Gartner Critical Capabilities for Procure-to-Pay Suites 2022 report is out and takes a deep dive into what Gartner has determined as the “critical capabilities” for procure-to-pay (P2P) solutions to help organisations simplify their end-to-end process.
Each year, customers expect more functionality and spend visibility, requiring P2P providers to continuously evolve. While most mainstream P2P suites offer standard capabilities, this report scores 15 P2P providers’ critical capabilities and applies these to use cases so customers can use the information to inform their P2P solution evaluation and selection.
Gartner defines procure-to-pay (P2P) suites as “integrated solutions with automated workflows to request, procure, receive and pay for goods and services across an enterprise”. For this report, P2P suites support the following processes at minimum:
Accounts Payable Invoice Automation (APIA)
Accounts payable (AP) automation refers to the automated technology that is used to streamline the entire AP process from invoice receipt to payment. AP invoice automation (APIA) solutions are evaluated on their ability to manage exceptions, support account coding and approval workflows when no PO exists, support supplier communication, and electronic invoice archival for global compliance.
In addition to these features, functions like dynamic discounting, supplier registration, employee expense management, and payments are considered additional functionalities.
E-Purchasing
E-purchasing enables employees to order goods and services through a centralised, controlled solution, similar to online shopping. To achieve high e-purchasing scores, functionality around the creation of a requisition through e-forms, catalogs, or free text orders are considered. Gartner also reviews the ease of use around how POs are transmitted to suppliers and the final step in the e-purchasing workflow, the receipt of goods and services.
How to read the report
Gartner recognises that the critical capabilities evaluated do not represent all capabilities for every solution; therefore, clients should use the critical capabilities analysis as one of several sources of input about a provider before making a decision.
Each capability is assigned a value from 1 to 5 with 1 decreeing that the capability is poor or absent and 5 determining that the capability is not only met but significantly exceeded. Then, each capability is weighted regarding how relevant it is to a specific product or service use case. Use cases address the key business problems that are best suited for P2P capabilities. They are intended to portray the most common needs of organisations searching for a P2P suite.
Basware’s Performance
Out of 15 providers (up from 12 last year), Basware scored highly across many of Gartner’s critical capabilities and use cases. We consider ourselves a visionary in the procure-to-pay market with our insights-led AP-first approach to P2P. To us, the position of “visionary” is what we expected as we view P2P slightly differently. And whereas Gartner evaluates the market on a full P2P scale and might underestimate the importance of strong finance automation, our focus and priority is providing the best AP solution possible, which the Critical Capabilities report has proven for 3 consecutive years.
In the current climate of volatility and business uncertainty, we believe the most strategic place to gain full visibility into company-wide spend is streamlining and automating your Accounts Payable processes as the foundation of your P2P process. Finance is where Procurement first turns to get holistic data on supplier spend, so this is where your P2P strategy should start.
Secondly, our vision of the P2P market is one where we don’t believe in recommending only one, single P2P suite solution to make automation work across the full procure-to-pay process. We don’t prescribe a “no PO no pay” policy as a condition for automation to work. Instead, we have made it our mission to make automation work by fitting into enterprises’ realities, which means:
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Easy integration into existing complex ERP landscapes
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Making automation work across multiple ERPs and procurement solutions, alongside our own
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Making automation work despite various sources of PO creation
So, when comparing automation capabilities, do so in the context of your existing landscape to make the best choice. Based on our 35+ year experience working with multi-national enterprises, we have seen this approach fits enterprises’ day-to-day reality best and sets them up for fast time-to-value with a low-risk investment.
