Case Study: Maintenance Services Company Uses Supplier Self-Service To Cut AP Costs

A $3 billion maintenance services company faced many challenges processing six million invoices per year, most from small-business subcontractors. The accounts payable (AP) director knew that full e-invoicing was impractical for this large, technology-limited supplier base. Instead, she looked for a solution based on supplier self-service invoice entry and chose JPMorgan Xign (now JPMorgan). With top-level support for the project, the AP director was able to make using JPMorgan's Order-to-Pay a contract condition for the company's subcontractors, but she used carrots as well as sticks. The company worked hard, with JPMorgan's help, to sell the benefits of participation to the suppliers, including immediate notification of discrepancies and faster payment. The result is that more than 55% of its suppliers submit invoices via JPMorgan's Order-to-Pay, and the AP department achieves an impressive performance of more than 90,000 invoices per AP clerk per year.