Increasing collaboration shouldn’t add more to your to-do list. Here’s why strengthening the AP and procurement relationship should be one of your New Year’s resolutions.
Although part of the same P2P process, AP and Procurement teams often function as separate entities within a business. Procurement is historically focused on strategic sourcing and developing long-term, favorable relationships with suppliers, while the AP department is concerned with having visibility of commitments, tracking spend, and ensuring payments are paid on time.
By linking your accounts payable and procurement departments and processes you can streamline your supply chain. The benefits of streamlining are increased cash flow, savings, and improved supplier relationships. The most effective method for maximising this alignment is through AP automation.
Although Procurement and AP teams sit within the finance function of a business, employees from each team often report to different managers and have different priorities. Often, this leads to a lack of regular communication and collaboration, even when working toward complementary objectives.
Here’s what we found when we polled AP and procurement teams at leading organisations to determine their priorities for 2021:
According to those polled, AP departments will be focusing on the following in 2021:
According to those polled, procurement departments will be focusing on the following in 2021:
These objectives may look different on paper, but they’re two sides of the same coin. While early visibility of commitments will allow AP teams to work strategically and have insight into what’s coming, it becomes nearly impossible without a consistent sourcing strategy that allows for efficient vendor analysis. Similarly, procurement teams can’t improve their supplier relationships if AP teams aren’t in control of DPOs.
For insights into the benefits of automating AP and aligning AP and procurement departments, we spoke with our Total AP customers. Here’s what they recommend:
When AP and procurement departments share data and work together, they can improve efficiency, cost control, and accuracy.
By automating AP with Tungsten Network, you gain:
The advanced analytics from automated AP enable procurement to cut costs, claim lost resources, improve supplier relations, and innovate — rather than focus entirely on mundane tasks.
By automating AP, organisations can achieve all of their AP and procurement goals for 2021. By implementing mechanisms for consistent communication, collaboration, learning and buy-in, they can optimise the value of their digitisation.
With your AP and procurement teams working together, you can increase cash flow, save money, and improve your supplier relationships. By automating AP, you can facilitate the alignment of these two departments and streamline your entire P2P process, providing more value to the business.
To start collaborating more effectively in 2021, we recommend that you:
For more insights into the most common obstacles to successful collaboration facing finance teams today, as well as the top strategies for building strong AP-procurement alignment, watch our New Year’s Resolutions for AP and Procurement webinar.
If you haven’t yet transitioned from manual to automated, there’s never been a more urgent need.
With Total AP from Tungsten Network, you upload your invoice to the platform for buyer review, processing and approval, and upon approval payment is sent — and you can accommodate all your suppliers, regardless of size, location or maturity. Plus, you’re 100% digitised from day one.
Did you know that the top-performing purchase-to-pay organisations report 10% year-on-year improvements in efficiency and effectiveness?
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