With over 70% of businesses that are already digitized or in the process of being digitized, it can be inferred that digitization is the new trendsetter. When talking about Procurement, digitization is something that can fasten up the process with relatively low manpower and spendings. One important aspect of Procurement is Source-to-Pay. What’s the most important step when you’re talking about a business deal? Is it buying goods? Or making the final payment? Tallying the invoices, or negotiating with the supplier? It’s all of them. And all of them come under “Source-to-Pay”. So, what is source-to-pay in elaborative terms?

What is Source-to-Pay?

Source-to-pay is the end-to-end process where businesses can perform the following operations:

To analyze the potential (value) of a product by understanding its spend
To ensure the quality of that product after proper analyzation
To settle the contract with on-time transactions and invoice-check
To monitor the risk-free data flow among all the parts of the supply chain

Source-to-pay involves some of the crucial but repetitive tasks. Certainly, there are reasons why one should opt for digitized source-to-pay rather than traditional ones. Well, what are those reasons?

Why you should go for digitized source-to-pay?

The main motive of digital source-to-pay is to optimize the whole procurement process with the use of advanced technologies like RPA (Robotic Process Automation), Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computer-coded bots, Cloud Management System, and other intelligent automation techs. Besides this, certain plus points that would help you realize the necessity of going for a digitized source-to-pay:

It reduces the manual workload by cutting out the analyzing and processing part
It eliminates the chances of the slightest of errors or inefficiencies, making the process almost 100% ideal
It ensures the quality and certification of the product (or data) in a lesser period
It organizes and streamlines the process of data tallying
It prevents unwanted errors and issues in transactions and invoicing
It saves the employees from the hectic physical workload and let them focus more on logic-oriented tasks
It brings the information related to the supplier, products, prices, invoice, billing, dispatch, all in a single platform
It enhances the collaboration of the buyer with the vendor or supplier to ensure a smooth and sleek approach to procurement
It saves resources (monetary) since no paperwork or additional spreadsheet software is required

Why we’re concerned with digitizing source-to-pay rather than the whole business model?

When we choose to digitize the whole business model, the Procurement process also comes under it. But since we know that Procurement is a sensitive and important aspect that requires careful handling, we can’t go for the reliability of ERPs or any other software. Opting for a vendor who specializes only in the Procurement sector and will handle all of it for you, is the demand one needs to fulfill.

Apart from this, Procurement processes are somewhat complex and require a large amount of potential. The complexity of accountings, negotiations, and strategies isn’t understood by everyone. Henceforth, it is preferable to go for a vendor who is quite experienced and specializes only in digitizing the Procurement Procedure.

The Final Verdict

Digitized source-to-Pay is providing new opportunities to the enterprise owners, both in terms of optimization and savings. Companies or startups that are quick to adopt this trend will surely get long-term benefits. Also, opting for a vendor specifically for the digital Procurement process is another vital task that needs to be executed to ensure efficiency and accuracy.

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