Published Oct 19, 2020
P2P Automation: Digital Procurement for Modern Businesses
Everything we do today is digital – from shopping and paying bills to attending parent-teacher conferences. Why should business buying and enterprise spend management be any different?
Short answer: it shouldn’t. Automating and digitizing the procure-to-pay process – including business buying, vendor invoice management and payments – is a surefire way to make life easier, increase speed and efficiency, and improve financial outcomes. Many financial and AP departments, however, still rely on manual and paper-based processes and approaches to procurement.
The urgency to automate today is as high as ever. COVID-19 has made it even more important for financial leaders to control spend, increase visibility, minimize costs, and equip their employees to work from anywhere and everywhere. Automating the procure-to-pay process is an effective and proven solution for accomplishing both.
Deploying a digital procure-to-pay platform that automates key processes – like requisitions, purchase approvals, invoicing and payments – enables organizations to save time and money, increase spend under management, and equip their employees to be more productive and strategic. The specific ROI of procure-to-pay automation differs for every organization, but no matter your size, spend or industry, there are several key benefits you can expect:
- Increased spend visibility for smarter decisions: Manual procurement creates a lack of visibility into what’s being spent, by who and with what suppliers. If you don’t know these details, how can you strategically manage your budget? Automated procure-to-pay improves real-time controls and visibility by tracking spend, POs, invoices, goods receipt, supplier data and more. Armed with this information, you are empowered to make better day-to-day purchases and long-term financial decisions. This right system – digital, user friendly, and with a consumer-like shopping experience – also makes business buying easier, resulting in higher levels of spend under management and less rogue purchasing.
- Higher savings on goods and services and stronger operational efficiency: Digitizing manual processes – like vendor invoices and payments – can save up 50% and 75%, respectively. Modernizing the business buying process by offering your employees a user-friendly and digital marketplace enables you to take advantage of pre-negotiated savings and only deal with approved suppliers. This naturally increases financial control, compliance and spend under management.Similarly, procure-to-pay platforms track everything centrally and digitally, giving your team complete visibility into where things stand and what needs to happen next – regardless of if they are remote or on-site. The tech can automatically flag, catch and eliminate errors, like overpayments and duplicate invoices, saving you time and money.
- A higher-performing (and happier) workforce: When it comes to procurement and AP teams, you have two options: assign them time-consuming, inefficient tasks like manually writing checks, following up with suppliers, and processing invoices, or automate these procurement processes and free them to spend time on strategic, value-driving tactics that push your company forward. It’s likely not a hard decision to make, for you or for them.
The Right Tech Matters
You can automate every task for your business, but it only helps if the new processes are adopted by your employees. At the end of the day, people will do what they need to be efficient and successful – even if that means breaking policy. When it comes to business purchasing, employees need a simple, consumer-like shopping experience that fits how they work and live. At the same time, procurement leaders need a deep and feature-rich solution that enables them to find, maintain and control spending. Achieving both doesn’t have to be difficult, but it requires you to ask the right questions and select the right technology.
For many, boosting adoption and maintaining control is as simple as improving the usability and access of existing ERP and financial systems. A modern, easy-to-use procure-to-pay extension, deployed by Vroozi and integrated via Celigo, can augment your current systems, meaning there’s no need to rip and replace what you already have to digitize processes. An integration like this helps customers easily connect their procure-to-pay suite with existing solutions. It expands the value of current purchasing, accounts payable and financial technology investments, giving users a simple and effective way to automate their approach to things like purchasing and vendor invoice management. Choosing modern tech that seamlessly connects with existing infrastructure is a simple way to reap the benefits of both ERP and modern, digital procurement technology. It’s a win for procurement, your employees and the bottom line.
The world is going through a rapid digital transformation – and every business function needs to keep pace. Now is the perfect time to evaluate, digitize and improve current procurement and AP processes. For more information on digitizing your current AP and procurement capabilities, check out the Vroozi connector on Celigo’s iPaaS, integrator.io.