Purchase to Pay will go live early this year and it is vital that you receipt the goods and services you have ordered on EASEbuy once they are received.

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Through its hugely successful e-invoicing programme, it has converted 1.8m of its invoices to electronic. Speaking on our latest sharedserviceslink.com webinar, Peter Downie, Global Invoice Automation Lead at HP, revealed how the company has managed to deliver such impressive results.

A shared-services pioneer, HP first embraced centralisation in 1990. Since then it has stormed ahead in its adoption and implementation of automation technologies. By 2000, the company already received 30% of its invoices via EDI and knew that e-invoicing would help bring more of its suppliers on board.

HP’s drivers were process efficiency, standardisation and cost savings, but it also pursued more intangible benefits, such as greater auditability, business intelligence and improved cash management.

Partnering with e-invoicing network, OB10, HP’s goal was to convert 80% of its entire manual invoice population to electronic through a fully tax compliant, global solution that was viable for all its suppliers.

With these objectives pretty much ticked off, Peter is focusing his attention on the resisting one hundreds (the suppliers who won’t convert), developing a portal that offers self-help tools, and embracing the benefits of dynamic discounting.

When asked to share his top-three strategies for success, he highlighted:

• Understand your stakeholder framework; finance and procurement must work together hand in hand
• Focus on economies of scale
• Maintain ongoing programme management to support supplier enrolment, manage service providers and stakeholders, and process improvement.

Watch a recording of the webinar on the sharedserviceslink.com website.

Peter Downie is also speaking at e-Invoicing Europe 2011 in London in July.

We run the risk of being too clever by half by wrapping our solutions up in ever more complex packaging to get around archaic conventions

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We are already seeing “free” services offered by the likes of Coupa on the e-procurement side and Tradeshift on the e-invoicing side.

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Supply chain finance can oil the wheels of industry the way the banks should but, for whatever reason, don’t. In difficult economic conditions, it allows business to continue to operate by leveraging the strength of the powerful at the same time as protecting the weak. It can preserve jobs and sustain industries

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It’s a statement any project implementation team in any function could make, which isn’t necessarily helpful  if you’re in the middle of automating purchase to pay (P2P) and struggling with adoption. Nigel Chapman, Change Management Facilitator at ABB, a provider of power and automation technologies, revealed how he helped to transform P2P.

Speaking on today’s sharedserviceslink.com webinar with Basware, he told us how they not only increased ABB’s purchase-order-compliant invoices from 60% to over 99% but also achieved closer relations with its suppliers and internal businesses.

It’s worth taking note of ABB’s key lessons learnt for delivering a successful automation programme:

• Be clear in your communications about why changes are happening and provide a high-level route map for your P2P journey
• Change management is key
  • Adopt a robust methodology
  • Build and maintain stakeholder engagement and communication
  • Deliver consistency in messages and actions
• Involving the supply chain management function was critical to our success
• Maintain commitment and be willing to dig deep and provide support during tough times
• Recognise that this is a journey and be prepared to work with changes that emerge as the project proceeds

Sound advice for all project managers.

If you missed the webinar, the recording of this session will be available on sharedserviceslink.com soon.

The Basware contract management system allows finance and purchasing to easily monitor contract compliance and utilisation. Key questions can be answered more easily. Are contracts used efficiently? Do staff, suppliers and other business partners comply to contracts terms? This and other business critical information is available quickly without the need to spend time looking for data dispersed across numerous systems. Instead, valuable time can be better-employed analyzing this information and managing the business. Introducing this capability is a great way to obtain a strategic view not only into the purchase-to-pay process but the broader business as well.

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Ariba, Inc. (Nasdaq: ARBA), the leading provider of collaborative business commerce solutions, today announced that it has signed an agreement with Gasunie, a gas infrastructure company with one of the largest networks of high pressure gas pipeline grids in Europe. As part of ongoing efforts to reduce costs and improve profits, Gasunie is tapping into the Ariba^® Commerce Cloud to drive a more efficient, effective commerce process that generates savings and efficiencies across its operations.

Gasunie will implement the full range of solutions available in the Ariba Commerce Cloud including: Ariba^® Spend Visibility^™ to prioritize sourcing plans and maximize opportunities for savings; Ariba^® Procure-to-Pay^™ to drive a best-practice procurement process; Ariba Sourcing^™ and Ariba Contract Management^™ to negotiate best-value agreements and drive compliance with them; and Ariba Supplier Information and Performance Management^™ to more efficiently manage trading relationships.

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Fraudulent billing schemes are so popular precisely because everything looks legitimate.  Invoices are received, reviewed, and approved.  Payment checks are cut and distributed.  Any employee in the purchase-to-pay cycle can perpetrate a fraudulent billing scheme.  However, an alert business owner can often prevent or spot the schemes before they do do significant damage.

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Charlotte, N.C. – December 28, 2010 – Employees of Verian Technologies, a leading provider of purchase-to-pay automation solutions, recently took time out of the busy holiday season to lend a hand at the Urban Ministry Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.

An interfaith organization that serves poor and homeless people with love, compassion and tangible help, the Urban Ministry Center conducts an ongoing meal drive called ‘Operation Sandwich’ to help feed the needy with volunteer-prepared homemade sandwiches.

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The question is, if it’s such a commonly cited pre-requisite, what’s stopping companies from doing it? 

Scouring my notes from the conference, I’ve jotted down, in no particular order, some of the key points discussed around collaboration between procurement and finance.

• Supplier relationship management: with finance and procurement working together, your supplier data will be more accurate so you can easily identify your strategic suppliers, and spot the ones who are falling out of process and why
• Appreciate your differences: finance professionals will focus on control, segregation of duties, compliance and making accounting easy. Procurement wants the right goods and services to arrive at the right place, at the right time. You don’t have to become an expert in each other’s functions but you need mutual respect. As one speaker said, there’s no point having an end-to-end process if you have brick walls between the functions
• Blur reporting lines: consider making accounts payable report to procurement or recruit a procurement professional into a finance-led P2P team
  Align goals: give finance and procurement shared performance goals and balanced scorecards
• Contracts and T&Cs: if you’re rolling out e-invoicing, work with procurement at contract renegotiation time to introduce new terms and conditions to your suppliers
• Communicate: run internal trade fairs to help procurement teams understand your objectives and communicate regularly
• Data analysis: consider recruiting a supply chain management analyst to focus on getting the detail out of the data and delivering continuous improvement for procurement and finance processes. This will also help you take advantage of financing options such as early payment discounts and reverse factoring
• Multi-function collaboration: why stop at collaboration between finance and procurement? Every function that triggers an invoice needs to be on board with accounts payable automation activities.

These nuggets come from companies such as HP, Orange Business Services, Eaton Corporation and P&G, so there’s considerable evidence to suggest they know what they’re talking about.

North Carolina is proposing to privatize its IT services as part of a broad cost-cutting move.

Gov. Bev Perdue said last week she wants to hire a vendor to consolidate and centralize the state’s IT services, Matt Williams writes in Government Technology.

Across the state government, Perdue would consolidate 14 departments into eight, institute a hiring freeze and outsource the state’s procurement process, Williams writes. North Carolina’s Office of IT Services would be folded into a new Department of Management and Administration, and about 100 computer service units would be closed.

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Basware, the global leader in purchase-to-pay solutions, announced recently that it is partnering with industry analyst firm, Paystream Advisors, Inc., to host a webinar on “Taking the Pain Out of Accounts Payable:10 Ways to Increase Workflow Efficiencies and Decrease Spending by Automating AP.”

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You may have noticed that we recently spruced up the sharedservicelink.com website. Not content with making it even easier for you to find the information you need on finance and accounting shared services we thought we’d also set you a bit of a challenge.

Kill the Paper Invoice has been designed to dispel myths that invoice processing isn’t the most entertaining of activities while also allowing you to vent your processing frustrations.

Catch the invoices as they fall and quickly process their numbers to keep your desk clear. Watch out for electronic invoices that process themselves and the sharedserviceslink.com power up that will clear the pile on your desk. But don’t drop an invoice or let them pile too high as you’ll get three warnings from your boss before you get fired.

Our leader board is already filling up… if you’re in the top five at 5pm on 31^st January 2011 you stand a chance of winning an iPad!

Good luck!

A great write up in the NY Times. Here’ an extract:

“Ariba’s network links about 1,000 buyers and 300,000 sellers. In the last 12 months, about $135 billion worth of goods and services were sold on the system, up from about $115 billion in the previous 12 months. Last week, Ariba paid $150 million to acquire Quadrem and its network of 70,000 suppliers that sold $30 billion of goods last year to customers like Alcoa, Rio Tinto and Nestlé.

Large companies like Ford Motor and Procter & Gamble have long used homemade and purchased technology to refine their supply chains and to narrow their supplier lists. It’s all part of improving business basics, like understanding what you buy and how you buy it.

The networks open more options for these giants, and today’s pitch from companies like Ariba and CombineNet, a specialist in complex transactions, is that littler guys can get in on this kind of goods-and-services dealing and save money in lean times.”

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Miele, the leading manufacturer of domestic appliances and commercial equipment, has deployed an advanced, web-based invoice automation solution from enterprise purchase-to-pay specialist Palette, to optimise financial management across its Swedish business operation.

Miele is using PaletteInvoice, part of the PaletteArena suite of accounts payable automation solutions, to ensure that the 20,000 invoices received annually at its Swedish headquarters are processed, approved and scheduled for payment quickly and efficiently.

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Do you know the number of invoices each of your FTEs processes per annum?

It’s a key performance indicator of your purchase-to-pay process. World-class performers operate at a level of more than 40,000 per FTE.

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Implementing procurement techniques such as category management principles  at your bakery or restaurant can provide a major contribution to improved profitability. But you don’t need to employ a procurement consultant. Start by measuring and capturing sales data at your or point of sale. Go as granular as you can within reason measuring not just your muffin sales but the split between blueberry and regular for example.

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The limitations in computing power that inspired our thinking about standards are no longer relevant. When it comes to looking at standards in 2010, don’t look for better standards or more standards – just stop looking, and abandon them.

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Software as a Service (SaaS) is an alternative delivery method to traditional, perpetual licenses. By its nature, SaaS means that companies are always equipped with state-of-the art solutions, allowing them to focus on core competences and the creation of  business value while at the same time keeping tabs on expenditure. With SaaS, you pay only for the services you use; there’s no need to invest in hardware or software up front, and it is a  flexible way to start immediately reaping the benefits of purchase-to-pay automation.

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The Welsh Assembly Government has announced plans to overhaul the procurement process in the country, with an £11 million investment over a five year period.

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When bidding for a public sector contract you’ll probably have to go through an official procurement process with a set timetable. The more the contract is worth, the more time-consuming the process is likely to be.

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I a great blog at Purchasing Insight, Peregrine writes: “For as long as I can remember, the great and good in the B2B world have espoused the use of standards as a fundamental component of business communication in the technology enabled world – yet they have simultaneously complained abut the number of standards that are out there. Surely its about time that we all realized and accepted that further attempts to evangelize and impose standards will not work. They’ve never worked in the past. If they had, there would not be so many standards today (not to mention the numerous standards bodies). We normally learn from our mistakes – once bitten, twice shy. In the B2B world – once bitten, twice bitten.”

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Commerce Manager automates four key processes—Payables, Receivables, Invoicing, and Supplier Onboarding—and drives purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash improvements, including:

* Increased process efficiencies
* Help improve cash management and forecasting
* Reduced costs
* Better investment decisions
* Advanced auditing, controls and reporting

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