Balancing Speed, Accuracy, and Reporting Insights to Move Finance Forward

As any finance leader knows, accounts payable (AP) is a critical part of doing business. Behind the scenes, virtually every organization relies on its own network of vendors and suppliers to run, and those organizations have to be paid. It’s like the circle of life, but for businesses. Inevitably, the volume of invoices varies from one organization to another, but what doesn’t vary is the need for accuracy, efficiency, and insights within this process. But even as leaders recognize AP’s importance, many companies struggle to achieve what they need.

We covered the keys to AP success in our recent webinar, “Balancing Speed, Accuracy, and Reporting Insights to Move Finance Forward.” The event, featuring Jeffrey Holcombe, VP of finance & accounting services for OneSource Virtual (OSV), and Kaylan McDuff, OSV’s director of solution consulting, offered viewers an in-depth look at how the combination of Workday and OSV can help companies enhance their AP processes for greater efficiency and impact.

Below are some key takeaways from their conversation. You can also watch the full finance webinar on demand.

Transforming AP starts with establishing a solid foundation

Establishing a solid foundation is critical for any successful AP transformation. As the presenters emphasized, offers scalability, adaptability, centralized visibility, and control over your AP functions.

One of Workday’s standout features is its flexibility. For example, it allows for the seamless addition of new cost centers or business entities, eliminating the need to manage multiple systems. This unified setup simplifies reporting, enabling finance teams to consolidate data more efficiently and streamline their processes.

Another crucial aspect of Workday Financial Management is its robust reporting capabilities. Finance leaders gain real-time insights and reporting across various dimensions — such as cost centers, product lines, and geographical locations —without sacrificing Workday as their single source of truth. This improves the accuracy and speed of decision-making, as finance teams can analyze detailed reports that reflect the company’s latest financial data.

“The dimensionality of the reporting…being able to dial into the vendor cost by certain cost centers, R&D versus marketing, if they’re sharing a vendor…you’re able to take all these building blocks of data and organize and report on them in real time, which is quite compelling.”

– Jeffrey Holcombe

In addition to its reporting strength, Workday also simplifies auditing and security. The system’s detailed audit trails and robust security features ensure businesses can easily manage roles and permissions, reducing complexity during audits or when onboarding new employees.

By leveraging these powerful features, finance teams can operate more strategically, optimize their AP processes, and ensure compliance, all while benefiting from Workday's adaptability and scalability.

Extend your team’s reach with full lifecycle solutions

While Workday Financial Management lays a solid foundation for streamlining AP, your transformation isn’t complete without a partner like OSV to provide finance and accounting services for the entire AP lifecycle. In this part of the webinar, Jeffrey and Kaylan highlighted two critical differentiators for OSV as a partner.

In-tenant service delivery

OSV delivers services directly within Workday, offering customers a unified and transparent experience. There’s no need for separate logins or web-based integrations — your invoices and services are housed within the same secure platform. This in-tenant approach enhances transparency, auditability, and control, ensuring complete visibility and accuracy throughout your AP processes. It also simplifies operations by offering a single security framework, standardized processes, and expert administration while maintaining Workday as your single source of truth.

Unmatched accuracy

OSV’s ability to deliver invoices into Workday with 99.8% accuracy stems from a combination of optical character recognition (OCR), artificial intelligence (AI), and two levels of human review.

“We push invoices into our clients’ tenants at 99.8% accuracy, the highest in the ecosystem.”

– Kaylan McDuff

This comprehensive approach ensures any errors missed by OCR are caught, resulting in a higher level of accuracy. Such precision is crucial for companies seeking to streamline operations and do more with less.

Delivering customized results for Innisfree Hotels  

Before closing the webinar, Jeffrey and Kaylan shared a compelling case study from Innisfree Hotels.

Before coming to OSV, the hotel management company struggled with fragmented processes and manual bottlenecks. Their decentralized AP system required significant manual effort to handle large volumes of invoices across multiple properties, making scalability difficult without adding more AP staff. However, by partnering with OSV, they were able to reduce their banking reconciliation team from three people to one, allowing the rest of the team to focus on more strategic accounting tasks. At the same time, OSV handled the processing of approximately 100,000 invoices for them.

Another standout achievement was the custom automation OSV developed for handling Innisfree’s petty cash, which the company had previously managed manually through spreadsheets. By automating this process with OCR, Innisfree could streamline petty cash payments across all their properties without manual input.

“We were manually processing petty cash... We took it to OSV, and they figured out a way to custom build the OCR system to read the petty cash sheet. Now, we send the worksheet, and it processes all 50 payments automatically.”

- Kellie Kasper, Controller, Innisfree Hotels

In addition to saving time and resources, Innisfree’s ROI was substantial. They earned $383,625 in rebates, contributing to a total return of $459,147 — a testament to how OSV’s AP services not only increase efficiency but also generate tangible financial benefits.

Are you ready to move finance forward?

If your company is looking for a way to move finance forward, the combination of Workday Financial Management and OSV is a compelling alternative to other AP solutions that fall short. By integrating Workday’s scalability and robust reporting capabilities with OSV’s advanced technology, businesses can achieve exceptional accuracy and efficiency, as illustrated by our successful collaboration with Innisfree Hotels.

If you’re ready to transform AP, contact us today to learn how OSV can help your team.