This article is brought to you by Square 9. 

Every new convenience store location creates additional sales, but it also creates more documents, data, approvals and administrative work.

Additional invoices, shift reports, lottery documentation, vendor records, employee paperwork, contracts and other documents each have their own paths and workflows. Each manual step takes time and resources away from the tasks driving real value.

“For a growing franchise, this creates an enormous opportunity to automate the way information flows, and the back office contains many valuable areas to start,” said Stephen Young, president and CEO at Square 9.

Expanding the Value of Automation

Accounts payable has become a natural entry point for automation because invoices are high-volume, repetitive and data-intensive. But other c-store processes also fit these characteristics. For example, a lottery or shift report submitted by a store may need to be collected, reviewed, entered into another system and routed for further action.

Similarly, employee onboarding forms such as I-9 employment verification and W-2 tax documents must be completed by each new hire. These forms must then be validated for completeness and carefully archived in the correct location in preparation for audits.

Vendor documentation, delivery paperwork, maintenance records and more all follow similar processes involving data entry, hand-offs, reviews and archival.

“AI-powered intelligent document processing can simplify these steps, identifying documents automatically, extracting and validating information, and routing both documents and data to the appropriate employees or systems,” said Young.

Narrowing Focus

Back-office automation can be incredibly valuable for storefront teams who have their own tasks and initiatives to focus on.

“Store employees should not need to understand complicated corporate filing structures or how to manually enter information across multiple systems,” said Young. “Their jobs are to maintain the ground-level operations that keep individual locations producing. Instead of spending time rekeying data or managing filing cabinets, store teams can simply scan a document to be captured, classified and routed while the central office handles what comes next.”

This streamlined focus continues at the central office. “Instead of chasing missing reports, rekeying information, or determining where documents belong, corporate teams can focus on exceptions and decisions requiring their expertise,” said Young.

Capacity Without Complexity

“As store growth creates new information to process, intelligent document processing ensures both the teams on the ground and in the back office can focus on the tasks that drive the most value,” said Young. ”By expanding intelligent document processing into additional processes, retailers can build a scalable information infrastructure across their entire store network for easy growth and efficient operations.”

This is the second article in a two-part series brought to you by Square 9. Read part one to learn about how invoice automation can protect thin margins.

Artificial Intelligence Back office