From the beginning, the promise of P2P (Procure-to-Pay) solutions was that they would automate lower value, high volume transactional and tactical procurement tasks for requisitioning and ordering indirect goods and services – the “long tail” of corporate spending – freeing up time to reallocate procurement resources to more strategic high value activities such as strategic sourcing or supplier management.

Achieving greater compliance with preferred vendor contracts by eliminating or reducing maverick spending was and continues to be a key hard dollar, ROI driver for P2P, but the implicit promise of greater transactional process efficiency has always been central to the P2P Business Case.

Fifteen years or so into the e-Procurement era, top performing organizations are distancing themselves from the rest of the market across a number of key performance metrics, especially in terms of more efficient requisition-to-order processes.

Nevertheless, when even world-class performers are still required to correct one of every ten POs issued in the P2P process, and one in five invoices are initial mismatches for the overall market, current performance remains a far cry from the theoretical goal of a completely “touchless” P2P process.

Where PO and invoice volumes number in the tens or hundreds of thousands, much higher levels of P2P process efficiency must still be achieved to fully realize the original value proposition, prompting an evaluation of the current and future state of P2P process efficiency as follows:

• Q1. What are the key measures of P2P process efficiency?
• Q2. What steps can lagging performers take to close the P2P efficiency gap?
• Q3. What strategies are top performers adopting to find enhanced P2P efficiencies?
• Q4. What innovations have the potential to drive the next wave of P2P efficiencies?

Stay tuned as we evaluate the P2P process efficiency.