by Jan Malasek | Feb 8, 2023 | Procurement Operations
Digitization of strategic procurement processes and capabilities has been the biggest advance in the world of procurement over the past 10 years. This enablement allows companies and their suppliers to be more efficient, effective and accurate and hence significantly adds to increasing value across the extended enterprise. Read how a global oil services company went about improving the digitization of the source-to-pay process after a merger. SITUATION OVERVIEW When the CFO heard the procurement team explain the importance of a software portal for suppliers to register and manage their banking and payment information, he had an “ah-ha” moment. Realizing a similar need for the company to register and use their customers supplier portals to ensure proper payment through the order-to-cash process, he understood the efficiency of the same process for a supplier portal to manage the company’s suppliers. This “ah-ha” moment provided the procurement team with a way to align with the CFO and other executives to continue developing their source-to-pay digital strategy. As a result of a recently merged global oil services company with over $3 billion in annual revenue, the procurement team needed to implement a digital system to support the purchasing requirements across multiple business units and ERP systems. This need was driven by two factors. Frist, because of the merger, prior procurement software licenses expired and second, the newly merged entity started to experience significant operational problems processing supplier payments. These factors had a cascading impact on the central procurement’s team capability to manage supplier relationships necessary to meet delivery and cost reduction goals. Given these factors, executives including the CFO, COO, CIO and VP...
