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You’ve completed the audit and recovery process for your vendor master data. Congratulations! Identifying errors, recovering lost funds, and cleaning up your data is an important first step, but now it’s time to take things further. So, what’s next?
In this post, we’ll walk through how finance teams can leverage the insights gained from audit and recovery, implement actionable next steps, and set up a long-term strategy for success.
During the audit and recovery process, your finance team should have collected a wealth of valuable data. Here’s what that looks like:
You should now have a validated, up-to-date vendor database, free from duplicates, inaccurate contact details, or outdated financial records. This data is essential for ensuring timely, accurate payments and maintaining smooth vendor relationships.
A key part of the recovery process is identifying errors such as duplicate payments, overpayments, and missed early payment discounts. According to Gartner’s insights on AP recovery audit services, these types of discrepancies can be significant. In fact, organizations can recover as much as 0.5% of their annual accounts payable spend by identifying duplicate payments, and 1-2% through overpayments and missed discounts. These recovery insights provide immediate opportunities to reclaim lost revenue.
By analyzing past payment data, you may uncover recurring issues—whether that’s certain vendors consistently underperforming or a high frequency of payment errors from specific departments. These insights are invaluable for refining your processes going forward.
Now that you’ve cleaned your vendor data and identified recovery opportunities, how can you make the most of it?
Utilizing accurate and complete vendor data can strengthen your vendor relationships. This is the perfect opportunity to go back to your vendors with improved contracts and better payment terms. Transparent, accurate data helps build trust, which leads to deals that are better negotiated and improved vendor partnerships.
Use your clean, accurate vendor data to make smarter procurement decisions. By identifying high performing vendors and analyzing the cost-effectiveness of past contracts, you can refine your supplier strategy and ensure you’re working with the best partners for your organization.
With a clearer picture of vendor payment schedules, you can better predict cash flow and future expenditures. This enables more accurate budgeting and financial forecasting which ensures that your organization stays on top of its financial health.
Data integrity is not a one-time fix, it requires continuous attention after the initial steps. Once the audit and recovery process is complete, the next step is ensuring your vendor database remains clean moving forward. This is where automation and regular checks come into play.
Leveraging advanced technology, like our platform, can streamline this process by automating data validation and real-time monitoring. Bedrock’s AI-powered platform continually checks for errors, flags discrepancies, and ensures your supplier database stays verified and up to date.
Audit and recovery should be an ongoing process, not a one time event. At a minimum, perform quarterly audits to ensure your data remains accurate and your payments stay on track. Consider integrating audit practices into your regular workflow to catch issues early before they grow into larger problems.
To measure the success of your recovery efforts, it’s important to establish clear KPIs. These could include:
By setting and tracking KPIs, you can gauge the long-term effectiveness of your audit and recovery program and ensure continuous improvement.
Manual audits are time consuming and prone to human error. By integrating technology like Bedrock into your recovery strategy, you can automate much of the work. Our platform automates the collection of vendor data, performs real-time checks, and continuously monitors your database, allowing your team to focus on strategic tasks while ensuring the integrity of your vendor data.
Audit and recovery isn’t just about fixing immediate issues, it’s about aligning your financial processes with your broader business objectives. By improving data quality, you reduce financial risks, enhance vendor relationships, and create a more efficient procurement system. This leads to better decision making and long term operational success.
Successful audit and recovery also provide the foundation for broader goals, such as:
By aligning these objectives with your recovery efforts, your finance team can drive significant value for the entire organization.
Successfully auditing and recovering vendor data is only the beginning. Once your data is clean and you’ve recovered any lost revenue, it’s time to turn your insights into action. By leveraging your verified data, establishing continuous monitoring, and integrating technology like Bedrock, your finance team can achieve greater efficiency, reduce risks, and support broader organizational goals.
The next steps after audit and recovery will set your finance team, and your entire organization, up for sustained success. Start by taking control of your data today and build a foundation for smarter, more proactive financial management.