Delivering Better Outcomes and Scalability in Accounts Payable for Emergency Medicine Provider

When a Senior IT Business Analyst at the company arrived on his first day at work for this emergency medicine provider, he was pulled into a project meeting to resolve the tedious nature of manual data entry for invoices in the accounting department. Before he started, the company tried using an off-the-shelf accounting software system, but they couldn’t get it to work. The Senior IT Business Analyst had experience with implementing new technology, so he was perfect for the job at hand.

The large healthcare provider bills patients through third-party medical billing systems. On average, they process 1,500 to 2,000 invoices per month, but the invoices can range from one page to almost 200 pages, depending on the services. The challenge was that the company had no way to capture invoices from the accounts payable inbox without manually typing it into the general ledger. Additionally, to obtain approvals, the staff would have to send a manual email. The accounting department received both physical and electronic invoices, so they had to make sure there was an easy process for handling both types. 

Another hurdle was that the provider added new vendors frequently, which had to be onboarded manually. With over several thousand vendors, not all invoices are set up the same, so they required a solution that could be easily trained to read and extract data, regardless of invoice format. 

The team began a full analysis and comparison of 25 capture solutions, before selecting Ephesoft. “Most of the solutions were using legacy OCR technology. We wanted a cloud-based application that used machine learning, where the system can be improved over time to continuously add value,” explained the Senior IT Business Analyst.

The company already worked with Box, a content management, workflow and collaboration solution, as well as an Ephesoft partner, who recommended that they explore Ephesoft Transact and their mutual partner Nintex, a process management and workflow automation provider. 

All three partners worked together to quickly implement the end-to-end automation solution within one month. Ephesoft’s Professional Services team stepped in to assist with the implementation, which is being hosted in the company’s AWS cloud environment. The digital transformation workflow starts with Ephesoft’s intelligent document processing platform to capture, classify, extract, validate and export the data into Nintex, which then routes the invoices through workflow and approvals. Nintex then exports that data into Box or Workday.

“Ephesoft’s professional services team did an outstanding job!” said the Senior IT Business Analyst. “We needed flexibility and this was a no-brainer. We’ve experienced very few problems, and if we do, I can pick up the phone and talk to my customer success manager. Ephesoft checked all of our boxes. Everything was easy.”

Ephesoft is able to read any type or format of invoice, which other solutions could not do. There are no longer manually typed emails for approvals and confirmations and they could send PDFs directly into Ephesoft for processing. Emails are automated, so that accelerates processing. “These automated emails make each email consistent so it’s easier for approvals with a standard format. We wouldn’t be able to do this faster without Transact.”

The team also noted that depending on the invoice type and length, the accounting department is saving minutes per invoice, which allows for scalability and the team to focus on other priorities. The company’s modern, cloud solution also made working during the COVID-19 pandemic easy with digital processes and downstream automation. 

“One of the best things we achieved was scalability using Ephesoft,” stated the Senior IT Business Analyst. “We can easily grow and don’t need to hire more people to do the work. This is especially important as the company continues to make acquisitions and grow its patient and services base.” Currently, the company only needs two people that use Transact and then the accounting team validates the data within Transact. “The validation step within Transact is one of the best and most useful features for the accounting team. The user experience is better than anything else out there.”