Ariett Blog Purchasing and Accounts Payable Reunite for Smarter Spend Management

For too long, too many purchasing and accounts payable departments have grown apart - working independently to make important supplier, contract and procurement decisions. This Valentine's Day, it's time to rekindle the magic between these departments by focusing on their common goal of smarter spend and payment management. To achieve this goal, organizations require the right solutions to collaborate, pre-approve spending, reduce costs and gain visibility. Only then can these departments retie the knot!Already, cloud financial management solutions like Sage Intacct have delivered the real-time business and operational metrics to your accounting team. Across entities, your accounting team can use Sage Intacct to quickly view monthly recurring revenue or customer acquisition cost (for example). Now, all your employees and managers outside of accounting need is visibility to spending, so they can collaborate more on purchasing and contract decisions.Bridging the Divide Between Accounts Payable & ProcurementSurprisingly, 33% of organizations reported in a PayStream Advisors survey of over 200 back-office professionals that their accounts payable and purchasing systems were still totally separate ("2016 P2P for Indirect Spend Report," 4). Imagine that your procurement team has just spent a few weeks renegotiating a vendor contract with new pricing. Then, they file away the contract. When a department manager receives an invoice from that same vendor, alas, the manager has no way to view the invoice against the contract budget.Why is it so important that we bring together these two processes? The VP of Finance and CAO of Oryx Midstream Services elaborates on the benefits of having a unified cloud purchase to payment platform, "It keeps all departments accountable... We can make sure that our vendors have the latest version of the PO, so that it can be matched against the invoice when it comes in. It gives our CFO and CEO a lot of comfort knowing that we are tracking POs on a regular basis."Gaining a Holistic View of SpendingAn Integrated cloud purchase to payment solution that extends your accounting software brings visibility to spending full circle. With an end-to-end solution, the department manager can view the invoice applied against the contract budget during approval. In addition, if the invoice is associated with a purchase order, the manager can drill back to the associated PO receipt, PO and requisition. Only an integrated procurement, invoice automation and payment processing platform can deliver this kind of holistic view of spending.Collaborating Across Departments to Reach New HeightsWith an integrated system and the support of upper-level management, your organization can bring procurement and accounts payable together to reach new heights. Suddenly, you'll see a new level of collaboration across departments and devices. This has certainly proven to be true for Oryx Midstream Services: "More than half of our employees are primarily in the field and managers want to make sure that the field guys have signed off on the service before they approve it. This can be hard to do when you have several locations, so Ariett's mobility makes this much easier. A few of our managers approve everything out of the office."Pre-Approving Purchases to Control CostsA unified requisition to PO to invoice process also helps organizations to take control over spending before it actually occurs. For instance, the CFO can view large IT requisition requests against the budget and decide to buy now or buy later in another budget period. Managers can check on the budget for an internal project with multiple vendors, such as a build-out, to help them make better spending decisions. Reducing Costs and Saving TimeBy implementing an automated AP and procurement solution, you also eliminate re-keying of data between disparate systems. Paperless requisition, PO, invoice and payment processing and approval save your team time - and there's no more heartache over lost invoices or data inaccuracies!If your AP and procurement departments are ready to get together to make smarter spending decisions for your organization, please request a demo of Ariett here.Tags: eProcurementMobileVendor Contracts