Most organisations, whether large or small, employ a variety of mechanisms for procuring and settling payment of goods and services. These might include some of the following:
- Raising a purchase order (PO) and matching a supplier invoice with the PO before passing the invoice through to the accounts payable system for cheque production or direct bank credit;
- Running an open account with a supplier (such as a travel management company) and reconciling monthly accounts against some internal manual log of requests;
- Using a corporate credit card such as a purchasing card, “lodged” card or Travel & Entertainment card in conjunction with an expense management system;
- Reimbursing employees who purchase with their own financial resources;
- Receiving an electronic file of invoices and line items from suppliers and passing it through an expense management system.
The payment industry has been producing best practice reports for nearly 10 years, advocating how particular methods can save time and money by reducing the handling cost and improving accuracy and transparency. The metrics of electronic solutions over manual processes are well established and generally not disputed.
- Inlogik offers solutions that embrace a wide range of procure-to-pay applications including:
- Expense management solutions (EMS) for corporate credit cards and employee re-imbursement;
- E-Invoice processing for a range of commodities including office supplies, print, courier charges and temporary labour;
- Mobile phone management;
- Purchase order generation and matching with payment transactions.
Inlogik has observed that payment process make-overs sometimes fail to deliver to expectations. This has little to do with the technology and mainly to do with change management – the ability to quantify an opportunity, set and communicate objectives, implement change and then monitor and communicate progress towards the opportunity.
Spend analytics play a vital role by revealing the profiles of payment activity. The entire outgoings of an organisation for a number of years can be collected and categorised in as many ways as there is data stored on the transaction – eg. payment methods, amounts, dates, merchant category codes, vendors, departments, G/L accounts, etc..
It will be quickly revealed that certain commodities which naturally lend themselves to one particular efficient payment method are, in fact, being purchased using multiple methods. It is possible to quickly spot and quantify the opportunity, effectively setting an objective. For example you may find that office stationery supplies are being purchased by card, PO/EFT and employee reimbursement. Armed with this information, you can target the expansion of the card program, focusing on those departments and individuals who haven’t used cards for whatever reason.
This is just one example of how various solutions can be brought together to support a program of transforming many of the procure-to-pay processes.