Get More from Your Company’s EDI Investment

Many businesses have already invested in digital systems like EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) or API integrations to trade documents faster and more accurately with suppliers and customers. These tools are designed to handle purchase orders, invoices, shipping updates, and more with no human input. But what happens when your suppliers don’t follow the plan?

That’s where things slow down. Some suppliers still send business documents such as email attachments, scanned PDFs, faxes, or even paper mail. That means your staff has to step in—manually.

The Manual Workload is the Hidden Problem

When your team receives a non-digital document, someone has to:

• Open the email or fax
• Read and understand the documentRe-type the data into your internal systems
• Double-check that everything matches up
• Flag anything that looks wrong or confusing This takes time—and a lot of it.

According to Ardent Partners’ State of ePayables 2023 report, it takes companies an average of 10.1 days to process a single invoice from start to finish when done manually.

Now imagine your company handles hundreds or thousands of invoices each month. That’s a mountain of lost productivity.

Errors Add Cost and Risk

Manual data entry doesn’t just slow things down. It also introduces mistakes. A tired team member might type in the wrong number, miss a decimal point, or forget to match the invoice to the correct purchase order.

These little slip-ups can turn into big headaches. In fact, the Institute of Finance & Management (IOFM) found that 30% of controllers surveyed said the percentage of invoices requiring problem solving or “re-work” was among the most important metrics to their accounts payable department. And 15% of businesses say that the percentage of invoices processed straight-through without operator intervention (which raises the chance of errors) was a top accounts payables metric.

Fixing a single invoice error includes hidden costs in the time it takes to chase down the problem, talk to the supplier, and make the corrections in your system.

Over time, those errors pile up—and they hurt your bottom line.

The Fix: Automate Incoming Documents from Non-Compliant Partners

The good news is that you don’t need to wait for every supplier to start using EDI or API connections. Today, powerful automation tools can read and convert non-digital documents into clean, accurate data—automatically.

These tools use smart technology like OCR (optical character recognition) and machine learning to pull information from emails, PDFs, and scans. Then they match it to your internal systems and send it along as if it had come through EDI.

You get the same speed and accuracy—without needing your team to lift a finger.

Real-Time Visibility Improves Decision-Making

Once all your data flows into one central system—EDI, API, or automation from non-compliant formats—you gain complete visibility into your accounts payable process.

You can instantly see:

• Which invoices are paid or pending
• Which suppliers are sending duplicates
• What products were ordered, delivered, or delayed

This makes it easier to manage cash flow, avoid late fees, and improve communication with both suppliers and internal departments.

Make Suppliers Compliant—Without Changing Their Process

You don’t have to beg every supplier to change the way they send documents. By using automation to “translate” their emails or paper documents into structured digital data, you make them compliant from your side.

That means fewer delays, fewer errors, and more efficiency—without asking your suppliers to invest in new systems or change how they do business.

And when they see how fast and smooth the process becomes, they might eventually switch to EDI anyway.

The ROI Is Real

The return on investment for automation is proven. According to a 2023 Ardent Partners State of ePayablesreport, companies that automate invoice processing:

· Reduce invoice processing costs by up to 80%

· Cut processing time by over 70%

· Experience fewer errors and duplicate payments

That same report states that processing invoices without human intervention is the industry’s “holy grail” even though only about 48% of suppliers are able to send electronic invoices—so finding a reliable way to process incoming PDFs, email and other formats into the digital mainstream becomes a vital part of finding that solution.

Final Thoughts

Your company likely made a smart move by investing in EDI or API systems. But if you’re still dealing with a flood of manual documents, you’re not seeing the full value of that investment.

With the right automation tools, you can turn slow, error-prone processes into fast, clean, digital workflows—even if your suppliers are still stuck in the past.

It’s time to stop working around non-compliance—and start working smarter.