The future and the digital transformation of accounts payables in manufacturing
January 31, 2020
Industry 4.0 is reshaping manufacturing as companies leverage emerging technologies to streamline production and gain better customer, market, production and equipment intelligence.
As the assembly line changes to become more technology and data driven, so does what’s required of the back office to support it. But is this happening? Are manufacturing companies putting as much focus and investment in the back office as they are into their commercial activities? And where does accounts payable fit into this equation?
To answer these questions, we ran a study in partnership with IDG, here are some of the key takeaways:
- 35 percent of manufacturers claim they are undergoing digital transformation and 37 percent claim they have completed their projects.
- 35 percent of manufacturers claim their AP projects are finished.
- There is an even spread of AP pain points overall with invoice approval taking too long (57%) and high invoice processing costs (55%) and compliance challenges (47%) dominating.
- 76 percent of manufacturers claim they currently use electronic invoicing, while 71 percent claim that emailed PDFs are still very much in use.
- 49 percent of manufacturers chose ‘Automated Data Capture and Extraction (e.g OCR)’, as a transformational tool—a clear sign that transformation projects are not necessarily moving in the right direction.
- Nearly all manufacturers undergoing transformation believe their digital transformation projects are already successful in achieving project goals.
Download the survey for more insights into the state of accounts payable transformation in the manufacturing sector.