A leading toll integrator who provides back-office software and services recently sought a solution to streamline their QA/QC review processes. In October 2023, they implemented Perceptics’ Summitt Invoice Quality (IQ) software with the goal of improving outgoing invoice accuracy and manual review efficiency.
Before Summitt IQ
Prior to implementing Summitt IQ, the integrator’s QA/QC team would login to their mail house portal to manually review an Acceptance Quality Limit (AQL) sampling of correspondence pdfs. During the manual review process, they would individually review a series of checkpoints depending on the correspondence type. For citations, they reviewed 23 checkpoints, and for toll notices, they reviewed up to 15 checkpoints. By implementing Summitt IQ, they hoped to streamline this review process.
“We were hoping to advance the accuracy of our review process and minimize the likelihood of overlooking important issues [by implementing Summitt IQ]. Additionally, the goal was to streamline operations by reducing the manual time invested by employees reviewing,” said a key stakeholder.
The Opportunity
Under this process, a sampling of toll notices and/or citations determined by the AQL were reviewed; however, there was no way to ensure that the invoices being reviewed were the ones with errors. This meant that citations or notices could still reach customers with clear errors or be sent to the wrong person entirely. Additionally, team members had to spend a significant amount of time reviewing individual checkpoints for each correspondence.
Since Summitt IQ automatically reviews 100% of invoices and flags them for errors, the integrator saw an opportunity to enhance the accuracy of their review process, minimize oversight of critical issues, and reduce manual review times by implementing the software.
The Solution
Summitt IQ is one of the first products on the market of its kind, and this integrator was one of the first to implement the software into their internal systems. Once pdf files are received from the mail house, Summitt IQ audits invoices by checking each field against authoritative data from the customer’s business system and business rules and running the license plate image through our Summitt LPR software to ensure an accurate read.
Any discrepancies are flagged, categorized by error type, and shared in a secure customer portal for final review.
The Results
Since the implementation of Summitt IQ six months ago, over 2M documents have been processed averaging around 33K a day. Within these documents 156,888,198 individual checkpoints were automatically audited by Summitt IQ, and 1,606,543 of those automatic checks produced errors indicating an average issue rate of .75% per test.
The team is still manually reviewing the same percentage of invoices as determined by the AQL, but the adoption of Summitt IQ has brought significant improvements to the company’s invoice review process, demonstrating its value through enhanced efficiency and proactive error detection.
Quicker Error Identification
To improve invoice accuracy, Summitt IQ has helped ensure the manual review team is able to focus on invoices with errors. The software has been instrumental in catching easily overlooked inconsistencies like mailing and due date errors, allowing them to identify and resolve issues much quicker than before.
“It [Summitt IQ] is instrumental in swiftly identifying errors, enabling a quicker resolution,” said one quality analyst.
Improved Efficiency
One of the goals of implementing Summitt IQ was to reduce time spent on manual reviews. Since its deployment, team members estimate the software has reduced the time spent on manual reviews by nearly 50%.
“We’ve seen the time it takes to review correspondence drastically reduce just because of Summitt IQ,” a team member noted.
Simple Interface and Quick Issue Resolution
In addition to the clear benefits of error identification and time savings, the integrator noted that they’ve been happy with Summitt IQ’s user-friendly dashboard and have found it beneficial to search by criteria like error type to better identify the root of the issues.
Our engineering team has worked together to fine tune the integration and ensure Summitt IQ is working optimally, and they noted that the Perceptics team has been “exceptionally responsive.”
Looking Ahead
Moving forward, the integrator hopes to see Summitt IQ streamline their review process across all correspondence types through ongoing integration with their daily operations and back-office system. The team continues to collaborate with Perceptics for continual system enhancements that will further optimize operations and drive sustained value for the company.