How an Integration Platform Can Help in Procure to Pay (P2P) Automation?
Tags: Ipaas, Cloud, Procurement, Integration, Procure To Pay

Procure to pay process are generally responsible for improving the strength of enterprise cash flow and bottom line. In general terms, Procure-to-Pay(P2P) is the process of integrating purchasing and accounts payable systems. It’s a purchasing cycle which starts at procuring raw material, vendor selection, enforcing compliance, reconciliations and ends at invoicing and payment. For most of the companies, a procure to pay cycle has gained a strategic position as purchasing is no longer considered as a siloed function.

Of all the years, P2P processes were set up manually resulting in operational inefficiencies, spend visibility and compliance issues etc. To reap the maximum benefits, the P2P processes have to be connected to a wide array of business applications such as ERP, HRM, Logistics, Warehouses, SCM, AR, AP etc. For instance, P2P processes combined with AR processes can drastically improve the cash flows and hence it is important to have seamless connectivity between P2P and AP processes through a meticulously planned integration initiative.

An integration platform can significantly help in establishing P2P automation. It can enable procurement processes to be tightly coupled with other business applications especially finance. These days enterprises opting for a Procure-to-Pay solution can’t afford to build inhouse point-to-point integrations for each application and they are looking to build express integrations for immediate business results.

Focusing on P2P integration during its initial deployment makes it easy to create a single master data view of suppliers/vendors and helps in their quick onboarding to the new system. Not just this, there are multiple benefits of an integration platform offers for getting the maximum value out of your P2P automation initiative. Let’s look at them in detail -

1. Plug and Play Connectivity — Having an integration platform supporting your P2P solution will give you the advantage of serving your customers with a solution connector. The P2P solution can be deployed and connected with the bigger business ecosystem and applications quickly with the help of the connector. Gone are the days, where it would take weeks or months to get the P2P solution up and running. Now businesses can get their purchase cycle streamlined with an out-of-box P2P solution connector.

2. Reduced IT Complexity — An integration platform will provide support for integrating P2P solution with all the business applications. This way the integration logic doesn’t scatter in different applications hosted on the cloud or on-prem and eradicates the need for maintaining multiple codes for each point-to-point integration. This reduces IT architecture complexity, removes infrastructure silos and offers scalability.

3. Business User Accessibility — An integration platform with an interactive interface can help a business user to integrate P2P solution without involving the tech team. They can make customizations to the integrations, map the P2P process with ERP accurately and create workflow automation as per the required business case without the involvement of additional manpower and IT users; thus, expediting the whole P2P automation process.

4. Higher Productivity and Efficiency — For companies having a wide scale of operations across multiple geographies, it becomes mandatory to achieve scalable, streamlined, and low-risk integration. They have to connect existing purchasing and payables processes to have a controlled view of the back-office operations. Because P2P solutions are cloud-based, it becomes easy for the enterprises to maintain the single instance of the data. An integration platform helps in providing a consolidated access to P2P solution across the enterprise. All the users have complete visibility on the P2P workflows and the real- time insights which removes silos and bring people and processes together and help in driving productivity.

In a nutshell, enterprises planning for P2P automation can deploy an external integration platform which can help in their integration pursuits. DXchange integration Cloud is well-equipped to align existing processes to business requirements, across different systems and locations.

To book a demo of DXchange Integration Cloud, contact us!