Over the last few years, s2p consultants have been more and more in demand from businesses of all types. As technology continues to advance, and move its way into practically every business on the planet, it is becoming clear that the way to accomplish the task of a successful source-to-pay strategy is to look for a professional to guide the way. The old ways of finding sources, ordering goods, and paying the bills are slowly fading away.
The Planning Strategy
The purpose of the s2p endeavor is to successfully discover and acquire the best possible sources that will fulfill the unique needs of the business. From obtaining sources, through the ordering phase, and finally, to the paying phase, the source-to-pay process can be looked over, scrutinized, and adjusted in a way that will benefit the business to the fullest capacity.
Although each business is different and will have to do things in a unique way, the core steps of the process will be the same with virtually any business.
- Plan
- Source
- Buy
- Pay
It is in the planning phase that the business owner and the consultant can get a good look at how the current procurement process is working…if one is already established…or layout all of the options in a convenient way that everybody can easily see the available paths for the strategy to take.
Discovering Money Pits
A seasoned consultant will be able to look at the plan and the details in the steps that you are going to take throughout your process. If you already have a process in place, the consultant can look over the entire process and pinpoint places where you could potentially be losing money. For example, there have been companies that discovered they were paying twice for the same thing without even knowing it because of the way that their procurement process was set up. Oversights like these can be costly, and sometimes it takes a trained eye to see where the problems are and provide appropriate solutions to the problems.
Acquiring Sources
One of the greatest challenges for many companies is finding the types of sources that are consistent, reliable, and cost-effective. An expert in the sourcing industry will be able to use intelligent software that is built specifically for procurement strategies to find the absolute best matches for whatever the company’s needs are.
Finding and setting up sources can be a frustrating task, but a consultant will be able to show you how to find exactly what you are looking for, then match up your results with other results and give you the best options out of the best finds.
You can discover sources that would be the most likely to help your business prosper. You can then acquire these sources and get them into a contract so that they stick around. All of this can be done without using an excess amount of energy and resources.
Imagine taking your existing source-to-pay or procure-to-pay procedure and switching things around to where instead of it being a burden, it turns into an asset that actually makes money.
Conclusion
A specialized team of source-to-pay consultants can bring out the best of what your business already has going on. In many cases, businesses find that they actually get more money back from hiring a consultant than they do when they pay for one. From discovering hidden losses to building a foundation of consistent, solid vendors and other sources you can’t help but imagine how much money you could be losing on your current solution.
