{"id":3084,"date":"2017-08-01T17:06:16","date_gmt":"2017-08-01T17:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peeriosity.com\/shared-services\/articles\/?p=3084"},"modified":"2022-09-06T21:51:54","modified_gmt":"2022-09-06T21:51:54","slug":"enhancing-the-purchase-to-pay-p2p-user-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peeriosity.com\/shared-services\/articles\/2017\/08\/enhancing-the-purchase-to-pay-p2p-user-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Enhancing the Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) User Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

At major corporations across the globe, the Purchase-to-Pay<\/a> process can be very complex; involving thousands of suppliers and employees who represent many different departments within the company.\u00a0 While the shift to an end-to-end process design has helped to break down the company silos, standardize operations, and streamline the overall process, ensuring that the \u201ccustomers\u201d (suppliers, employees, etc.) of this critical process area can easily have their needs met on a consistent and comprehensive basis needs to be a high priority for any Purchase-to-Pay organization.\u00a0 Utilizing powerful tools, such as supplier and employee portals, call centers and help desks, and even robotic process automation and artificial intelligence, can greatly enhance the user experience when the proper focus and resources are applied to this important aspect of Purchase-to-Pay.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Company Experience<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Recently a major global company with more than $50 billion in annual revenue and operations in more than 50 countries was featured on a recent Peeriosity PeercastTM<\/sup> in which they shared their experiences in enhancing the Purchase-to-Pay user experience at their company.\u00a0 Their Purchase-to-Pay organization consists of Procurement (not strategic sourcing) and Payments, with major service centers in an Eastern European country (Europe), the Philippines (Asia\/IMEA), and Central America (Americas).\u00a0 They utilize two primary outsourcing providers.<\/span><\/p>\n

With no global standard P2P self-service portal and undersubscribed supplier portals in the regions, the majority of customer inquiries were coming into the call centers at the rate of approximately 30,000 per month.\u00a0 Referred to as \u201cincidents\u201d, they came in as both phone calls and e-mails, with 80% being invoice inquiries that the outsourcing provider could typically resolve.\u00a0 The remaining 20% of the incidents were escalated to the company\u2019s P2P organization for resolution, which was time-consuming for the generator of the inquiry and those responsible for resolving the issues.\u00a0 As described by the feature company presenter, \u201cThere\u2019s a cost for raising each incident.\u00a0 Many of the inquiries were from internal customers. Many were simple questions, such as \u2018Have you received my invoice?\u2019 and \u2018When will it be paid? \u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

To address this heavy influx of inquiries from both suppliers and employees, the company developed an internally focused self-service portal, with what they described as a \u201cKiller App\u201d to handle invoice and payment inquiries, as well as initiatives to improve the supplier portal and streamline call center inquiries.\u00a0 Some of the steps they took to improve the supplier portal include the following:<\/span><\/p>\n