How Ottimate Solves 4 Top AP Challenges for Manufacturers
by The Ottimate Editorial Team
Manufacturers are experts at streamlining complex supply chains, but accounts payable (AP) processes can often lag in efficiency. By leveraging a single, integrated platform that seamlessly integrates with any ERP system, manufacturers can expedite invoicing and payments while optimizing the entire purchase-to-pay process.
However, even the most well-oiled manufacturing operations can encounter challenges that hinder productivity and profitability. From increasing demand to managing spend and inventory, these hurdles can quickly eat away at efficiency gains. Fortunately, AP automation offers a powerful solution to help manufacturers overcome these common obstacles and unlock new levels of performance.
Challenge #1: Increasing Demand
Solution: Increase Productivity
As manufacturing demand surges, it’s crucial to find ways to boost productivity without overwhelming your team. Ottimate’s advanced technology can handle the heavy lifting of invoice processing, eliminating manual data entry and coding.
With each new invoice processed, the AI models become smarter and more adept at accurately capturing and categorizing data, saving your team valuable time that can be redirected toward more strategic initiatives.
Smart Technology!
Ottimate’s proprietary deep-learning AI and large language models learn with every new invoice processed, continually improving efficiency and accuracy over time. Learn more about implementing Ottimate, request a demo.
In addition to the direct costs, paper invoicing is plagued with inefficiencies. Manual data entry is slow and error-prone, physical routing of invoices for approval is cumbersome, and storage and retrieval of paper documents is time-consuming.
Challenge #2: Scaling the Business
Solution: Get a Full Picture of Your AP Process
As manufacturers grow, it becomes increasingly important to have complete visibility into accounts payable processes across the organization. Ottimate provides a centralized platform for managing all aspects of AP, from invoice capture to approvals to vendor payments.
By consolidating AP operations into a single system, manufacturers gain process efficiency and control. Invoices can be easily uploaded and routed for approval, with customizable workflows that ensure the right people sign off on each transaction. Ottimate’s mobile app enables key stakeholders to manage AP tasks on the go, ensuring smooth processes even outside the office.
Challenge #3: Budgeting
Solution: Gain Control Over Spend with Custom Approvals & Spend Management
Effective budgeting is critical for manufacturers, but it can be challenging to keep track of every dollar spent across the organization. Ottimate provides a comprehensive solution to help you manage and control spend through custom approval workflows and dedicated spend management features.
Custom Roles and Approvals for Invoices and Payments
Ottimate’s VendorPay and invoice platforms allow you to create custom roles and multi-level approval workflows for invoices and payments. Approvers can easily review and approve transactions, ensuring better control over spend and a clear audit trail.
Spend Management for Employee Expenses
Ottimate’s Spend Management platform helps you control employee expenses by assigning corporate cards and setting spending limits for custom expense categories. Real-time monitoring and powerful analytics provide insights into spending patterns and trends.
Know Your Accounts Inside Out
Ottimate’s Spend Management feature provides real-time visibility into spending patterns and trends, empowering manufacturers to make data-driven budgeting decisions.
By leveraging Ottimate’s custom approvals and Spend Management, manufacturers can reduce unauthorized spend, optimize expense management, and gain better visibility into important financial data.
Challenge #4: Inventory Management
Solution: Connect with Your ERP for Full Transparency
Ottimate’s platform is continually evolving, enabling new features and capabilities to be introduced to further support inventory management and optimization.
Ottimate’s seamless integration with popular ERP systems can significantly improve transparency and accuracy across the procure-to-pay process. By connecting Ottimate with your ERP or accounting software, manufacturers can ensure that invoice data is automatically synced and reconciled, eliminating manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors.
Your integration provides full visibility into invoice amounts, what’s being ordered and paid for, and how that impacts inventory counts and pricing in your ERP.
Seamless Integrations
Learn more about Ottimate’s ERP integration capabilities and how you can streamline your AP processes.
With real-time data flowing between systems, manufacturers can make more informed decisions about inventory levels, supplier relationships, and cash flow management. As Ottimate’s platform continues to evolve, new features and capabilities will be introduced to further support inventory management and optimization.
Unlocking AP Efficiency for Manufacturers
As manufacturers strive to stay competitive in today’s fast-paced market, optimizing accounts payable processes is more important than ever. Ottimate’s AI-powered AP automation platform provides the tools and insights needed to streamline invoice processing, improve budgeting, and integrate seamlessly with existing ERP systems.
By leveraging Ottimate’s advanced capabilities, manufacturers can overcome common operational challenges and free up time and resources to focus on strategic growth initiatives. With increased productivity, better budgeting, and full transparency across the P2P process, manufacturers can drive efficiency and profitability to new heights.
Ready to take your manufacturing AP processes to the next level?
Contact Ottimate today to learn more and request a demo of our leading AP automation platform.