* Consolidation for shared services support. By definition, shared services centers are disconnected, at least geographically, from business users -- and sometimes from the pre-existing IS logic. As a result, they are often comprised of multiple systems, application instances, processes and business units. "Outside the ERP" workflow can support efforts to create regional or worldwide shared service centers for AP processing, addressing diverse systems automatically and including logic to avoid errors -- a key success factor and precisely what companies are looking to achieve in their AP shared services initiatives.

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in Network World's Software section.