Creating, mailing, and chasing invoices can drain your already busy timelines. The efficiency of financial operations is crucial for a company’s success – especially small to medium-sized businesses. If you still rely entirely on traditional manual processes to send business-critical communications like invoices, know that you are not alone. Many organizations across almost every industry manually send critical transactional documents like invoices, statements, notifications, and contracts.
In a recent survey, Quadient polled over 3,500 customers and found that many small-medium businesses currently have several paper-intensive processes, with invoices and financial documents being the most common among them.
This blog outlines how Quadient customers have improved their day-to-day invoicing functions using an automated solution. We look at how Quadient’s customers have improved their day-to-day invoicing functions by implementing more digitalization aspects in their business.
Why should I “go digital”?
Paper-based processes are the backbone of many companies’ operations. You do not need to switch to digital entirely. However, having options for yourself and giving your customers options gives you a competitive edge.
According to research from Deloitte, about 80 percent of small businesses in the United States are not entirely using the beneficial digital tools available to them. In other words, most companies are missing out on the benefits associated with digital document processes. This includes faster document processing, savings in time and money, and increased employee productivity.
One of the significant drawbacks of traditional paper methods is how clunky they are. All these documents require multiple manual steps and result in much paperwork. It’s an inefficient system that is prone to error and time-consuming. Regardless of your business or industry, any organization can save more time and reduce manual and repetitive labor.
What initially drove our customers to purchase a digital solution for invoicing?
Many factors drive customers to purchase digital invoicing solutions, seeking efficiency, cost savings, and enhanced business operations. Manually prepared invoices often take a long time to build out. The time increased when they included many expenses and line items with lengthy descriptions. Here are our customers’ key motivations:
- To optimize some or all outbound mail processes - 70%
- Gain more visibility and control over customer communications - 11%
- Provide digital delivery/paperless channel options for customers - 10%
- Eliminate manual mail processing steps to reallocate key employees to core tasks - 52%
- Reduce the overall cost of outbound customer communications - 25%
- Mitigate risks and maintain compliance with internal and/or external requirements - 16%
- Increase customer satisfaction - 11%
- Other -14%
Does it save your business money?
The short is yes, digitizing your documents eliminates many hard costs. Many businesses are implementing software to reduce manual processes and reap the monetary benefits. The cost of invoice processing varies, but most companies find it’s between $12 to $20 per invoice. The costs rack up in the printing, processing, and sending a paper invoice. There are dozens of things that can impact costs between creating an invoice and making a payment. Plus, they can add up quickly if you’re not careful. When calculating invoicing cost savings, pay close attention to labor costs – one of your most significant expenses. For example, how long does it take to process an invoice for a single employee? Figure out their hourly pay rates and multiply that by how many hours they spend on monthly invoice processing. Figure out how many people are involved and add up those costs. You can see where it gets expensive if you include your infrastructure costs, like accounting elements, ERP systems, and fraud detection tools. Fewer steps also mean fewer errors and, of course, reduced invoice costs.
When surveying our customers, we found that customers were able to increase efficiency in their business and save a lot on costs. We found that 61% reduced their overall costs by 25% or more using a digital invoicing solution like Impress.
The time spent might seem negligible when you only issue a handful of monthly invoices. But if you’re a business that needs to send hundreds to thousands of invoices per month, or when your business grows – do you want to spend so much of your time on a process that doesn’t add any value for your clients?
If you’re considering investing in a digital solution to help automate invoice preparation and delivery for your business, contact us here.
