Procure-to-Pay Trends Predictions and Advancements for 2022 and Beyond

Supply chain disruption, asynchronous lockdowns, labor shortages, and pandemic recovery measures contributed to a year of growth and learning in 2021. All helping to expedite existing P2P trends and adaptions to business models.

So, after another year of change what have we learned? And what can we take forward as emerging Procure-to-Pay trends in 2022.

Top 4 P2P Trends in 2022 and Beyond

The pandemic fundamentally changed how businesses ran their day-to-day operations. Organisations have much to consider, from remote work to real-time payments and analytics, when reviewing their P2P process for the next decade.

While we identified eight trends in our recent report, the following four are examples of trends that are shaking up finance departments worldwide.

1. Enhanced data to fuel proactive P2P strategies and supplier centricity

Automation and real-time data are increasingly empowering organisations to better understand their current operations, improve their planning, and identify potential bottlenecks. For so many companies, getting that first stage of end-to-end visibility is an ongoing mission.

Add to that the addition of dynamic and contextual data, companies can begin to benefit from innovations such as Artificial intelligence and other innovations in P2P so that they can take a proactive approach to managing their supplier relationships and build more personable relationships.

2. More support for supplier diversity programs

According to The Hackett Group, "...by 2025, companies expect a more than 50% increase in their diversity spend goals, with an average target of 13% of their spend dedicated to companies across a wide range of under-represented diversity groups."

Consumers expect increased transparency and ethical decision-making from their trusted organisations, and supplier diversity programs play a part in living up to these expectations. There are additional benefits outside of customer experience for organisations that choose to invest in diversity. Increased competition, reduced costs, increased agility, and higher quality have all been linked to supplier diversity programs.

3. Further evolution of global financial compliance

One-third of finance professionals can't guarantee compliance with global invoicing regulations. E-invoicing has made the regulatory burden far more manageable for organisations worldwide. But while this P2P trend is here to stay, invoicing and tax receipt rules differ from country to country and are unlikely to be standardised on a global scale.

Already, we are seeing countries further define their regulations, such as France’s 2024 e-invoice mandate and India’s frequent GST revisions. We are likely to see more countries follow suit in the years to come.

Full-scale P2P solutions are now providing complete tax and invoicing compliance features to support businesses going forward.

4. Increased flexibility to combat the labor shortage

More business owners are providing remote work environments to maintain their employees. However, providing more flexibility and autonomy in the workplace requires another level of technology. As this P2P trend is likely to continue growing over the next 12 months, organisations that haven’t already switched to cloud-based solutions, will need to quickly to keep their employees and also widen their talent pool as location is no longer a critical factor.