BancTec Helps CFOs Reduce Cost Per Invoice With New Accounts Payable Solutions and Services; New BancTec AP Master(TM) Offerings Increase Process Efficiency, Improve Financial Management and Control, and Support Regulatory Compliance.

DALLAS -- BancTec, a leading global provider of document and payment processing solutions, today unveiled new offerings for CFOs seeking to reduce invoice-processing costs. BancTec's AP Master-branded accounts payable solutions and services enable companies that handle large invoice volumes to significantly lower expenses, simplify regulatory compliance through process standardization and audit functionality, as well as improve overall financial management.

The suite of solutions and services, under the BancTec AP Master brand umbrella, balances cost with functionality based on client requirements. The offerings include three in-house solutions and a business process outsourcing (BPO) service line:

--BancTec AP Master Quick Start is an easy-to-implement, in-house automated solution that reduces labor-intensive processes, shortens cycle times and maximizes financial control, all at a competitive price.

--BancTec AP Master is BancTec's flagship in-house solution, with full functionality to address challenges across the entire receipt-to-pay cycle. Features include advanced line-item PO matching, customized reports, integration with client ERP systems, and advanced implementation and training.

--BancTec AP Master Control is an in-house solution for customers that desire advanced control and process functionality to reduce costs and ensure regulatory compliance. It includes customizable workflow, a dashboard feature and robust reporting/analysis tools.

--BancTec AP Master BPO is the ultimate outsourced offering for accounts payable, managing both electronic and paper invoices for a guaranteed reduction of processing cost per invoice. It enables companies to reduce costs, improve financial management, and focus on strategic business functions while leveraging BancTec's proven process-optimization experience.

"The sheer volume of paper invoices and related documents continues to grow and drive higher accounts payable costs, despite the outsourcing of data entry to low-cost labor markets, Web-based invoicing and electronic data exchange," said Jeff Brown, vice president of BancTec's business process outsourcing in the Americas.

"The cost to process paper invoices is high in terms of manual activity required at every stage, high potential for mistakes, missed discounts and late-payment penalties," Brown added. "With its new offerings, BancTec helps CFOs across all industries address these inefficiencies with options that directly match their business needs and priorities."

According to a survey by the Institute of Management Administration (IOMA), over two-thirds of all companies process more than 10,000 invoices a year. Ninety-six percent of AP invoice processing involves keying data from paper and the average time to process an invoice is 12 days. The same survey reported that 44 to 55 percent of AP invoices have anomalies, and that 25 percent of invoices are paid late, often incurring penalty fees and at minimum eliminating a company's chance of receiving early-payment discounts.

BancTec's AP Master-branded offerings provide automated, end-to-end solutions for these problems at all "pain" points in the AP process, including invoice receipt, document and data capture, content storage/archiving and management, workflow management, posting and payment, and queries and analytics.

"BancTec chose to implement BancTec AP Master in-house earlier this year, and we anticipate significant cost savings as a result," said Jeff Cushman, senior vice president and chief financial officer.

"Internally, BancTec processes more than 100,000 invoices each year. By automating the 'pain' points in the AP process with BancTec AP Master, we expect to reduce the time spent per invoice from over 10 minutes to less than five minutes," Cushman said. "If we can achieve this kind of result within BancTec, we are confident we can replicate it for our clients."

BancTec offers BPO services for a wide variety of business applications, including document imaging and archive, correspondence, application forms, mobile capture, and remittance. BancTec's BPO services are delivered through a common technology platform that makes it easy for customers to add additional services. BancTec operates outsourcing service centers in Totowa, N.J.; Chicago, IL; Charlotte, N.C.; Dallas, TX; Berkshire, United Kingdom; Essex, United Kingdom; Middlesex, United Kingdom; Dublin, Ireland; Tallin, Estonia; Utrecht, Netherlands; and Bielefeld, Germany.

About BancTec

BancTec helps clients around the world simplify the process of managing their information. Founded in 1972, the company provides a wide range of solutions for automating complex, high-volume and data-intensive business processes for clients in the financial services, manufacturing, government, services and utilities industries. BancTec's offerings include business solutions, business process outsourcing, and infrastructure services. With headquarters in Dallas and London, BancTec is privately owned with annual revenues of $345 million and serves more than 50 countries. For more information on how BancTec can help you optimize information management, visit www.banctec.com or call 1-800-BANCTEC.