Memorial Hermann Healthcare of Houston will use electronic invoicing to automate its accounts payable and supply chain processes.
The 14-hospital system has joined with Atlanta-based OB10, a B2B e-Invoicing network, in an effort to reduce processing costs.
The network is designed to deliver suppliers' invoices within minutes of their submission, so that hospitals will be able to provide real-time invoice processing that will maximize the back-end purchasing card payments into supplier's bank accounts.
Memorial Hermann Healthcare processes 569,0000 invoices annually. By using e-Invoicing, officials hope to be able to reduce at least 40 percent of the average cost to process a paper invoice. By eliminating the time and potential errors of data re-entry, misplaced invoices and staff time spent handling invoices, OB10 officials say their clients typically cut 10 to 15 days out of the invoice cycle.
OB10 touts its technology as being "green," and says Memorial Hermann Healthcare would save 162 trees annually, along with 14 barrels of oil and 28,000 kilowatts of electricity, if the system received 80 percent of its invoices electronically. In addition, OB10 officials said, nearly 500 pounds of air pollutants would be avoided and 28 fewer cubic yards of landfill space would be needed for disposal.
"We were looking for significant process improvements, in which we could eliminate the manual data entry points, and we wanted a solution that was 'green' and environmentally friendly," said Daron Whisman, director of Finance and Supply Chain at Memorial Hermann Healthcare. "The combination of e-Invoicing and the payment card was an ideal fit for our procure-to-pay initiative."