-service ensures the platform performs as expected, regardless of where your agent is working from
  • Improved transparency – enterprise-wide CX analytics and business health checks, driven by a unified business view, ensures your agents get the information they need in real time, 24/7.

For a faster, more transparent, and reliable purchase-to-pay process that increases customer and employee satisfaction, implementing a next-generation, self-service AP platform is a must.

To learn more about how Capgemini’s AI.Payables solution helps implement a new self-service, frictionless AP platform across your purchase-to-pay function, contact: mahalakshmi.r@capgemini.com

About author

Mahalakshmi Ramakrishnan

Accounts Payable Global Process Owner, Capgemini’s Business Services
Mahalakshmi Ramakrishnan leads multi-national multi-cultural teams and transformation projects across the accounts payable.