$4.49M in Duplicate Payments Prevented in 4 Months
Overseeing a global community of independently managed specialty hospitals introduces a high degree of financial and operational complexity.
One fast-growing healthcare organization supporting thousands of these locations has been delivering accessible pet care for more than three decades. And over the years, it has evolved into an expansive support network of practices that empower doctors and staff alike by investing in technology and back-office support.
Following several transformative business events in recent years, the healthcare system was well-positioned to advance its mission for improving pet care. Yet a recent financial transformation was putting their objective at risk.
Most finance leaders know that some financial leakage is inevitable during ERP migrations. But the long-term payoff — improved efficiency, visibility, and ultimately growth — is often worth the short-term disruption.
But if payment errors are slipping through the cracks undetected by your ERP or AP team post-transformation, your cash flow, supplier network, and operations can all be disrupted. The healthcare organization mitigated this with FlexTrap. Now, it has a reliable safety net that flags and corrects payment errors in real time.
The Challenge: The Downside of Financial Transformation
It’s not uncommon for back-office processes like AP to resemble a patchwork of solutions after several business events. Following an acquisition and the formation of two distinct businesses, the organization was left with three ERPs and a disparate AP team, each with varying financial controls and processes.
Looking to streamline AP workflows and safeguard its margins and cash flow, the organization made the hard decision to consolidate and move all three ERPs to Oracle. Payment errors, such as duplicate payments and unclaimed credits, thrive in these environments.
Anticipating that financial leakage was inevitable, the provider engaged FlexTecs to conduct an AP recovery audit post Oracle implementation to assess the impact. After culling through the data, the audit revealed more financial risk than the organization expected despite ERP automation.
With an IPO on the horizon and cash flow at risk, the organization realized it needed more than recovery to stop the leaks. It needed a payment error prevention solution to safeguard its financial assets. Already working with FlexTecs, implementing FlexTrap was a natural next step.
Plugging Financial Leaks: AI as Financial Control Oversight
FlexTecs developed FlexTrap to operate as a safety net for AP teams. Using AI, machine learning (ML), and FlexTecs’ forensic recovery audit approach, FlexTrap catches, corrects, and prevents payment errors in real time. Once implemented, the organization quickly established the right internal controls to prevent errors at the source.
A Single Source of Truth for Payment Accuracy
Before FlexTrap, the team relied on VLOOKUPs and Oracle exports to find and correct duplicate payments. FlexTrap eliminated that manual work by consolidating all ERP and payment data, regardless of format, into a single dashboard that runs daily automated invoice scans for potential payment errors.
So rather than sifting through multiple lines of data, the AP team now starts each day with a focused report of flagged issues and fixes them directly in Oracle before payments are released.
Automated Error Prevention That Learns Over Time
Despite the increased use of automation, limited rule-based controls, manual overrides, and exceptions hold ERPs back from true payment error prevention. FlexTrap’s AI-powered algorithms reduce the number of false positives while using ML and human-in-the-loop feedback to drive continuous improvement.
For every correction made by the AP team, FlexTrap learns and applies those insights to future use cases to eliminate the amount of noise inherent in most AP processes. The healthcare organization can now also review root cause analysis and historical reports to identify patterns and opportunities to further improve AP controls.
Fast, Low-Lift Implementation
The last thing finance leaders want to do after migrating an ERP to a new system is to implement another tool. The healthcare organization was able to get its global team onboarded within 30 days with minimal IT involvement and training. Since FlexTecs already had its data, creating a unique instance of FlexTrap based on its specific governance rules and exceptions was easy.
From Risk to Resilience With Preventive AP Controls
With FlexTrap as an extra pair of eyes, the healthcare organization has prevented $4.49 million in duplicate payment errors from hitting the books within four months of use. The AP team has also benefited from a single source of truth, spending less time chasing refunds and more time on strategic activities. If FlexTrap can unite a dispersed global community of hospital systems to operate effectively and protect cash flow, imagine what it can do for you.