Improving your procurement strategy is at the forefront of every innovative organization. An effective business strategy including procurement can make your organization more resilient and provide a broader perspective to your long-term business initiatives. Recently, Basware’s Jason Vincelette, Director, Product and Business Managements, and Velocity’s Mike Jasper, Director, Digital Transformation, spoke about the importance of implementing an array of purchasing and sourcing strategies in your business planning. Here are their 4 key takeaways.
1. Automating P2P
The automation of a procure-to-pay process centralizes all invoice data without the possibility of user error, reduces risk of AP fraud, automates invoice matching, reduces processing time, and encourages a streamlined easy process. Automation saves time, but there are also hidden ‘time sucks’ that are reduced when automating a procure-to-pay strategy.
2. Centralizing Processes
One centralized application empowers the procurement team to have complete control over purchase related activities. Procure-to-pay software enables organizations to make payments, evaluate invoices, process invoices, and have 100% visibility into their total spend. There is a need to centralize processes so organizations can look at the value of spend. Organizations see a clear view of constraints withing the audit trail. The benefit of centralizing is you can do all of that in one place rather than searching through other systems and ERPs.
3. Ensuring Compliance
Digitization of procure-to-pay solutions standardize processes in the procurement cycle. This level of transparency and accountability allows organizations to adhere to global compliances. This allows teams to focus on enterprise strategy, optimization and building a competitive advantage to stay viable in an ever-advancing global business setting rather than spend time on hidden ‘time sucks’ like audit preparation.
4. Achieving Spend Visibility
Real time analytics allows teams within your organization to gain visibility over total organizational spend- including tail end spend, arguably the most detrimental ‘invisible’ issue to your overall spend. 100% visibility into spend allows organizations to streamline spending and eliminate unnecessary expense. To quote Jason Vincelette, “All of this is for naught if you can not see where your spend lies.”
The bottom line
Automating your procurement strategy allots more time for strategic initiatives within your organization. The hidden ‘time sucks’ of multiple ERPs, meeting compliance standards and maintaining a global footprint requires the centralization of procurement and AP functions in order to save essential time and resources. One centralized solution leads to streamlined processes, saves resources and a promotes a resilient organization.