Invoice approvals are something that we've worked on with many organizations over the last two decades. When I started at RPI, helping with the shared services and accounts payable department consolidations within the industry was a big part of the work that I did, so I'd like to explain more about this process.
With Lawson as the current financial system, there's nothing on AP-20 that tells someone what to do in order to release the invoice, which is essential information for your AP processors. The difference is night and day with CloudSuite, especially in conjunction with the new GL where the payables have become a real solution. It's a perfect example of how CloudSuite is based on workflow driven processes, especially now that tracking the status of an invoice within the AP process is no longer a bolt-on fix, it’s a part of the application. Most organizations will roll out non-PO invoice approval using the delivered workflow. The one that comes right out of system is flexible and super easy to turn on, but if you have more complex approval needs, you can go in and edit the underlying IPA flow. In the other half of that equation, we've got workflows that surrounds our AP data.
What about the imaging? Infor OS, the shared technology foundation for all of our CloudSuite apps, includes a highly capable, general, all-purpose document management solution. It's got some really nice internal integration to payables module, which makes it easy for processors and approvers to see a picture of that invoice right on the same screen as the relevant data.
Something that's really important when we're talking about an approval process in a software solution is that the application needs to know who has the authority to approve which transactions and who needs to see them. In the past, every approval system that's been bolted on to Lawson, whether it be IPA, On-Base, or a separate imaging system, has had to store the logic within its own configuration and its own way. Those systems have been really disconnected from the core HR application.
One of the things I really like about CloudSuite HCM, and an aspect of the system that several of our clients are really starting to reap the benefits from, is that it moves beyond HR records management into a system that's really based around financial details. CloudSuite HCM offers the option to drive enterprise system access and provisioning, or approval workflows outside of HR and finance supply management. With Global HR and CloudSuite HCM, you have the ability to model the real-life hierarchy of role and people relationships within the HR application and start to let it drive anything involving staff that might occur outside of HR, giving you a matrix of multi-tiered, flexible levels of depth.
We're doing this very thing with a couple of clients now. When they have a change in position, when somebody moves, or somebody is terminated, those changes automatically flow through to all these other processes. Their system access changes, maybe they're removed from the approval matrix, and then the system will automatically bring in who the new correct approver is in that position. It doesn't kick off this domino effect of manual updates that need to be done - rather, everything is handled by the system.
