Dmitri Krasik, Senior Sales Exec (UK&I) Medius (personal photo)
On April 27 Spend Matters will be joined by Medius, a spend management solutions provider and specialist in AP automation, to talk about how organizations can drive growth through best-in-class process efficiency between procurement and AP, leading to cost-savings opportunities and greater financial control (register here).
A specific focus of the discussion will be on the financial control theme, recognizing that when it comes to spend management process improvements, whether from technology implementation or behavioral change, it is more often than not the last step in the process that gets left out: AP. Whether digitizing or automating processes, it’s important to do that for the whole process, not just part of it if we want to see comprehensive results. So this webinar aims to explain the imperative of making Accounts Payable part of your process improvement process, and why AP is such a valuable partner to procurement, and vice versa.
While AP is often seen as the end of the sourcing process line — paying invoices, processing paperwork, doing the admin side to the negotiations and contracts procurement has put in place — there are many essential elements of the AP process that touch procurement. If we aren’t working efficiently with AP, we risk value leakage from all the hard work put in upstream, lost through the inefficiencies of invoice discrepancies with negotiated prices, lost or non-existent POs, mismatched invoices, and basic errors through duplication, or non-compliance — basically inaccuracy. Likewise, procurement is not just about selecting suppliers and negotiating terms, it’s about ensuring that your organization procures based on those terms and pays accordingly, which touches AP in so many ways. Suffice to say the two are mutually essential.
Our AP/procurement expert speakers
Speaking on this theme will be Dmitri Krasik, Senior Sales Executive (UK&I) at Medius, who specializes in advising businesses on achieving touchless processing in AP, P2P and sourcing. Posing questions to drive the discussion will be our own Global Head of Client Services, Jenny Draper, who has more than 20 years’ of international procurement experience.
“We are looking forward to this discussion,” says Dmitri, “because it will finally cement awareness that getting procurement and AP to work together is fundamental to making the most of negotiation and sourcing activities. While they are two very different departments, with different metrics of success, the success criteria is tied, and in fact AP and Procurement are natural allies, and I intend to demonstrate why.”
“Procurement works hard to find the best vendors and negotiate good terms. From there starts the ‘value leakage’ we mentioned earlier when cumbersome procurement processes and lack of user adoption leave people purchasing from non-preferred suppliers or to non-negotiated terms. AP also contributes to this by letting poor behavior slide (such as after-the-fact POs, lax receiving or wide price variances).
“In a best-practice process AP is the enforcement arm of procurement ensuring all supplier spend possible is joined to sourcing activities and procurement terms. On the other hand Procurement can guard AP from the nightmares of last-minute approvals chasing, inaccurate accruals and a large number of PPV and PQV exceptions. Procurement (together with strong technology) can ensure people are raising requisitions, easing cash forecasting, and by driving suppliers to invoice correctly smooth out variance management.”
What enables a lot of this is both the right process and reporting technology that systematically links sourcing, transactional procurement and AP, and provides visibility through highly usable apps for business, procurement and finance.
What you will learn
By joining this webinar you will hear how a partnership between AP and Procurement is critical in the aftermath of the pandemic, and if the two work together to become allies, quick wins and savings can achieved.
Dmitri will be sharing:
- What some best-in-class organizations are doing to align procurement and AP
- Why technology is important and specifically why it must align with procurement?
- How to conduct a self-analysis on where you are now in your AP automation process and
tips on how to get to your desired point on the AP tech journey - How to position the value of automated AP to your stakeholders/budget holders
You will come away with a clear understanding of how accounts payable and procurement are part of the same process and why they must work closely together to ensure efficiency, cost control and accuracy for the ultimate benefit of the entire organization. For anything you would like further clarification on, or if you have any burning issues you’d like to discuss, Dmitri and Jenny will be answering your questions at the end of this 45 minute session. Do think in advance about anything that you would like know more about and take this opportunity to ask the experts in this free-to-attend discussion.
April 27, 1400 – 1500 BST/CET
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