For finance professionals in an era of new regulatory controls and expectations, cost savings from payables-driven supplier management programs has often taken a backseat to compliance initiatives. This does not have to be the case. It’s now possible for CFOs, controllers and accounts payable professionals to centralize the management of all supplier corporate and financial data, simultaneously collecting and managing the information necessary to tackle both compliance and cost reduction programs.

One of the major challenges finance professionals face is the need to accomplish more with fewer resources. As a result, many finance organizations have moved to shared services environments or even outsourced aspects of the A/P function entirely to reduce their cost structures. However, these initiatives have done little to fundamentally improve the core business processes around an enabling technology platform that reduces – by an order of magnitude – the number of resource required to manage supplier information (one of the most resource intensive aspects of the finance function). In addition, few finance organizations have chosen to tackle the challenge of data quality and accuracy – another key factor that can indirectly free-up working capital and improve compliance.

Aravo SIM enables finance and accounts payable organizations to:

• Centralize the management of all supplier information (even in a complex, decentralized people and technology environment)
• Automate the collection of supplier tax, banking and related information (e.g., W-9 forms, routing and payment account information)
• Track and manage global tax, tariff, duties, VAT and related supplier content
• Better understand which suppliers to target for specific payables initiatives
• Streamline and reduce the time to roll-out automated invoicing, discounting and payment initiatives
• Proactively manage and reduce supplier risk