Procurement. What’s in a word? In this case, plenty. There are many facets to procurement and Ronnie Wendt has covered all of them. This is a prime example of a technical term/process that is not readily understood by others. When discussing procurement with those who do not work in this space daily, it’s important to impart the information in layman’s terms. This article removes tech speak to help present a case for procure-to-pay (P2P) to others. The information is imparted through a case study, which helps present hard-to-comprehend topics in a compelling way.
Excerpt 1
Procure-to-pay (P2P) should be a simple process. The purchasing manager orders an item, the product or raw material arrives as ordered and on time, and the accounts payable team receives an invoice and pays it promptly. Unfortunately, the process is anything but easy. Companies often place this behind-the-scenes effort on the back burner where procurement, approvals, invoice validation, accounts payable and spend analytics become disjointed activities performed manually, and often inaccurately.
However, technology is pushing this back-office procedure to the forefront, where it’s automated, connected and mobile. For companies, like Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, a hotelier with more than 1,300 hotels in over 100 countries, automating P2P is making all the difference in the world.
This automation as a real game changer. Standardizing P2P will dramatically reduce the costs and errors associated with manual efforts to prepare, place, receive and pay for orders. The results included better financial controls, lower product costs, reduced overhead and improved relationships with operations staff and suppliers.
