Payment Request and Approval System is an IBM eForms and BPM solution. By streamlining the cash flow system, this solution is expected to free-up millions of dollars in tied up funds over the next year.

It has reduced processing lead-times from one month to a few hours. The (OPRA) solution provided:

• A secured document management repository for storing paper-based and electronic documents; i.e., account payable invoices, purchase orders, etc.
• Automated system for creating and processing the electronic payment request forms and managing the related documents
• An automated system for authentication, data lookup, extraction, transformation and population of electronic forms data from three disparate systems
• Electronic representation and repository for storing the Payment Request (electronic) Forms
• Custom utility for attaching to the eForm the relevant supplier’s invoices and POs residing in the IBM document management system
• Process automation by transporting the eForm using IBM eProcess, integrated with Microsoft Outlook, for electronic signatures of approval by the Accounts and Treasury participants in the workflow
• Automation of the loading of Payment Request forms data into Oracle Financials AP System, which is automatically wired to the vendor payments after Treasury approval

The new system has high visibility within customer's top management, as it significantly impacts the company’s cash flow management and financial reporting. Before implementing OPRA, the wire payment request process involved substantial manual effort of three departments across the enterprise. The old system was supported by three different IT teams entering data in three disparate systems. The Marketing AR team received vendor invoices against POs and entered/scanned-in the associated information. The AP department team raised numerous requests for wire payments by hand writing the request forms after reconciling outstanding balances with multiple vendor invoices and POs. The relevant invoices/ POs required printing from two different systems for attaching with the request eForms. Finally, after the Treasury team completed the paper based approval process by reviewing request files, the payment data was manually entered by the IT team in the Oracle Financials AP system that automatically wired the payments. OPRA has done away with the redundant and error-prone multiple data entry. Now data transfer and document
extraction applications deal with the disparate systems that had no communication between the document management, AR and AP systems. With eForms replacing error prone handwritten payment request forms, exposure to risk has now been minimized. The possibility of making bad decisions in a sensitive financial area has been reduced substantially and the turnaround times have improved the cash flow.