Spend
Accounts payable. Sample company: PulseIQ, a composite demo company. Figures are illustrative.
Before: messy
18 steps, 7 owners and 8 exception loops. A business team raises a spend request. Procurement issues an order. The invoice arrives by email or portal and someone logs it, then re-keys it into the payables system. Coding gets a second look, approvals depend on who is around, and a person releases the payment in the bank portal. Eight exception loops keep pulling work backwards: a missing order, wrong bank details, a missing receipt, a price mismatch, a late approver, a duplicate, a missed payment cutoff and a month-end accrual chase.
After: agents help
8 steps, 2 loops, 5 agents and 3 human decisions. Agents read the invoice, check it has an order, match it to the order and receipt, and propose the coding. They ask for a missing receipt, prepare the payment run and check it for risk. People keep three decisions: releasing a flagged exception, approving above the limit, and signing off the payment run.
What changed
Every box on the before map goes into one of four buckets.
Re-keying, the second coding review and the loops that come from them. Fix the cause and the loop goes away.
Rules and system feeds do the repeat work: order checks, matching, payment scheduling and posting.
Reading, coding, chasing and preparing the case for a person.
A named person approves and signs.
Illustrative figures
| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Cycle time (days) | 21 | 5 |
| Straight-through rate | 22% | 78% |
| Cost per invoice entered | $14 | $4 |
These figures are illustrative. They are not measured.