Results of a Study on Invoice-Reading Systems in Germany

Companies order, receive, and pay for goods. Hence they continually receive and process invoices. For the most part these are printed on paper and are dealt with manually, so that each invoice after receipt involves processing costs of about 9 Euro on average. Often, human searching and typing of data into computer forms is required to transfer the information from paper into the computer, e.g. into ERP-systems, like SAP, that many companies run. This article presents the main results of our 300-page market survey of 11 suppliers of invoice reading systems (\(\mathcal{I}\)-\(\mathcal{R}\)-\(\mathcal{S}\)), which automate the transfer of invoice data to ERP-systems. For the scientific \(\mathcal{I}\)-\(\mathcal{R}\)-\(\mathcal{S}\) community we hope to provide the service of a better visibility of our discipline to potential investors and users.