A mid-sized company recently told me that most of the application software they had evaluated lately did not make it easy for end-users to “get at the data,” much less write their own reports!

This is a common complaint.

Fortunately, there is renewed focus on new Business Intelligence (BI) Tools in the marketplace, and how they can be integrated with ERP, P2P, Budgets, etc.

A software platform needs to first provide meaningful standard reports and inquiries. As it relates to P2P, this means making reports available that help Buyers analyze Dollar Commitments, evaluate price trends, check on open order status, etc.

But that’s not enough. End-users are forever being asked by management for special one-time analysis of Purchases, Payments, etc. A tool is needed to perform these important analyses.

Providing a Data Dictionary is not enough. It must be easy to manipulate data and perform calculations that accurately portray spend data within a system. An enhanced capability would allow data residing in other systems to be incorporated in the analysis. This might include data from Accounting, Budgeting, ERP, etc.

At the end of the day, BI needs to provide Actionable Business Intelligence. This means the data is timely, meaningful, and accurate … not just accounting-oriented stale data from 6 weeks after Month- or Quarter-end.

Ultimately, Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) must be determined and actual data compared to Best Practice Benchmarks. This will be the next phase of BI in the P2P world.

Recently, our “Carrot and the Stick” series was featured as a topic of discussion on Debbie Wilson, Research Director for Gartner Inc.’s blog (View Debbie’s post Not the Carrot, the Stick!) — as a follow-up, we would like to comment:

“We have customers and prospects that say things like, ‘We can’t dictate to our end users.’ The reason vary from ‘our people are very entrepreneurial’ to ‘we can’t make Partners do anything they don’t want to do!’

I do get your point that avoiding the Expense Reporting system is not an option in almost every company I know, so why should eProcurement be any different?

Here’s the difference…First, the CFO and his/her staff have tons of clout in every company. If the CFO wants something, it will be done. Unfortunately we run into many CFO’s who a) don’t have the Procurement organization reporting to them and/or b) don’t understand the complexities of Procurement and wish to stay ‘above the fray.’

Why is this the case? After all, the eProcurement system controls far more expense and capital dollars than the Expense Management system in most companies.

When CFO’s are truly committed to eProcurement and Procure-to-Pay systems, they pay tremendous dividends…and it all falls right to the bottom line.

Enlightened CFO’s understand this and can use the carrot or the stick, depending on their style, to achieve the same result.

If the CFO’s not committed, and the eProcurement Executive Sponsor lacks clout, the carrot may be the only viable option available.”

Everyone agrees that in order to increase ROI from a P2P implementation, suppliers must be on-boarded quickly and efficiently. What does this mean and how is it done?

First, on-boarding means allowing the Buying company to place orders electronically, access electronic supplier catalogs, and receive invoices electronically.

It should be noted that connecting to a Global Network with thousands of suppliers does not necessarily mean you have “on-boarded” your suppliers. If you do happen to find your suppliers on a Global Network, it may just mean they can receive an emailed PO from a buyer.

Even if your software provider offers a supplier network, expect to do some heavy lifting to get your suppliers, your catalogs, the suppliers invoice preferences (paper or electronic), and payment preferences set-up in your P2P system — either you or your software suppliers will need to do this.

Supplier networks are not all they’re cracked up to be. As one company recently put it, “If you’re going to connect with a Global Procurement Network, expect to do a lot of work yourself.”