Data visibility is critically important for all aspects of the modern enterprise, from the production floor up to the executive office. In the case of accounts payable (“AP”), lack of visibility into invoice and payment data is one of the most persistent obstacles for the typical AP team. Because of this visibility challenge, it is heartening to see solution providers, such as Esker, tackling the problem head on. In fact, visibility features strongly in Esker’s latest platform updates—the Paris-based solution provider has focused on providing more ways to highlight metrics and activity throughout its solution.
Recently, Esker Senior Product Manager Catherine Dupuy Holdich walked the Ardent Partners team through a solution demonstration to showcase the recent updates in the solution’s latest release. According to Dupuy Holdich, for this release, Esker focused its efforts on the solution dashboard, recognition engine capabilities, and the supplier portal. Additional improvements have been made related to ERP integration and in managing and presenting non-purchase order (“PO”) invoice data. .
All Metrics, All the Time: The New Esker Dashboard
In terms of the dashboard improvements, the primary efforts have been in enabling deeper visibility into the AP process. Dupuy Holdich noted that dashboards are customizable based on a user’s role within the organization. This allows AP to have a different view than procurement, and a different view from the line of business. This variance also allows each dashboard view to show different metrics based on what the user needs to know for their work. For example, AP can view invoices in process, procurement can view purchase orders awaiting approval, and the line of business can see which invoices they need to approve.
The Esker solution does this through color coding its data, which is designed to draw attention to important information and make it easy to see at-a-glance what is and is not important. “We are really presenting the data in a way that is easy to understand and easy to use for different users,” Dupuy-Holdich said.
As part of the solution’s updated functionality, Dupuy-Holdich noted that Esker provides extensive customization for the dashboards. Admins are able to remove any indicator, add new indicators, and even create metrics that are unique to the organization; Dupuy-Holdich said that each indicator on the Esker dashboard points to a list, so an admin can create a list and point the dashboard to provide a counter of the data on that list. This can even be done at the user level, assuming that client admins gave users that ability.
Other Key Updates
Beyond updating the dashboard and making it more streamlined, Dupuy-Holdich said that Esker had taken the time to “put a face” to the solution’s workflow engine. What this means is that users can now change the workflow and add new approvals at will, as part of the user interface that makes it easier for Esker to roll out projects as well as for users to manage their own approval workflows.
In addition to the workflow update, Esker has also updated its optical character recognition (“OCR”) capabilities for suppliers and developed a new automatic-learning capability that allows users to “teach” the solution how to recognize a particular line item or invoice field that it previously did not recognize properly.
Dupuy-Holdich also noted that Esker is hard at work creating connectors for different ERPs. In fact, Esker recently announced the completion of a connector for Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The goal with these ERP connectors, Dupuy-Holdich said, is to make it easier for users to deploy Esker.
What the Future Holds
Esker is working on a way to merge purchase orders and purchasing requisitions, Dupuy-Holdich said, which also includes functionality that will enable better buyer/supplier interaction. As part of this, Dupuy-Holdich noted that Esker’s 2016 plans include creating the ability for users to “push” their purchase orders into the ERP rather than managing POs externally. Esker’s clients are very interested in their vision of the P2P process, and in fact Dupuy-Holdich said they have a lot of traction with AP opportunities—including a sale of Esker’s AP and purchasing solutions in a bundle, which is currently functioning well for the client involved.
Dupuy-Holdich also said Esker plans to expand into payments through partnerships with other solution providers to provide a full business-to-business (“B2B”) payments solution. Additionally, Dupuy-Holdich said Esker is currently in the design phase of a supplier network built around their solution. Work on these and other areas will commence in 2016 with availability dates to be announced in the future.
Final Thoughts
Esker’s traditional strengths have been in digitizing the paper invoice. But, the AP market’s needs are evolving beyond the inbound paper problem. Esker’s new release and planned solution expansion into P2P, payments, and networks are very much aligned with the modern AP organization that is thinking holistically about the AP and P2P process and how it can drive supplier enablement. Now it must execute.
Download Ardent’s benchmark “The State of B2B Payments 2015: Emerging Business Value” (click here) for a look into the state of the payments marketplace today and how to improve operations.
Check out these related articles for more:
Esker Wants to Take Over the Procure-to-Pay World
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