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Imaging Automation Solution Cuts Time and Costs in Invoice Processing
With the acquisition of Stellent last year, Oracle Fusion Middleware now has a proven imaging technology in its arsenal, giving financial managers an important new capability that will help to further streamline procure-to-pay operations.
Oracle Imaging and Process Management (Oracle I/PM) automates the processing of paper-based invoices and reports, which have long thwarted efforts to speed high-volume back-office processes. Companies now can save money with imaging technology by reducing the time and staff required to handle paper forms, says Sancho Pinto, Oracle director of product management.
Oracle I/PM provides productized integrations with Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards applications and includes best-practice solution templates to accelerate implementations.
Using Oracle Document Capture or other scanning solutions companies scan paper invoices, expense reports, and other documents into Oracle I/PM, which stores the electronic files in a document management repository. The scanning procedure also automatically initiates a workflow process based on the industry-standard Oracle BPEL Process Manager engine, which is included with Oracle I/PM.
The BPEL process can then send the documents to Oracle E-Business Suite, for example, for subsequent processing actions, such as validating the account information, applying discounts, and forwarding documents through the approval chain. For financial clerks, the process is seamless, as they continue to search for, access, and interact with imaged documents through the context of familiar Oracle E-Business Suite interfaces.
Oracle I/PM released an updated integration with Oracle E-Business Suite just prior to September's Oracle OpenWorld conference, where attendees viewed a public demonstration of the technology. Oracle also described one company that recently completed a large acquisition project that doubled its invoice-processing volume. Because of Oracle I/PM automation, the company expects only minor additions to its staff, Pinto says.
"As your business grows and your processes change, you don't have to grow your staff or install new solutions to accommodate the changes," thanks to I/PM's imaging and BPEL-based workflow capabilities, he says.
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