Your ERP needs P2P automation
CFO’s roles have changed immensely over the past 5 years with the onset of automation in finance. Ankur Agrawal from McKinsey noted that “CFOs have influence on more and more functions.“ As a result, it’s important for modern CFOs to have the skills necessary to lead not only their teams but the organisation.
Today’s CFOs need to go beyond traditional financial management, embracing a diverse skill set that’s essential to driving growth and efficiency across the organisation. Efficiency and growth can be accelerated with automation. Innovative automated AI features include data capture, releasing time consuming manual data input, data verification at source ensures accuracy and prevents fraud, and real-time reporting against customised KPI for better visibility and cash flow forecasting. These are just a few of the features that facilitate growth and efficiency with additional costs.
As a CFO, are you asking your team to use their ERP for P2P automation? If yes, try asking these questions? You might be surprised at the answers.
- Does the finance system work in the way you want?
- Can you configure it without outsourced consultancy?
- Is it agile enough to keep up with business changes?
- Does it give you real-time reporting?
- Do you have the visibility needed without exporting data?
- Does the built-in automation enable a touchless process?
Using your ERP system as your only Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) automation solution might seem convenient and a cost saving, but in practice, it will limit your team’s efficiency, flexibility, and control over the end-to-end procurement process. Here are some of the reasons why.
Limited Flexibility & Customisation
Most ERP systems offer basic procurement and invoice modules, but they are rarely tailored for the complex workflows and approvals needed in real-world procurement. Workarounds and manual interventions are often needed, resulting in inconsistencies, inefficiencies, and poor user adoption.
Frustrating User Experience
ERP systems are built for record-keeping and reporting, not for modern, intuitive procurement workflows. Clunky interfaces that are difficult for the wider business to use, causing frustration and users looking for a way around the system.
Manual Workarounds Are Common
Without intelligent features like automated invoice capture, exception handling, and matching logic users have to manually enter data, chase goods receipted and purchase request and invoice approvals. A large amount of time is spent chasing information or fixing mismatches between POs, invoices and goods received, slowing down the payment process, which in turn has a detrimental effect on supplier relationships.
Missing Best-in-Class Features
ERPs typically don’t offer out of the box features such as AI-powered invoice capture, 3-way matching, advanced analytics and spend dashboards or supplier self-service portals and custom development often needs to be outsourced and therefore expensive and slow.
Source of Truth
While your ERP is crucial for posting and paying invoices, it doesn’t give you the workflow management, exception handling, or real-time budget control. Think of your ERP as the source of truth, which records all business activity. Your P2P solution is the engine for engagement and automation. Fully integrated P2P solutions and ERP systems are imperative for this to work.
Supplier Management Is Often Lacking
ERP systems tend to focus on internal processes, with limited functionality for activities such as managing supplier onboarding and compliance or tracking performance. There are usually no system features for automating communications such as purchase order issuances, invoice status, invoice rejections, payment dates etc within an ERP.
Scaling Is a Challenge
As your organisation grows or becomes more complex (multi-entity, multi-country, multiple approval layers), ERPs often struggle to scale workflows flexibly.
So what is the Solution?
Use your ERP as the core financial engine, but integrate a best-in-class P2P automation solution for the operational layer. This will give your team:
- Faster invoice and PO processing
- Better visibility and control over spend
- Enhanced compliance and auditability
- Improved supplier engagement
- Significant cost and time savings
Your ERP records what happened. Your P2P automation ensures it happens the right way with your business rules embedded in a way that you remain in control.
If you'd like to see how our P2P solution integrates seamlessly and transforms invoice processing and procurement, get in touch with our Listening team for more information. We integrate with ALL ERPs to make your P2P processes efficient and scalable with full visibility every step of the way.
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