Accenture Payment Recovery and Analytics in the Federal Government

Detecting, Recovering and Preventing Improper Payment in the Federal Government

Are you leaving money on the table?

The race to achieve and sustain high performance is challenging enough without giving money away. But your agency could be doing just that by losing or failing to claim amounts that are rightfully yours.

Because of inefficient and disparate procure-to-pay processes, human error and pricing discrepancies, large organizations often suffer from undetected losses and overpayments amounting to millions each year.

Many organizations are unaware of the extent of their annual losses from overpaying supplier invoices, or from incorrectly computing deductions and allowances. Still others are aware of the problem but are uncertain about how to cost-effectively correct it.

The sources of improper payments throughout the procure-to-pay process are complex and varied: duplicate payments, invoice errors, incorrect data entry and failure to take appropriate discounts. These and many other factors can add up to significant losses. Correcting problems and generating measurable improvements in the performance of the finance function require a comprehensive and holistic solution.

Accenture is helping federal organizations drive toward high performance with innovative prevention, detection and recovery services that combine people, process and technology to deliver immediate measurable results.

Successfully implemented with federal organizations around the world, Accenture Payment Recovery and Analytics can move federal agencies beyond a reactive, post-payment-recovery mindset to one that prevents improper payments and overpayments. We do this by using advanced analytic tools to proactively identify processing errors (such as pricing, margin protection, duplicate and erroneous payments) before payments are made. Combined with traditional post-payment-recovery audit capabilities, our solution can help you optimize payment terms, improve working capital, tighten operating controls, enhance compliance and gain greater insight into your spending with suppliers. You can benefit from our leading-edge recovery and prevention solution at no risk because fees can be contingent upon results.

Accenture Payment Recovery and Analytics is based on a unique mix of sophisticated processes, proprietary software and skilled staff. We analyze your procurement and payables data to help you prevent, detect and recover erroneous payments, which can result from human error, systems integration issues and contract noncompliance.

In a matter of weeks, we can help you:

• Detect and recover improper payments and identify root cause issues.
• Identify opportunities to reduce and avoid unnecessary costs.
• Highlight opportunities to improve processes and controls.
• Deploy unique solutions to prevent future overpayments and under-recoveries.
  
  

Based on actual data from Accenture’s work with clients, we know that the sources of improper payments are varied, and so Accenture Payment Recovery and Analytics looks holistically across your entire procure-to-pay process to find sources of improper payments to make recommendations so that such losses are less likely to occur again.

Our advanced and proprietary cloud-based solutions help transform the entire procure-to-pay function. These tools include:

Accenture Transaction Compliance & Analytics Tool
Especially developed for the prevention of overpayments and under-recoveries, this application enables pre-payment reviews and is designed to minimize requirements for traditional post-payment audits.

Procure-to-Pay Audit Tool
This asset is a specialist post-audit recovery software application. It is commissioned to handle large volumes of complex data where there is a requirement to automate the analysis of such items as purchase orders, goods received notes, invoice line item data, allowances and rebates.

Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is currently helping organizations reduce costs, enhance scalability, increase implementation speed, and improve applications and business processes. Cloud computing comprises a set of next-generation technologies, which enable services and solutions that will be:

• Financially more attractive—total cost of ownership is approximately 40 percent less and requires little if any capital.
  
  
• Operationally, contractually and financially flexible.
  
  
• Able to match or improve the functionality that you have today, getting better over time.
  
  
• Available on demand as soon as you are ready.