Due to poor user adoption of the Requisitioning and Purchasing modules within their existing Lawson™ AP system, a Global 2000 media company was hamstrung by manual approval and ordering processes that caused late payments and a glut of "after-the-fact" PO’s. They were also looking for a supplier portal to reduce their AP workload and streamline their invoice processing. The organization needed a solution that could deliver ease-of-use for their requisitioners, ensure proper approval routing for expenses, and expedite invoice management to eliminate late payments.

By deploying PNet Software, the company now manages expenses and has enhanced spend visibility across all of their indirect categories including IT, Customer Care, Professional Services, Marketing, Business Services, Programming, and Broadcast Operations. Following a 13-week, end-to-end implementation, all PO and Non-PO invoices are now processed in the PNet ePayables suite. Approved invoices are then sent electronically to their Lawson™ AP system where payment is made.

Over 6,000 requisitioners put more than $600 million in spend through the PNet solution last year alone. Users report that they love the PNet Software experience and management couldn’t be more pleased with the spend visibility, process efficiencies, and hard-dollar savings secured.

Before implementing PNet ePayables, ExpressJet Holdings, Inc.’s Accounts Payable operations were a combination of manual and semi-automated processes. Although ExpressJet used Lawson™ Financial Software for some categories of spend, the Controller found that the system was not the right fit for certain types of expenses — namely services, aircraft maintenance, facilities, and operating costs. They needed to streamline

the invoice approval process in these categories and find a solution that would make it easier to "on-board" their key suppliers.

ExpressJet was being spun off from Continental Airlines and, as a result, they needed to select a new ERP solution and move off a Continental Airlines "home-grown" Supplier Invoice Portal. ExpressJet found that the PNet ePayables suite offered an easy-to-use supplier portal that could also manage "one-off" spending items and services that other solutions had difficulty handling.

The PNet ePayables suite now allows employees at each of their 75+ airport facilities to enter Non-PO Invoices into the PNet Invoicing Portal. Invoices are then routed for GL coding, approval, and then approved vouchers are exported into their back-end Lawson™ Financial Software for posting and payment.

PNet ePayables proved to be very scalable, expanding easily to meet the needs of their growing business. PNet ePayables is now available at approximately 75 sites (airport locations, maintenance facilities, and warehouses), up from 45 when ExpressJet initially implemented PNet Software.

When a Fortune 500 retailer kicked off their Procure-to-Pay automation project, they were looking for solutions that could offer dynamic early payment discount functionality to help them make better use of working capital and achieve a faster ROI for their software investment.

PNet’s Early Payment Discount Management™ (EPDM™) module provides customers with access to the working capital that is traditionally tied up in manual, paper-based processes. By automating the invoice receipt to approval process, PNet ePayables supports the collaborative relationship between buyers and sellers – enabling buyers to receive and approve invoices more efficiently and allowing suppliers visibility into the process and access to low-cost financing options like discounting.

EPDM™ provides additional flexibility to vendors via PNet’s Supplier Invoice Portal (SIP). Here key suppliers can view the invoices that are available for trade and elect to receive early payment in exchange for a trade discount. Often 2%-4% discounts are available if your organization can receive, approve, and process an invoice for payment in under 10 days. This Fortune 500 retailer understood they needed fully automated Procurement and Payables processes in place in order to reap the sizable benefits of early payment discounts.

U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB), with $247 billion in assets, is the parent company of U.S. Bank, the 6th largest commercial bank in the United States. The company operates 2,542 banking offices and 4,895 ATMs and provides a comprehensive line of banking, brokerage, insurance, investment, mortgage, trust and payment services products to consumers, businesses, and institutions.

It’s a bank’s job to help customers save their money. So, it only makes sense that a Strategic Sourcing department at a bank should have particular expertise. U.S. Bancorp was concerned with purchase costs due to the lack of consistent controls on their purchasing processes.

They replaced an assortment of

disconnected existing applications with PNet Software for Requisitioning, Purchasing and Inventory Control. Now, over 7,000 employees requisition contracted items like office supplies, print, software, and warehoused items via both Direct Catalog Connection ("punch-out") and internally managed catalog content within the PNet solution.

By using PNet Software, U.S. Bank has enabled 100% direct order capabilities of contracted items in the system, which means no need for centralized buyer resources; but rather a focus on getting appropriate contracted items in front of users at more than 2,500 locations. Orders are processed real time to the company's approved suppliers reducing cycle time and improving delivery of services in general through automated order feeds (EDI, CXML, email) to the company's vendors. With their PNet implementation, U.S. Bank realized better than 90% compliance in its office supply ordering process.

Another PNet customer, a Global 2000 financial services company with $7.8 billion in assets, 183 branches, and 2,200 employees, had four disparate purchasing processes and was looking for a solution that could centralize the function within a single Procure-to-Pay application.

The bank discovered that by implementing PNet eProcurement and ePayables Software,

they could dramatically reduce spending through demand management and ensure that their contracted terms were being applied enterprise-wide.

In fact, when the organization deployed PNet Software for their office supply purchases, their Strategic Sourcing Department was able to reduce the bank’s spend in this category by close to 50% in less than one year. They also achieved a 27% reduction in overall spend without re-negotiating the price of a single item – all savings were the result of leveraging existing contracts and using PNet Software to control the buying process. Following their initial success with office supplies, the bank identified more than 10 other categories of spending that have been managed through PNet Software to provide better service and lower costs and overhead.

One PNet customer, a $4-billion-dollar conglomerate operating in the corporate relocation, mortgage, and settlement industries, wanted better value from their company’s enterprise-wide Procure-to-Pay software solution without sacrificing functionality. After evaluating the market, they selected robust and flexible PNet Software to replace their existing Ariba system for Requisitioning, Purchasing, and Invoice Matching.

Within six weeks, PurchasingNet was able to install PNet Software that seamlessly replaced - and in many cases enhanced - the functionality previously provided by Ariba. The company now uses the PNet solution to manage numerous categories of spend including services, offices supplies, and computer equipment. And, through a PNet Financial Connector, they are able to interface the approved vouchers to their PeopleSoft Financial System. Since the organization chose the PNet Enterprise Out-Hosted deployment option, they were even able to minimize the IT resource involvement in their project.

Following a rapid deployment, PNet Software delivered enhanced spend visibility and streamlined business processes at a speed-to-ROI that Ariba simply couldn't touch.

Let’s face it, regardless of your organization’s size and technical sophistication, paper continues to be a part of the invoice management process. Best-in-class companies realize that the ability to handle both electronic and paper-based invoices is critical to drive supplier adoption and increase ROI within their Procure-to-Pay automation projects.

One PNet Software customer, a Fortune 1000 financial services firm, recently surpassed NYSE Euronext as the world's largest stock exchange. Despite their success and acquisitive growth, the organization was riddled by a manual, paper-based AP process that was inefficient and did not give them the enterprise-wide spend visibility they required.

As part of a phased overall Procure-to-Pay implementation, the financial services firm wanted a solution that offered invoice imaging capability. They had relied upon document imaging services in other areas of their business and knew this step would increase process efficiencies, improve the accuracy of their accruals, and streamline document retrieval and archiving. The company chose to implement PNet Software, including the PNet Invoice Imaging module in their ePayables suite.

According to the Aberdeen Group, paper-based invoicing still averages 80% of all invoice transactions for most companies - the opportunity for tremendous hard-dollar savings, process efficiency gains, and return-on-investment through automation is significant.

BankUnited Financial Corp., the largest banking institution in Florida with $14.3 billion in assets, needed a solution to automate their manual Procure-to-Pay process and they wanted to monitor the project’s progress - and the overall performance of their business - using a dashboard of Key Performance Indicators (KPI's). By selecting PNet Software, BankUnited identified a best-of-breed P2P solution that was equipped with a graphical, highly configurable, real-time reporting tool, the PNet KPI Dashboard & Best Practice KPI Library.

With more than 1,500 employees,
serving customers in 13 Florida counties through more than 80 branches,

BankUnited needed enterprise-wide visibility to spending trends. During a phased 12-week implementation, they deployed the PNet eProcurement and ePayables suite for Requisitioning, Purchasing, and Invoice Matching, as well as the PNet Financial Management suite for the KPI Dashboard & Best Practice KPI Library.

Now, BankUnited’s executives can measure and track trends using their unique key business metrics and make real-time adjustments to their business processes as needed. And, as the KPI Dashboard is completely configurable, each job function at the organization can have a tailored view of the business. Executives can either select one of the 50 pre-built KPI’s in the Best Practice Library and customize it to meet their requirements, or develop new KPI’s which look at PNet data or data from other sources within their company.

Switch and Data, a leading provider of carrier-neutral collocation, internet exchange, and interconnection services had significant "pain" around their Procurement and Accounts Payable operations. Their existing system was a combination of manual and clunky, semi-automated processes. And, as the business was growing and going public, their Price Waterhouse auditors were pressing for tighter control measures — recommending that they implement a solution that could also help them streamline their Purchasing and Invoice Matching processes, and get more spend under management.

They needed a best-of-breed, Procure-to-Pay software solution that was modular and had proven integration with their ERP, Great Plains (now Microsoft Dynamics). Since they planned to use the system to manage the bulk of the IT spending for their business, they looked for a provider that had plenty of previous experience managing this type of spend.

Switch and Data selected the PNet eProcurement suite for Requisitioning, Purchasing, Centralized Receiving, and Direct Catalog Connection ("punch-out") to key vendors; the ePayables Suite for Invoice Matching, and the Financial Management Suite for a connector to their Accounts Payable systems in Great Plains (Microsoft Dynamics).

As soon as Switch and Data went live with PNet Software, they experienced rapid user adoption, increasing their spend under management by approximately 65% within 3 months.

About a year after their initial implementation, Switch and Data elected to have the Professional Services Team from PurchasingNet come back on-site to perform a PNet Optimization Study. The goal was to identify areas of opportunity to better utilize PNet Software to achieve greater business control, visibility, and efficiency. At the onset of the project, Switch and Data identified about 20 issues they wanted to investigate further and learn best practices regarding. PurchasingNet Professional Services Consultants were able to address 90% of their issues - streamlining their business processes, maximizing their use of the PNet solution, and saving them money — without any additional software expenditures.

Friendship, a public charter school system operating 5 campuses in the Washington, D.C. area, was challenged by a manual, paper-based request process that resulted in lost or delayed requisitions. They were looking for an easy-to-use solution that would have rapid end-user adoption so select categories of spend, like office supplies, books, and IT equipment, could be brought under management quickly.

Friendship implemented PNet eProcurement to automate this process so all requests could be tracked from creation through approval and purchase to

receipt. The resulting invoices are processed through the PNet ePayables suite and exported into Friendship’s Great Plains (now Microsoft Dynamics) financial system for payment.

Through PNet eProcurement’s Direct Catalog Connection ("punch-out"), Friendship has been able to maximize their relationships with key suppliers. These online shopping environments only display the items available for purchase at Friendship’s contracted rates. The shopping experience is simple and intuitive for their users, the demand management control has reduced their costs by roughly 36%, and "maverick" or off-contract spending has been nearly eliminated.