Source-to-Pay vs. Procure-to-Pay: Which is the better procurement process?

So, you are planning to Digitalize your procurement process. The first step to this is deciding whether to invest in a Source-to-Pay or a Procure-to-Pay platform. To make a decision you need to understand the functions and limitations of both.

Source to Pay

is an end-to-end process that aggregates everything from design to sourcing to purchasing to quality.

Procure to Pay

is a process, on the other hand, focuses primarily only on invoice processing and payments. It does not cater to several critical steps of procurement, unlike its counterpart. Choosing the right Source-to-Pay suite such as Zumen will put you several years ahead on your transformation journey. Register below and let us help you.

An efficient Source to Pay suite delivers multiple times in ROI compared to a simple Procure to Pay solution. Here are other advantages of Source to Pay over Procure to Pay:

No more Working in SIlos

Integrating a Source-to-Pay platform improves the collaboration multi fold and helps you gain increased visibility across all processes and touch points in your complete procurement process. It gives you detailed insights at every step of your procurement process, from negotiations and raw material price updates to compliance’s and contracts under a single dashboard. You can bid farewell to tedious spreadsheets and thousands of emails and pave way for digital transformation.

Faster Time to Market

In today’s competitive times, bringing a product to the market faster is equally important as achieving the right cost and quality. A Source to Pay suite automates all the workflows involved in the procurement process, eliminating all the manual lead time spent on data gathering, communicating, and reporting. The fully digital platform also saves you valuable time otherwise spent catering to repetitive emails and trivial phone calls. This is a critical advantage of the Source to Pay platform that a simple Procure to Pay for handling invoices cannot deliver.

Strategic Sourcing

Strategic Sourcing is the key factor that differentiates the Source-to-Pay platform from the rest. Incorporating a Strategic sourcing process helps organizations identify, analyze and align their spending with the business goals. Source to Pay allows you to identify new suppliers to support you in your agile strategy for uncertain times. Implementing a Source to Pay platform that focuses on sourcing helps you optimize your product cost and Total Cost of Ownership for your assets.

Product Cost

A Source to Pay platform empowers you in streamlining your online quotation and negotiation process. The highly collaborative platform also ensures you have more time to negotiate and optimize every part cost. (Think of the time spent today on every status update and project report freed up!). Further, fully digitized cost cards with real-time commodity and shipping rates also allow you to recover the advantages of external cost impacts without any manual efforts. So, a complete Source to Pay suite with automated invoice processing and payment option delivers better product cost than one with just invoice processing.

Part Quality

The quality of every product is a collective of every single component that it is made of, not to mention the skill of putting it together. Organizations purchase thousands of parts every day to keep their production line running. Maintaining the quality of every piece of every part becomes arduous. A Source to Pay platform makes it easier to keep track of quality across all these parts with minimal manual efforts. The seamless integration of supplier inspection reports, process control documents, and incoming quality inspection reports in a single system ensures the success of quality management.

Supplier Relationship Management

Purchasing for Production is a repetitive process based on a robust sourcing strategy. A structured Source-to-Pay platform not only helps you optimize your sourcing but also fosters supplier relationships. Mature Source to Pay platforms promotes healthy and sustainable vendor relationships through seamless collaboration. The real-time supplier updates and order tracking gives no room for any surprises and keeps you informed at every step of the procurement process. Happy suppliers lead to proactive supply chain management.

 

While Procure-to-Pay is an efficient model, it is limited in functionality. The platform focuses only on certain aspects of procurement and cannot evaluate the efficiency of the overall procurement process. A Source-to-Pay model like Zumen, on the other hand, checks all the boxes in your checklist. It is built to optimize and automate every part of your procurement cycle starting with the design. Let us help you build a resilient procurement process. Register and schedule a free demo.