Transcepta: Banking on E-Invoicing

Accounts payable invoicing represents the single largest driver of paper drain for most businesses, according to Shan Haq, vice president of marketing and product management for Transcepta. Many companies are still using paper-based invoicing systems, "a process that is expensive, time-consuming,

and prone to errors," he says. Using Transcepta patent-pending technology, community vendors and buyers can meet online to share their invoices electronically. The company, which was founded in June 2005 by a team of ex-Microsoft employees, specializes in electronic invoice presentment and payment (EIPP) solutions.

"Most companies see OCR [optical character recognition] as a better solution than most systems being used right now," says Haq. "It does offer abetter way than typing all of the data into the system. But at the end of the day, it's still a paper process." OCR can also be fraught with problems that can slow down invoicing or bring it to a complete standstill when bills can't be processed automatically because the document to be scanned is smudged or the paper is creased, he says. "And you still need humans to validate the system."