NZ Post subsidiary Converga is launching an an off-the-shelf paperless Accounts Payable solution in Australia via an alliance with Prodagio Software (US), the first time the software has been deployed under a business process outsourcing (BPO) model.

Previously unavailable in the Australian market, the Prodagio solution is being offered as a software as a service (SaaS) model, accessed securely online. There is no long implementation process and workflows are handled internally, rather than being customised by the supplier. The first client is due to go live in Q1 2010.

Converga claims the new offering makes automated accounts payable accessible for organisations managing low volumes of invoices.

Normally the realm of businesses processing in excess of 100,000 invoices per year, Converga promises the Prodagio solution will give businesses with any number of invoices the chance to take advantage of the benefits of digital invoicing, without the need to invest in any hardware or software.

Users of the new Prodagio solution will have their invoices ingested and hosted at the same Converga Technology Centres in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, that are used by its biggest client, Coles Group. Converga handles processing of over 5 million invoices annually for Coles.

Converga’s CEO Brian Roberts said, “We feel there is a large potential in the Australian market for this type of solution. In the past it would be almost impossible for a business processing say, 20,000 invoices per year, to even consider going digital, the setup costs associated were just too great. With our partnership with Prodagio we are now able to offer a solution for all businesses. We are now talking to organisations with 5000 up.”

“Our solution for Coles Group is very customised, and historically we have been at the big end of town, and what we wanted was to have a very configurable solution that we could take to small and medium sized businesses.

Converga uses scanning and OCR software from ReadSoft and EMC, with in-house middleware developed for Quality Control. Prodagio will be used to provide the workflow for automated accounts payable processing,