Studies have said that companies are able to reduce DSO by 3-10 days with electronic invoicing. By adopting electronic invoicing credit departments are able to reduce the dependence on print and mail for timely delivery of invoices while also reducing costs in the process.

3.1. Top Challenges in the Invoicing and Payments Process

The top challenges associated with paper-based invoicing process are listed below:

• Paper based processes for invoicing that causes delays in sending and receiving
• Inability to track delivery
• High cost
• Non-standardized customer experience

The top challenges associated with accepting electronic payments are:

• Expensive procedures for complying with PCI-DSS guidelines
• Lot of work for internal teams to apply cash as remittance comes in from a variety of sources including EDI, website, and email
• Expensive to accept credit card payments because of the transaction costs
• Disconnected invoicing and payments systems that cause repetitive work for collections analysts to retrieve invoices and accept payments

3.2. How Top Organizations Deal with Invoicing and Payments

Creating a self-service portal for both invoicing and payments is the first step. This removes the wastage in the collections process where roughly 20% of collector?s time is wasted in re-sending invoices to customers. This is enabled with a centralized online repository of invoices that can be accessed anytime by customers. Top features that organizations leverage in these portals are:

1. Self-service portal where customers can retrieve their invoices
2. Ability to make payments through multiple options including ACH and credit cards

• PCI-DSS compliance for accepting credit-card payments by enabling processor tokenization

1. Lower card payment acceptance costs by leveraging Level III Interchange fees
2. Tight linking into the A/R module to enable customers to create deductions right from the EIPP portal
3. Ability to send/receive invoices on fax

• Automated print and mail service to customers who still demand paper-based invoices

3.3. EIPP Success Stories: Reckitt Benckiser

Reckitt Benckiser(RB) the leading consumer goods manufacturer had an expensive paper-based process for invoicing as SMBs depended on paper-based invoices while large customers were already using EDI for invoicing. By moving to an EIPP portal, RB was able to provide SMBs with lower cost e-invoicing options including e-mail and portal-hosted invoices to reduce the electronic invoicing cost by 98%. Yaskawa America Inc, the American manufacturer of HVAC products saved $12,000 on credit card payments with a PCI-DSS compliant credit card processing solution by leveraging level III data in the ERP for maintenance and repair orders.