How Solis Mammography Optimizes Invoice Automation with SAP Concur

Implementation is just the starting point. Too often, businesses set up Concur Invoice and leave it as-is, even as processes evolve around it. As Jesse Cox, AP and T&E Manager at Solis Mammography points out, the real value comes from actively refining invoice automation so it consistently reflects how the business actually operates and works its hardest for the people using it. Here, Jesse shares five tips to help make that happen.

1. Audit your workflows before they become your process 

Workflows configured at implementation reflect the business as it was at that moment. Over time, the business evolves, but the workflows frequently do not. The result is that teams quietly begin adapting their process to work around the system rather than with it, often without anyone explicitly flagging the problem. 

The risk here is compounding. The longer outdated workflows stay in place, the more the team treats them as fixed constraints rather than configurable tools. Reviewing them proactively, before they create friction, is significantly easier than untangling them later. 

“Make sure you are creating a workflow around your process, not a process around your workflow.” 

- Jesse Cox, Account Payable Manager, Solis Mammography

A practical starting point: walk through each workflow end to end and ask whether it still reflects how your team actually operates. Look for approval steps that have become rubber stamps, routing rules that no longer match your vendor or cost centre structure, and places where manual intervention is filling gaps that automation could close. Concur Invoice workflows are highly configurable; most admins are not using that configurability to its full extent. 

2. Use Vendor Setup to Reduce Manual Invoice Work 

Auto-assignment of expense types to vendors is one of the features most likely to be partially configured and then left untouched. It’s also one of the highest-return areas to revisit. 

When properly set up, auto-assignment reduces manual data entry, speeds up the processing cycle, and removes a category of error from the review queue. The process of setting it up correctly also forces a vendor review, which frequently surfaces duplicates, outdated records, and other data quality issues worth resolving regardless.

“The goal is to use it more fully so we can get the most bang for our buck.” 

- Jesse Cox, Solis Mammography

If your system has this capability and you’re not confident it’s fully configured, a vendor and expense type audit is a practical next step. The time investment is modest relative to the downstream efficiency gains. 

3. Treat your compliance configuration as a living document 

For organizations in regulated industries, the audit trail Concur Invoice provides is not a secondary benefit, but a core operational requirement. The system records the data needed for compliance reporting, supports targeted process changes when gaps are identified, and does so with a level of configurability that manual processes cannot match. 

Jesse is direct about what the alternative looks like in a healthcare environment subject to HIPAA, PHI requirements, and Sunshine Law obligations: 

“Without Concur, it would be a manual review of almost every piece of paper that came through the team’s queues. We would probably have to triple the team size just to handle the review, not even the processing, just the review.” 

- Jesse Cox, Solis Mammography

The key advantage SAP Concur provides is not just the initial compliance configuration but the ability to make targeted adjustments when something changes. Whether that is a new regulatory requirement, an internal policy update, or a gap identified during audit, changes can be made to the system configuration without rebuilding from scratch. 

4. Use Reporting to spot AP Patterns 

AP professionals are trained to work at a granular level, and that focus is necessary for accurate invoice processing. But working at the invoice level makes it easy to miss patterns that are only visible in aggregate. 

Concur Invoice reporting, including both the standard reports and the ad hoc reporting available through Query Studio, Intelligence, and the Process Invoices screen, provides the macro view that granular review cannot. Anomalies that would not stand out in a queue, such as a vendor whose invoices are consistently around one amount suddenly submitting something significantly higher, become visible immediately in aggregated data. 

“You can see aggregated data, and then things start to pop out.” 

- Jesse Cox, Solis Mammography

Admins who are primarily using canned reports should explore what the ad hoc reporting tools can surface. Real-time data at the process level, rather than the transaction level, changes the kinds of decisions that become possible. 

5.  Keep Invoice Policies Aligned with How the Business Works 

Expense and invoice policies have a tendency to drift. They get updated reactively, typically during or just after an audit, and then go untouched until the next one. The result is policy documents that reflect a series of historical responses rather than a coherent, current framework. 

Try this holistic approach to policy reviews: 

• An annual review to check that the policy reflects current practice, incorporate lessons from the previous year, and confirm that changes made under audit pressure are still appropriate in context. 
• A full structural overhaul every three to five years to assess whether the policy framework still makes sense for the organization, not just whether individual clauses are current. 

The annual review is also an opportunity to distinguish between genuine policy improvements and knee-jerk responses to audit findings. Both have their place, but they should be evaluated differently. A small change made in the middle of an audit cycle looks different twelve months later when the pressure has lifted. 

How Solis Mammography Is Building Trust in AI-Assisted Invoice Processing 

Organizations considering AI-assisted invoice processing frequently encounter the same internal challenge: leadership wants assurance before extending trust to an automated system, particularly in regulated industries where the consequences of error are significant. 

Jesse’s approach to this is worth considering as a model. Rather than making a capability argument upfront, the focus is on establishing a verifiable track record. The commitment to leadership is not that the AI will perform well; it is that performance will be measured and reported transparently.

“It is a trust-but-verify mindset. We audit five to ten percent of what passes through, across a random sample of small transactions, large ones, complex and simple, and we present that back to leadership. Here is what the system decided, here is what we found when we checked.” 

- Jesse Cox, Solis Mammography

That approach, an ongoing audit commitment with reported results, gives leadership a concrete basis for increasing confidence over time rather than asking them to accept a system on its stated capabilities. It also gives the admin team early visibility into any areas where the configuration needs refinement. 

The goal is not to remove human judgment from the process but to redirect it. AI-assisted review means that approvers spend their time on genuine exceptions rather than routine transactions, making their review more focused and, in practice, more effective. 

What Other AP Teams Can Learn from Solis Mammography 

Jesse's experience highlights a reality many AP teams face: invoice automation is not a one-time project. The organizations that see the greatest return from their investment are the ones that continuously refine their processes, configurations, and policies as the business evolves. 

For AP leaders looking to optimize their own invoice automation programs, five key lessons stand out: 

• Review workflows regularly. Make sure your system reflects how your business operates today, not how it operated during implementation. 
• Maximize vendor automation. Features like vendor-based expense type assignment can eliminate manual work and improve data quality when fully configured. 
• Keep compliance settings current. Regulations, policies, and business requirements change. Your system configuration should evolve with them. 
• Use reporting strategically. Looking beyond individual invoices and into aggregated data can reveal trends, risks, and opportunities that would otherwise go unnoticed. 
• Treat policies as living documents. Regular reviews help ensure policies remain practical, relevant, and aligned with business objectives. 

The common theme across all five recommendations is intentional system management. Rather than adapting their processes to fit outdated configurations, successful AP teams continuously evaluate how automation can better support the business. As Solis Mammography demonstrates, even small adjustments made consistently over time can lead to significant gains in efficiency, compliance, and visibility. 

“Make sure you are creating a workflow around your process, not a process around your workflow.” 

- Jesse Cox, Accounts Payable Manager, Solis Mammography 

If you’d like to connect with other invoice automation experts, join the Concur Community Invoice Forum. Or if you’re curious about how AP automation could help your company increase compliance and automate AP tasks, learn more about Concur Invoice.

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