Guest article by Dermot McCauley, VP BPM & Case Management, Kofax - a Lexmark Company
A modern financial system is the foundation for automation. Complete accounts payable automation solutions are a relatively new product category for financial operations professionals. Advanced technologies such as mobile, social networking, and intelligent dashboards are very slowly being integrated into offerings and adopted by enterprises.
Digital disruption is taking place across industries, functions and business processes, as they introduce cloud, mobile, social and big data. But the problem is, not every organisation or industry is following suit. And businesses are now falling into two categories: those that have already been disrupted and reshaped by digital, and those that have yet to be.
Q: Kofax is one of the older, more established document capture providers – why do you think Kofax has prospered where others have failed?
A: Well, I think one of the answers lies with our ability to be able to re-invent ourselves. We’ve been in business for over 30 years, and over that time we’ve managed to combine the best elements of our vast experience with innovation.
Q: Ok, but as an older company which is likely to have an established corporate culture, do you sometimes struggle to be as agile as you’d like to be?
A: No, not at all. The essence of innovation isn’t just present in our software, but in our approach to how we run the business too. In fact, the size of the company works to our advantage in that we are small enough to be agile and respond to new market requirements, but big enough to offer the advantages of global coverage. We are a $330m company - and in fact, within our market segment, we spend more on R&D than many of our direct competitors. And this enables us to be just as innovative around our solutions and platform offerings.
They say things come in threes – but when during the course of one week, that “thing” is fraud – it’s probably time to sit up and take notice. And there are probably two or three factors which may be at play here – 1) fraud is being carried out more frequently than before 2) our methods of catching it are more robust than before, or 3) perhaps organisations are not so prepared as they were to sweep fraud under the carpet in a damage limitation exercise. Most likely it’s a combination of all three.
Avalara helps businesses of all sizes get tax compliance right. In partnership with leading ERP, accounting, eCommerce and other financial management system providers, Avalara delivers cloudbased compliance solutions for various transactional taxes, including sales and use, VAT, GST, excise, communications, lodging, and other indirect tax types. Headquartered in Seattle, Avalara has offices across the U.S. and around the world in Canada, the U.K., Belgium, Brazil, and India.