An Executive’s Guide To Source-To-Pay Solutions
Eprocurement Definition
As the world of commerce, technology, and automation continues to move forward, procurment solutions, also known as Source-to-Pay (S2P) solutions, have come to point where they are essential for mature business. Source-to-Pay solutions are comprised of suite of applications and services that are designed to provide seamless overall experience in the purchasing and payment process. Companies that have adopted S2P solution have seen the process go from resource and time intensive to easy and efficient.
For C-Suite executive who is looking to better manage the purchasing and payment process within an organization, the appropriate Source-to-Pay solution can help streamline, virtualize, and automate the entire process. By using an integrated S2P solution, executives can receive better visibility into their purchasing and payment processes, offering better cost management and control.
Step 1: Defining Your Needs
The first step in implementing Source-to-Pay solution is to gain thorough understanding of your companies current purchasing and payment process. Crafting detailed plan of the existing system can include examining the use of different processes and technologies currently in place. Additionally, it is important to specify the required end-state of the process that you want to achieve.
Step 2: Assessing Your Options
Once the assessment of your current and desired state is complete, begin researching vendors that specialize in S2P solutions that fit your organizations needs. Evaluate these vendors using number of criteria, such as total cost of owned (TCO), total cost of implementation (TCI), and vendor risk. Consider the vendor flexibility, functionality of the solution in relation to ancillary systems, scalability, and company user-base.
Step 3: Evaluating Selecting
After researching and assessing the potential vendors, engage in detailed evaluations to narrow down your list of possible providers. Consult industry peers and review client feedback and success stories. Create short list of vendors to assess in the first place and deploy Request for Proposal (RFP) to gather greater depth on the potential solutions. Once potential vendors have been identified and reviewed, select the optimal candidate based upon the criteria identified in Step 2.
Step 4: Negotiating Contracting
Once the solution and vendor has been selected, move to finalize partnership through engaging in negotiation with the vendor. This includes designing the optimal contract that will define the products, services, timelines, and pricing that fits the organizations need. With finalized contract in place, engage in attentive project management to ensure the smooth implementation of the new solution uses established requirements, deliverables, timeline estimates, and cost plans.
Step 5: Implementing
Implementation of the S2P system begins with obtaining the necessary systems and data to bring the solution live. Ensure that all parties involved in the process (vendors, procurers, IT, etc.) understand the requirements, the implemented processes, and their expected roles. Engage in continual hands-on testing and strive for level of excellence in system and user training. Once trained, continue to provide guidance and support to ensure that the solution is used optimally by all processes.
Step 6: Measuring Success
In the final step, it is necessary to create metrics to measure the success of the implemented S2P solution. These metrics should offer ongoing clarity into the system’s performance such as total cost of ownership, customersatisfaction, and customer attrition. This data should be collected, analyzed, and shared with all stakeholders on regular basis. Additionally, staying abreast of advances in S2P solutions and engaging with peer organizations can help maintain the optimal functioning of the solution.
Conclusion
Implementing successful Source-to-Pay solution requires an experienced Vendor, thorough understanding of the organizations needs and current processes, and tested and measurable metric system to gauge success. By utilizing the steps outlined in this guide, any C-Suite executive can confidently select and deploy successful and well-managed S2P solution.
