Supplier Portals Benefiting the "Procure-to-Pay" Process
By Nick Sprau, Vice President of Marketing, Metafile, Inc., and Chris Evanoff, President and Managing Director, Soltec, Inc.
Adapted from an article that appears in the May-June issue of AP Matters
No matter what the industry, every accounts payable (AP) professional understands their success lies in efficiently managing and executing their role in the procure-to-pay (P2P) process. Beyond ensuring cost control, an efficient P2P process contributes to customer satisfaction that can help generate revenue and grow the bottom line. But with thousands of transactions among thousands of suppliers and customers in thousands of locations, getting to that bottom-line growth can seem all but impossible.
For organizations in many industries, supplier portals can extend automation across the supply chain and provide the “bottom-line value acceleration” accounts payable professionals seek. Understanding if a supplier portal is the right investment decision means assessing the portal’s application and potential value, and thinking strategically about the P2P process.&When AP professionals begin to consider portals for their organization, it is essential to ask the right questions:
- Deciding which portal path is right for your organization requires evaluating the resources of your IT staff – from software technicians to core IT systems personnel and others. Are they willing and able to develop, support, maintain, and upgrade the organization’s own supplier portal?
- Organizations must gain portal participation among their supplier ecosystems to ensure ultimate value. They must ask themselves: how much detail are they willing to share on an individual and collective basis? While small to midsized suppliers are best positioned to reap efficiencies from the use of supplier portals, some may deem adapting their processes to match the portal’s requirements too costly per transaction.
- Which transactions will the supplier portal make possible? Technology is available that makes multiple P2P transactions possible, maximizing potential for across-the-board efficiency and ROI.
The advent of supplier portal technology has proved immensely valuable, tremendously efficient, and widely popular for organizations in a variety of industries, as the adoption and use of supplier portals continues to increase.
It’s this success that also breeds the supplier portal’s next challenge: enabling automatic transaction processing and helping suppliers efficiently manage the ever-growing number of unique portals they may be required to access on a daily basis. After all, true automation exists when data can be accessed, shared, and processed seamlessly, without the need for rekeying or other human intervention.
