5 reasons it's important to accelerate P2P digitalisation: Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) P2P Webinar

In a recent webinar with Forrester Consulting, an industry-leading analyst firm, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Duncan Jones and Senior Consultant, Aashish Sharma, discussed the importance of procure-to-pay (P2P) digitisation and what to prioritise when navigating vendor selection. They also reviewed findings from the Basware Total Economic Impact (TEI) study that calculated the potential return on investment (ROI) businesses could realise by implementing Basware P2P solutions –including accounts payable automation, e-invoicing services, and e-procurement over the world's largest open business network.

Defining the value of digitisation

There’s no question the pandemic increased the need for digital technology to support day-to-day employee interactions (e.g., Zoom, Teams, etc.), but business processes were also disrupted with suppliers and external parties. To shape this relationship, Forrester defines the term Supplier Value Management (SVM) as the value you can get from working effectively with suppliers.

It’s not only about reducing spend and achieving cost savings from your suppliers, but also the value created through digitising the procure-to-pay process which allows suppliers to invest in innovation towards products, helps with risk mitigation, and accommodates a flexible supply chain. All benefits that allow your organisation to focus on process efficiencies and the employee experience.

5 reasons to accelerate P2P digitisation

Implementing cloud-based systems and automating business processes has been a topic of discussion for a long time. However, the importance of qualifying vendors based on innovation and expertise is especially critical when translating the ROI and value to the day-to-day tasks within an organisation.

Why is it important to quickly find what you’re looking to buy? How does eliminating paper affect your business and its wider objectives? With P2P providers that put technology powered by artificial intelligence (AI) at the core of their product roadmap, you can expect the following benefits:

1. Aligned priorities – With visibility into your spend and suppliers you can align with wider business goals like sustainability, sourcing ethical suppliers, empowering employees, and supporting business agility.

2. Automation – Automate manual, mundane tasks (e.g., coding or contract redlining) so employees can work on more strategic tasks like uncovering the cause for price variances and implementing process improvements.

3. Greater efficiencies – With real-time data, users have the visibility to fix problems when they happen instead of searching for the cause after the fact (e.g., accounting for suppliers that are consistently late or monitoring suppliers that regularly invoice with excessive price variances).

4. Optimised decisions – Drive better decisions through the analysis of real-time, complete data. Powered by AI technology, systems can suggest the behavior that the human would typically make and replicate the action to alleviate human interference or error. 

5. Happier employees – By automating and removing mundane tasks, you’ve removed unfulfilling portions of the role. Automation should not be seen as a threat but as an opportunity to make the role better and more enjoyable.

Case study results for Basware P2P

We commissioned Forrester Consulting, to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to examine the potential ROI that companies could achieve by deploying and implementing cloud automation, like Basware’s, across their procure-to-pay (P2P) processes. Interviewing a collection of companies across the globe, Forrester analysed the benefits, value, cost, and flexibility of our P2P solutions. While each client interviewed had their own P2P digitisation journey, the following three challenges rose to the top for each.

• Lack of visibility on spending 

• Inefficient invoice workflows

• End-user challenges

Given their challenges and the changes these organisations wanted to see, they decided on Basware as their P2P vendor. Forrester estimates over that three years businesses can realise 315% ROI and $3.8M net present value by implementing Basware P2P. Here’s a brief breakdown of the key results:

• Annual spend optimisation of $2.7 million

• Accounts payable (AP) productivity gains, $736,837

• Procurement productivity gains, $679,361

• End-user productivity gains, $494,187

• Early pay discounts, $260,060

• Legacy system maintenance cost savings, $156,672

Download the study

To learn more about these results and other savings and benefits businesses can realise with Basware Procure-to-Pay solutions, download the full study.