7 Must-Have Features to Look for in a Purchase-To-Pay System
- Modern purchase-to-pay systems enhance efficiency and reduce administrative costs.
- The AI-powered systems provide real-time access to purchasing data for better spend control and forecasting.
- The help in audits and significantly reduce non-compliance risks.
July 22, 2024 | Purchasing
A purchase-to-pay (P2P) system enhances procurement efficiency in multiple ways – it automates processes, reduces administrative costs, and speeds up order and payment cycles.
Through real-time access to purchasing data, it provides better spend controls. P2P systems also ensure transparency and compliance with internal policies and external regulations, aiding in audits and reducing non-compliance risks.
With multiple options of purchase-to-pay systems available, finding the best for your business can be tricky. Though it depends on your business needs, some features are a must-have.
Key Features of a Modern Purchase-to-Pay System
Enhanced Buying Experience with AI-Driven Requisition Management
Using generative AI, the P2P platform quickly understand users' purchasing needs. This helps identify the best suppliers and categories based on preferences. It recommends the best-fit products, services, similar items, and frequent requests as well. The AI-powered engine reviews all incoming requisitions and then analyzes them to suggest the best course of action to the procurement team. Further, it streamlines the creation and approval of requisitions through features like an easy-to-use guided buying experience, comprehensive search capabilities, an intuitive consumer-like interface and more.
Advanced Direct Material Capabilities
Best-in-class purchase-to-pay systems offer manufacturing visibility, purchase order (PO) collaboration, quality management, vendor-managed inventory, warehouse management, bill of materials management and advanced shipping notice notifications. By leveraging these advanced capabilities, organizations can achieve greater efficiency, cost savings, and strategic value from their procurement and supply chain activities. The integration of these features into a cohesive P2P system enables end-to-end visibility, control, and optimization of the direct material procurement process.
Scalable and Flexible Workflows
Cutting-edge purchase-to-pay systems offer personalized user experiences along with low-code functionality. This enables the creation of flexible, customizable approval workflows with automatic alerts and visual processes. This includes turn fosters agile supply chains and strong extensibility.
Comprehensive ESG Management
Using advanced analytics, machine learning, big data, and automation, the P2P platform enhances the efficiency, effectiveness, performance, and agility of ESG management and reporting.
Real-Time Order Management
The system intelligently tracks the entire supplier engagement cycle, from contract agreements and dynamic discount payment terms to POs and invoice due dates. It facilitates various methods of PO creation, automates approval workflows, routes to the appropriate stakeholders, provides complete visibility of PO progress, ensures proper authorization, and reduces manual intervention to improve order accuracy and compliance.
Autonomous Procurement
AI and ML-driven orchestration intelligently directs user requests, such as utilizing contracts with low balances or securing the lowest price, to the best channels based on predefined business rules. It executes low-touch transactions by auto-coding accounts, identifying supply sources, triggering quick quotes, seeking approvals and issuing orders.
Intelligent Invoice Management
Purchase-to-pay solutions reconcile and resolve invoice queries, using AI-based optical character recognition to identify discrepancies. It helps process invoices accurately and ensures compliance with country-specific regulations. Further, it automates the invoice processing cycle – capturing and extracting invoice data for validation against POs and receipts. It also performs multi-way matching between invoices, POs, and goods received notes to identify discrepancies or exceptions.
Also Read: Procure-to-Pay A Cost Savings Opportunity
To Sum Up
Incorporating a robust purchase-to-pay system not only automates procurement processes and enhances financial oversight but also ensures compliance with regulations. This optimizes efficiency and transparency across the organization. These systems are indispensable for modern businesses that are aiming to streamline operations, achieve greater control over their procurement activities and boost profits.
