Enable your employees to find and buy what they need

We have recently identified that Accounts Payable Automation tools mean your business can receive, process and pay invoices no matter where you are – particularly important in the current climate.

But once an organization has such a framework in place – to ensure proper purchase authorizations and automated PO/invoice matching – the next big step is to give employees easy access to content (catalogs, contracts and/or supplier websites) for specific goods and services that are available from authorized suppliers.

This capability is essential to achieving a high percentage of spend under management. Employees are far more likely to buy the right item from the right supplier when it’s easier to do so than it is to buy from another source. Providing employees with the ability to search for and select the item or service that best fits their needs streamlines the purchase process for the employee and dramatically drives higher on-contract spend.

Many organizations find themselves with minimal supplier content or information available and, as a result, employees have no choice but to find what they need outside the system. This is especially so when working remotely. Not only is this a laborious process for employees, but unless the employee engages with a buyer ‘offline’ to select the supplier and item, it essentially wastes all of the effort Procurement invests in finding good suppliers and negotiating high-value agreements. At a time when "waste" could spell the end for many organizations, manual entry and lost savings are completely unnecessary.

The cost impact of employees using suppliers that aren’t in the system and buying “off-contract" is extensive, with significant savings opportunities being lost when negotiated agreements are not used and spend is spread across many suppliers. There is also added, and often extensive risk of purchases being made with suppliers that have not been properly qualified, when the potential for supplier non-performance, non-compliance and even fraud is much higher.

In order to really leverage an organization’s system to improve spend management, and to ensure peace of mind that employees are buying on-contract, it needs to establish efficient, well-controlled ways to provide employees with convenient access to comprehensive supplier content, and give them the power to find and buy what they need.

The Procure to Pay Process: Explained - The secret to effective, agile, automated P2P