Is Your Source to Settle Process Leaving You Unsettled?

Let Collaborative Solutions help you right size a spend management solution for your organization. Spend management is often discussed as a great target for improving organizational efficiencies and generating cost savings. Businesses often hear complaints internally about the time it takes for a requisition to be fulfilled, an expense to be reimbursed, or a vendor to get paid. When the time comes to make the first move, however, finding the right place to start can be overwhelming. Spend management, also referred to as the “source to settle” process, involves a number of activities, including spend analysis, sourcing and procurement, receiving, payment settlement, and management of payables and GL accounts. Many organizations wonder how they can improve this area with low-impact, high-return changes so they see tangible benefits right away.

Organizations can realize tangible benefits in spend management by focusing on these two areas: business process improvement and technology enablement.

Business Process Improvement

Often times the business processes that support sourcing and procurement are highly inefficient and do not reflect the logical relationships that exist from the requisition step to the payment step (and each step between). These processes may reflect the way an organization has “always done it” versus how most world-class organizations adapt their spend management processes to reflect best practices.

Technology Enablement

New technology solutions, such as procurement or expense management software, are often viewed as instant fixes to spend management problems. Applying new technology to old business processes, however, can render little benefit, if any. New technology must be aligned with an organizational effort to revise spend management policies and business processes. Technology must enable the organization’s desired policies and procedures. When this does not happen, the technology often is counterproductive and further complicates the business process.

Collaborative Solutions has a proven track record of helping organizations review and calibrate their spend management processes to gain greater efficiencies. We can help organizations get both “quick wins” and develop a long-term spend management strategy. Our services include a deep-dive analysis of the spend management business processes and procedures currently in place to find areas where adjustments can yield immediate benefits. Basic steps such as requestor-spend thresholds and approvals, supplier consolidation and reduction, vendor-negotiated contract pricing, and prompt payment discounts can provide new efficiencies. We further help clients evaluate and implement technology solutions that can drive process efficiencies; tighter integration and coordination with suppliers, and greater individual accountability in spend management. Solutions such as Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Supplier Relationship Management and PeopleSoft Expenses and Workday’s Worker Spend Management applications provide rich functionality and best practices that enable organizations to realize operational benefits and measured improvements in the spend management function.

Spend Management–another way Collaborative Solutions provides IT powered by IQ.

For more information about how Collaborative Solutions can help your organization reduce costs and maximize value in the spend management area, contact us at inquiries@collaborativesolutions.com.