In the first post highlighting the recently announced partnership between Basware and Lavante, I provided a bit of context behind the deal, given both vendors’ histories and target markets. In today’s post, I’ll provide a bit more color on the announcement, especially from the standpoint of Lavante’s roots in automating as much of the audit recovery process as possible, leveraging their core solution in this area (vs. an expanded focus on vendor file management or supplier information management, as they are calling it). I had the chance to catch up with Lavante last year and came away very impressed with what I considered — and still consider — a novel approach to looking at invoices, payment and other related information to build a unique view of supplier relationships to drive audit recovery in an automated manner.
According to Lavante, the roots of the credit or audit recovery market go back some 30-40 years, when professional services providers starting reviewing historical A/P records and invoice data manually to search for gaps and anomalies. The model could not have been simpler: firms would take a cut of the recovery amounts they identified and their clients would receive immediate credit or reimbursement from their suppliers for finding mistakes. Early success in the market led to a greater number of entrants…
