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Technology, Telecom & Utility Invoices – There’s Inventory Gold in Them Invoices!

AP Departments have a lot on their plate – especially if they support a large number of corporate locations.

These locations need electricity, water, heat, internet, cloud and phone services in addition to a multitude of apps to operate smoothly, and having just one of these services go down could mean hours to days of lost business.

And while paying invoices is the MO of any AP professional, they have colleagues in other departments who would love to mine the hidden inventory gold that lives on those invoices:

IT Departments want to understand what Technology & Telecom service inventories they have to keep their CMDB in systems like ServiceNow up to date.
Facilities Departments want to understand Utility usage and trending so they can make better onsite decisions.
Sustainability Departments want to understand Utility usage so they can keep systems like Energy Star Portfolio Manager compliant and Energy Star’s Building Emissions Calculator up to date.
Procurement Departments want to verify the services they procured are being invoiced properly in systems like Coupa, Arriba, and Workday.
Finance Departments want to ensure departments are falling within their budgets in systems like Coupa, Workday, Oracle, and SAP.
Technology Business Management (TBM) practitioners want the accrued Technology and Telecom costs so they can report on them within their Bill of IT in Apptio.

The problem is that, for most companies, this data needs to be mined individually and manually by the interested parties in duplicative processes that touch the same invoices, resulting in both delays and loss of fidelity in this crucial reporting.

So how executive teams shift the labor focus from “Running the Business” to “Reinvesting in Innovation?”

By getting less hands-on keyboards and adding Vendor Hyperautomation to their portfolios.

At AMI, we have spent over 30 years perfecting the art of vendor automation and data system integration by:

Automating the retrieval of invoices from service provider portals with technologies like RPA and EDI.

Extracting line-item data from those invoices at the most granular level to create and update service inventories with technologies such as OCR, AI, ML, and our own proprietary software.

Validating data accuracy upon import to ensure all invoice line items were captured accurately.

Integration of that validated inventory date to platforms such as Oracle, SAP, Coupa, Workday, Apptio, ServiceNow and Energy Star where all stakeholders can perform their analysis in platforms that they are accustomed to.

Closing the invoice lifecycle loop for activities such as approvals and payments, no matter what enterprise system that activity took place in.

In the intricate world of corporate operations, AP Departments play a vital role, especially in supporting numerous locations. These sites rely on a spectrum of services, any disruption of which could cause significant downtime.

However, the manual handling of invoice data leads to redundancy and delays, compromising crucial reporting accuracy. Shifting focus from ‘Running the Business’ to ‘Reinvesting in Innovation’ necessitates integrating Vendor Hyperautomation into executive portfolios.

AMI, with over 30 years of expertise, excels in automating vendor processes and data integration. Using advanced technologies like RPA, OCR, AI, ML, and proprietary software, AMI streamlines invoice retrieval, extraction, validation, integration, and closure across multiple enterprise systems. This innovation frees departments from manual tasks, empowering them to prioritize innovation and organizational advancement.

David Sonenstein - Vice President of Product Strategy

AMI Strategies

With over 20 years in the industry, David helps orchestrate AMI’s vision for vendor hyperautomation. While contributing to AMI’s adoption of automation technologies, system integrations and technology frameworks, his research focuses on enterprise market and technology trends and where automation solutions can help organizations achieve their desired business outcomes. He currently serves on the executive board of the Enterprise Technology Management Association (ETMA) and is an associate of the Technology Business Management (TBM) Council.