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Source to Pay – a solution to making cost savings

by | March 19, 2020

Through transformational business practices, procurement has become a key enabler for the generation of incremental profits. Businesses have continued to step up their levels of focus on the cost base. They have also identified  the need for strategic partnerships and the necessity to transform their procurement function.

Procurement has recognised that it needs to elevate itself beyond being just the traditional business function and play a more strategic role in the organisation. Having a better understanding of what is core versus what is non-core, whilst buying-in to an end-to-end remit for all third-party expenditure, is what it takes to be a best in breed procurement function.

What is Source to Pay?

Source to Pay software is an integrated suite of applications developed to take care of and manage every process within the procurement department. A regular Source to Pay solution can handle all sorts of purchasing activities such as: e-auctions, purchase requisitions, sourcing events, spend analysis, invoice and payment processing and vendor relations.  Implementing a Source to Pay solution will improve significantly an oraganisation’s procurement processes and helps to achieve great cost savings, if implemented well of course!

Planning for a Source to Pay solution implementation

Even if implementing a Source to Pay solution can help your procurement function in numerous ways, things are not always that easy or clear. For many organisations going live with a Source to Pay solution will be the first time they had to manage strategic and transactional procurement systems, with hundreds or thousands of suppliers and users. Not investing enough time in a clear plan with deadlines can make the difference between the success and failure of your Source to Pay project, many months or years after implementation.

As a procurement leader, you will be aware of inefficiency spending.  A report by McKinsey states that automating Source to Pay processes can reduce spend by up to 3.5 percent and that most organisations waste 3 to 4 percent of their overall spend on excessive transaction costs, inefficiency and noncompliance.

source to pay graph

Additionally, organisations that deploy a Source to Pay system can get up to 50% more of their spend under management to drive an additional 31% in total savings.

Benefits of a Source to Pay solution

  • Improving visibility over all your procurement processes. By using a single platform, users can access information easier and have access to real-time data.
  • Improved spend analysis by having a deeper understanding of your data. When you use the information you have around where your money is going you can optimise your company’s spending to meet goals, reduce costs and improve efficiency.
  • The supplier management process is much clearer for the organisation and for the suppliers as the whole process is handled thorough the same platform. Supplier onboarding becomes easier and less prone to error.

We believe an integrated Source to Pay system helps companies become more powerful with their procurement processes.  But you have to keep in mind that change doesn’t happen overnight, and for a new system to deliver at its full capacity, all stakeholders need to be actively involved in the process and need to have the patience to understand it and learn its functionalities.

If you are interested in knowing more about Source to Pay systems, please don’t hesitate to contact one of our procurement specialists!