Sizing an invoice automation solution from vendor material produces a decision built on somebody else's organisation. Three numbers from your own team, gathered in an afternoon, decide which shape of product fits and how much of a saving is realistically available. They also make the eventual business case arithmetic rather than assertion.
Volume and minutes
Monthly invoice count, and the median minutes from arrival to approval, timed rather than estimated. Multiply by the fully loaded hourly cost of the people doing the work and you have your current spend on the mechanical part. This is the figure automation attacks directly, and it needs no industry benchmark to defend.
Purchase-order coverage
The share of invoices arriving with both an order and a recorded goods receipt. This caps how much of your queue can ever clear without a person, because an invoice with nothing to match against needs one by definition. Any touchless claim above this number is describing a different organisation.
What the three numbers point at
High volume and high minutes: capture pays quickly. Low coverage: the first improvement is a purchase-order policy, which is free. Long elapsed time with short work: the constraint is approval routing, which is a cheaper and different purchase. The numbers usually redirect the project, which is the point of gathering them first.
Questions people ask about invoice automation solution
How long does gathering them take?
An afternoon. Time ten invoices, count a month's volume, and count how many had an order and a receipt behind them.
What if we cannot get purchase-order coverage easily?
Sample a hundred invoices from last month. A sample is enough to know whether the number is high, middling or low, which is all the decision needs.
Do vendors accept these numbers?
Good ones welcome them, because it makes the conversation concrete. A vendor who prefers their own averages is telling you something.