SEEBURGER Unveils Invoice Processing System

Published: April 21, 2009

by Alex Woodie

SEEBURGER's automated invoice processing system, 4invoice, has become unhooked from the company's overarching EDI/B2B platform, and is now available as a standalone product. By pre-processing the paper-based invoices before sending them off to ERP systems, customers can slash the amount of manual work involved with invoices by up to 40 percent, the company claims.

4invoice was previously available as part of SEEBURGER's expansive Business Integration Server (BIS), which offers a wide range of integration capabilities, from business process management and EDI to RFID and ERP application adapters. (SEEBURGER also sells an iSeries-specific version of BIS, but that's another story.) The Atlanta, Georgia, software company decided 4invoice could get enough traction on its own (perhaps because tomorrow is Earth Day, which always seems to put a heightened focus on eliminating paper-based processes), so it decided to offer customers a standalone edition.

4invoice is designed to be used by accounting departments that are struggling to keep up with paper-based forms and faxes. With 4invoice doing the grunt work of scanning, classifying, and routing incoming invoices, workers can focus on more value-added activities, such as dealing with exceptions (and arranging Earth Day office parties).

SEEBURGER is offering a range of features with 4invoice. The product offers optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities to read incoming invoices that have been scanned or faxed; it can also read PDF documents. The company also boasts of the product's artificial intelligence capabilities, which it says allows 4invoice to "remember" how it dealt with the paperwork of specific suppliers in the past so it doesn't have to hand the paperwork over to humans as an exception. It also has built-in workflow routing features to comply with an organization's approval processes.

The software plugs into major ERP systems from SAP, Oracle (EBS, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft), Microsoft (Navision), and Infor (Baan). A special version of 4invoice designed specifically for SAP is also available. The company also sells connectors for a range of other systems, including Lawson M3 (formerly Intentia) and JBA's System 21 (now owned by Infor).

Bill Metallo, vice president of sales for SEEBURGER, says companies can drive out a lot of manual processes and save a lot of money with products like 4invoice.

"Over 80 percent of invoices are still received by paper or fax and require manual data entry, with associated costs, errors, lost invoices, and processing delays," Metallo says in a press release. "4invoice eliminates these inefficiencies by capturing the data electronically and automating all of the validation and approval processes that must be completed before it goes into the organization's ERP system."

Pricing and platform support for 4invoice were not available. For more information, see the company's Web site at www.seeburger.com.

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