Currently, the product group is working on new features for AP Invoice Automation to create vendor invoice proposals from scanned/electronic invoices. Has the product team considered adding additional AP paperwork automation?  Specifically, I am thinking about scanning and doing OCR recognition of vendor packing slips and using the data to create a Item Arrival Journal (or PO Product Receipt, depending on customer’s business process).  

We are currently using Item Arrivals in our business process and the next logical step would be to get the line details directly from the vendor’s packing slip. I envision a flatbed or sheet feed scanner at the warehouse arrival door, get the image of the packing slip, OCR recognize the details and create the journal lines. Then the receiver can cross-check then post the journal. This would raise the efficiency of processing partial receipts where only some of the purchase order lines are received; currently this requires the arrived subset to be entered manually, or use the built in function to create all the PO lines, then delete the ones that are not arrived.

As this seems like a very similar set of technology and dataflow to the invoice processing in AP, it could be a natural extension of the planned functions.