Maximizing Suppliers Risk Management Through Source-To-Pay Technology

Suppliers Risk Management


Traditional supplier risk management typically involves tedious manual processes, hampering organizations in preventing inappropriate payments, detecting fraud, and thus maximizing revenue. Developments in source-to-pay (S2P) technology, however, now make mitigating supplier risk increasingly easier, scalable, and more effective.

C-suite executives across various industries can now tap into the capability of source-to-pay solutions, designed not only to manage and streamline purchasing flows, but to reduce the risks associated with manual invoicing and payment processes. Source-to-pay systems offer unprecedented capabilities to evaluate and monitor each transaction of supplier data and activities to ensure that they remain in compliance with relevant law and industry best practices.

How Source-to-Pay Technology Works

The ability to integrate S2P technology with broader strategy of supplier risk management is crucial in providing visibility and insights into variables such as payment terms, spending, invoicing and delivery management. The technology itself is built on modern architectures such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and robotics, consisting of an extensive suite of tools for an organization to use in monitoring each supplier and their activities.

The suite of tools for S2P technology solution comprises:

1. Payment processing automation: Automates the payment process by enabling faster data exchange from banks and suppliers.

2. Rules-based automation: Automatically triggers workflows based on credit and bank account changes, payment currency, term verification, batch settings and more.

3. Tax verifications: Onboards new vendors with the appropriate banking and taxpayer information needed for tax payment automations.

4. Compliance tools: Generates instant compliance reports to ensure that suppliers are compliant with regards to applicable anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws via applicable policies, witness attestations and more.

5. Risk management: Automatically detects suspicious transactions or fraudulent activities, and alerts the organization of suspicious activity.

6. Vendor payment notification: Providing the vendor with notifications of the payment status, potential delays or problems with the payment.

7. Data integration and mapping: Consolidates all payment, invoice and other supplier related information in central databases.

The Benefits of Source-to-Pay Technology

Better risk management process helps C-suite executives improve their decisions, and Source-to-Pay technology can help. By replacing paper-based and manual processes, organizations can speed up payments, reduce errors, fight fraud, and secure tax compliance.

Organizations can leverage the capabilities of S2P technology for improved supplier risk management with the following benefits:

1. Improved access to trusted data: All payment and vendor information are accessible in central repositories, providing the organization with trusted and up-to-date data.

2. Increased operational efficiency: Helps automate processes, streamline data flows, and improve performance with minimal manual interventions.

3. Reduced vendor payment time: Because of the automation of the process, S2P technology can process payments faster and issue payments to vendors in timely manner.

4. Improved visibility into the purchase to pay process: The incorporation of artificial intelligence, robotics and analytics allows organizations to gain insights into their purchase to pay and payment processes and take proactive actions against risk.

5. Reduced fraud risk: Automated processes are designed to detect fraud and reduce the exposure to fraudulent activities.

6.Improved compliance: Automated processes are designed to detect anomalies in the payment process and alert the organization of any suspicious activities.

Conclusion

In conclusion, source-to-pay technology has major impact in mitigating supplier risk, thanks to improved access to data and automation of processes. C-suite executives in finance have an increasingly important responsibility in securing their operations and processes in the digital age, and S2P technology has now provided these executives with unprecedented capabilities to ensure the security of their data, payments, operations, and accounts. Leveraging this technology is sound decision which can help executives secure their financial operations while minimizing risk exposure.