The Impact of Technology on the Procure-to-Pay Process

Many companies’ procurement processes are underway. As a fast-growing company needs more vendors and transactions, it becomes harder. Accounting can no longer keep up with procurement, which happens sooner than most companies want. These companies avoid invoice overload with procure-to-pay (P2P) technology. It automates the most tedious operations and gives a wealth of data.

Today, we’ll discuss leveraging technology to improve purchases. Discover the most frequently asked questions:

• Defining Procure-to-pay technology
• Advantages of Automation of procure-to-pay
• Which procure-to-pay tools work best?

Defining Procure to pay technology

Organisations use procure-to-pay technologies to manage acquiring materials and services. Purchase requests, purchase orders, tracking, invoice matching, and payments are typical technologies.

Advantages of procure to pay technology.

Procure-to-pay technology streamlines company procedures to save money. Procurement software aids in numerous ways.

Simpler ordering and payment

Ordering and paying take time. Your accounting or procurement staff must spend hours on it even when it goes smoothly.

Automating these processes lets the procurement system handle approval, ordering, and payment. This lets your procurement or accounts payable team focus on more important tasks.

Lowered overhead

Staffing with arduous manual processes is sluggish and expensive. Technology helps your present team work more efficiently, avoiding the need to add staff to handle the expanding invoicing.

Technology reduces human entry errors, so your accounting team may focus on more important tasks instead of discrepancies.

Enhanced cost effectiveness

When you know how much you order and which suppliers offer the best incentives, you can optimise your procurement process to benefit from strong supplier relationships. You can quantify supplier relationships, detect redundancies, and negotiate better terms with a P2P system.

Accessing data

Centralised processes provide extensive audit trails. This richness of information improves decision-making, enhances negotiations and pricing, and reveals process improvements. Automating most or all procure-to-pay processes simplifies spend management.

Reduced risk

Controlling third-party vendor risk is costly and challenging. Transparency eliminates errors and fraud, reducing these risks.

Choosing from 5 procure to pay tools

A successful procurement process requires choosing the finest options. Consider the following best-in-class tools for your organization’s purchasing solution.

Complete reports on these tools and more are available in this evaluation.

Order.co

Buying with Order.co is simple but powerful. Order.co centralises procure-to-pay with powerful capabilities and a great user experience.

Order.co lets casual buyers buy from over 15,000 pre-qualified providers.

Pros:

• A ‘frequently ordered item’ feature speeds up reorders.
• Automates GL coding and allocation every time.
• Invoice consolidation lets you pay hundreds of invoices with one click.

Cons:

• While Order.co is always adding merchants, several customers said more pre-loaded curation options would simplify catalogue deployment.

PRM360

PRM360 automates enterprise and midmarket procurement. Teams have transparency in the vendor-bid process with this platform’s e-procurement infrastructure. The system emphasises pay automation.

Pros:

• User-friendly and customisable dashboard and workflow development
• The notification system updates users on bid and order changes.

Cons:

• Some people experience slow loading.
• Some teams want multi-login on the platform.

Coupa Purchasing

Coupa Procurement manages enterprise purchasing from intake to payment. Users can purchase things with guidelines and cost restrictions and submit purchase requisitions in the system. The platform simplifies inventory, supplier, and supply catalogue management.

Pros:

• Fast and simple platform for casual users to build POs and submit requests.

Cons:

• A learning curve or platform inhibits initial use, say users.
• Reporting might be difficult and require third-party solutions.

SAP Ariba

SAP Ariba organises purchasing, budgeting, and cash flow with SaaS. The platform automates buying via guided purchase, invoicing automation, and reporting.

Pros:

• SAP enables advanced customisation and connections with ERP, accounting, and other applications for skilled users.
• Interconnected systems save time and expand data capacities.

Cons:

• The system lacks an intuitive UI, therefore casual users may struggle.
• Customer service had problems answering some questions.

Basware

Basware creates transparent data for data-driven decisions. This procure-to-pay programme uses AI to streamline purchase and invoicing. The eco-friendly company uses the platform to reduce consumers’ carbon impact and promote sustainability.

Pros:

• Key feature: invoice automation
• Data capturing is precise.
• Good tool for P2P enthusiasts

Cons:

• The system is basic for some uses.
• Better platform coding and roll-up/approval protocols would improve the experience.