Are paper invoices bogging down your business? Ricoh Americas unveils solution

MALVERN, Pa., May 16, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- When it comes to paying the bills, small and medium-sized businesses can have outsized paperwork burdens, leading to overwhelmed staff, missed discounts, late-payment penalties, clerical errors and invoices that just get lost.

To address these problems, Ricoh Americas Corporation today unveiled Ricoh Accounts Payable Solutions for Small to Medium-Sized Businesses, a suite of services to bring paper invoices into an efficient electronic workflow as soon as they enter the business. Ricoh Accounts Payable Solutions for Small to Medium-Sized Businesses are the latest example of Ricoh's Business Information Solutions approach, which provides clients with custom solutions to address their most urgent business challenges.

Ricoh helps organizations take a big-picture view of their accounts payable process, whether they call it that or not, and seize opportunities to improve cash flow, eliminate paper shuffling, pay bills on time and preserve vendor goodwill.

Unfortunately, paper is still the dominant medium for invoices. According to a recent study by Aberdeen Group[1], approximately 59 percent of invoices arrive in paper form and cost from $3.34 to $16.67 each – from receipt to approval for payment. An electronic accounts payable workflow can be up to 46 percent faster than a paper-based one, the study found.

How it works

Ricoh Accounts Payable Solutions for Small to Medium-Sized Businesses make it easy for whoever receives an invoice to scan it at their nearby multifunction product (MFP), touching a "Scan to AP" icon to automatically route it to the person or persons approving payments. With point-and-click options for capturing important data – e.g., invoice number, date, item, amount – the information becomes easy to match up with purchase orders or contracts, and integrates with most accounting software, business system and/or electronic archive. The solutions include analytics to give customers visibility into their invoices, cycle times, labor costs, discounts, avoided penalties and more.

"Small and medium-sized businesses often significantly underestimate the time they spend on accounts payable paperwork that can be easily automated," said Dominic Pontrelli, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Ricoh Americas Corporation. "We help these businesses find opportunities to improve their processes in ways that will also help them reduce their operational costs."

About Ricoh's Business Information Solutions

Through extensive analysis and experience, Ricoh has identified the major business challenges enterprises are facing today: globalization, increasing employee mobility, new generational work styles, exploding information volumes, mounting cost pressures and rapid IT infrastructure changes. The company directly addresses these challenges with its Business Information Solutions approach, which brings together technologies, services and expertise that can help to measurably improve business performance by optimizing the flow of business information.

The Business Information Solutions approach streamlines an organization's entire information workflow by improving:

• Input – capturing valuable information from employees, customers and partners.
• Processing – creating business value from information.
• Output – distributing the information to the right person at the right time in the right form for productive action.

For details on Ricoh's full line of products, services and solutions, please visit www.ricoh-usa.com.

About Ricoh

Ricoh is a global technology company specializing in office imaging equipment, production print solutions, document management systems and IT services. Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group operates in about 200 countries and regions. In the financial year ending March 2013, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 1,924 billion yen (approx. 20 billion USD).

The majority of the company's revenue comes from products, solutions and services that improve the interaction between people and information. Ricoh also produces award-winning digital cameras and specialized industrial products. It is known for the quality of its technology, the exceptional standard of its customer service and sustainability initiatives.

Under its corporate tagline, imagine. change. Ricoh helps companies transform the way they work and harness the collective imagination of their employees.

For further information, please visit www.ricoh.com/about/

© 2013 Ricoh Americas Corporation. All rights reserved. All referenced product names are the trademarks of their respective companies.

Contact:
John Greco
Ricoh Americas Corporation
(973) 882-2023
[email protected]

Jill Searl
Brodeur Partners
(603) 559-5824
[email protected]

[1] Pezza, S., Jan, W.; Aberdeen Group - AP Invoice Management in a Networked Economy (Benchmarking Survey), May, 2012.

SOURCE Ricoh Americas Corporation

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