I am still writing about verses. The articles that have preceded this one were document management vs. automation, transactional vs. seat license and the last one was SaaS vs. self hosted. The point is to help you find out, based on the service providers you are using, what to look for so you are able to compare all of the competing offering in a more objective manner.

This Is Difficult

If you look at the other verses, those were more tangible things. Time and ROI is much more tricky.. hang on!

ROI

ROI, which means return on investment, is a technology companies way to monetizing the benefit of AP Automation. It is designed to illustrate by investing a certain amount you will receive that amount plus more. The formula for return on investment for AP Automation is your current AP cost – your automated AP cost x over time = ROI.

Time

The time that I am referring to… as it pertains to AP Automation is the amount of time that is freed up by automation. If you look at AP Automation in its purest form you will find that its job is to free your people up from task that software can do. An example is, if you get an electronic invoice you won’t have to open that envelop.

Verses?

As I wrote in my introduction, this one is a much different verses… it’s more of a heads up… because your service provider is going to want to help you evaluate the ROI. Salespeople do this all the time because they (personally) are motivated by opportunity, so they will naturally think you are too. The downside is ROI numbers can be grossly manipulated (lies – damn lies – and statistics). The verses part is time cannot not be manipulated. Meaning if a service provider will free your process up of 9000 hours and another service provider will only free up 2000, the 9k service provider has the competitive advantage.

Want to know more? Buy My Books!

To buy the book – The Argument to Automate – How Innovation Can INSPIRE Not Fire – click here to buy

(Also) To get your copy of The 8 Pitfalls of Accounts Payable Automation – click here to buy

How about a children’s book? The Princess and the Paper – click here to buy