Optimizing Your Organization’s Purchase-To-Pay, Order-To-Cash Processes With Managed Services
PURCHASE TO PAY ORDER TO CASH
In their everyday operations, financial departments of all organizations must be outfitted with solutions that enable them to manage their purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash processes. Unfortunately, purchasing and managing the technological solutions necessary to carry out these activities can be extremely costly, often requiring organizations to allocate significant resources without being sure that the solutions can meet the organizations current needs and scale quickly over time. To help overcome this dilemma, many organizations are turning to managed services as very viable option for optimizing the purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash processes.
Managed services enable organizations to outsource functions that can be managed instead of bearing the burden of maintaining them in-house. This includes acting as an intermediary between the customer and the provider while providing access to the necessary technology solutions, as well as providing users with the training and expertise that enables them to fully utilize the tools effectively. When applied to the purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash processes, managed services help financial departments run more efficiently and effectively while decreasing the long-term costs associated with the upkeep and implementation of the solutions necessary to sustain those processes.
Below is step-by-step guide to leveraging managed services to help optimize your organizations purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash processes:
1. Analyze Your Existing organizations Financial Processes: Before deciding if managed services are the right option for your organization, it is important to first analyze your existing purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash processes. Identify what procedures and strategies are currently used, what works well, and what may need to be improved. Doing this exercise will provide you with an invaluable roadmap for what needs to be done to optimize your organizations performance. It will also make it easier for you to compare the managed services you?re considering against what?s already in place.
2. Research Potential Managed Services Firms: The next step is to begin researching potential managed services firms. When gathering information, it is crucial to look beyond the technical capabilities of the firm. Make sure to look at the core values they live by as well as how they go about handling customer requests and inquiries. Additionally, they should have the expertise in managing payment and invoicing systems, well-trained staff that can deal with customer support issues quickly and seamlessly, and the experience necessary to understand your organizations financial processes.
3. Assess the Cost Benefit of Managed Services: Managed services can often help your organizationsave on the cost of maintaining, implementing, and upgrading financial solutions over the long run. At the same time, the fees for such services can incur extra costs that may make it iseem unfeasible. To determine if using managed services is worthwhile investment, it is essential to analyze the cost-benefit of the services. Do the financial savings justify the extra expense of using managed services?
4. Execute and Monitor the Agreement: Once you have decided that managed services make the most sense for your organization, the final step is to make the agreement. Before finalizing the document, ensure that it is detailed and tailored to your organizations wants and needs. Once the agreement is executed, it is crucial to continually evaluate the performance of the managed services firm to ensure they are meeting the demands of the agreement.
Leveraging managed services as part of financial department?s purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash processes can provide substantial benefits but is by no means one-size-fits-all solution. It is important to do comprehensive research into the different managed services firms and evaluate the costs associated with such services. Following the steps laid out in this article can help organizations make the best decision when it comes to optimizing their purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash processes.
