As a product marketer for Iron Mountain, while I’m not on the front lines like 
many in this community are, I have talked to a number of customers about this 
issue and thought you might appreciate what I’ve learned from them. I do 
agree with the comment of 20% of creditors/vendors accounting for 80% of 
invoices.  We see this trend with our customers all the time.  While sending 
PDF invoices is good - this is just an incremental step to scanning.  And OCR 
processes take a lot of training to get the capture right, and you may end up 
shifting labor from paper handling to OCR tuning/error correction.

A more streamlined alternative is to get those high invoice volume suppliers to 
send you electronic data files (true e-invoices) that you can ingest directly 
into ERP - you get 100% accurate data down to line item level detail in real 
time.  Suppliers will sign up for this if there's no cost to them, and there are no 
file format restrictions.  They get the added benefit of invoice validation / 
acknowledgement at the point of submission and eliminate the turnaround time 
of postal mail and email.

For the lower volume suppliers who send fewer invoices, you can encourage 
them to sign up for a supplier portal to submit their invoices.  This again is a 
no cost option for suppliers to get their invoices to you quickly with 
acknowledgements and you have the benefit of receiving electronic data that 
you can pass directly into ERP.

Finally, you can use PDF attachments/ email or outsourced scan/capture as 
the "catch all" option for all other vendors who don’t meet the above 2 options.

If you’re making the outsourcing decision and your goal is to lower costs, free 
up staff/resources & cut processing time, you can consider working with a 
vendor who can provide this type of service and can archive the e-invoice as 
well. 

Making a business case should be straightforward since there will be no 
significant up-front capital expense required and recurring processing costs will 
be lower than your current state.

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