Insights

29 Apr

Posted at 06:06h in Electronic Invoicing, News by
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The world of commerce is all about the numbers. Top line, bottom line, FTEs, KPIs and ROI but, to borrow and paraphrase the words of the great Albert Einstein - not everything that counts can be counted. Royal WeddingIn London today - the streets are filled with people from all over the world - from the United States, from Germany, Australia and New Zealand, Canada and Brazil as well as all corners of the British Isles - all coming together to celebrate the wedding of a young couple. It's an unparalleled media event - The Mall is swarming with news readers, surrounded by revelers, somehow maintaining a degree of dignity as they report to the folks back home the party atmosphere. Good Morning America broadcast live from London. The feel good factor is palpable. Even a miserable old git like me that hand on heart believes the monarchy to be an anachronism that's unlikely to survive long enough to see Charles on the throne never mind William, is prepared to put his cynicism to one side to celebrate a great day. We may be in the middle of a recession but even that can't dampen the enthusiasm of the crowds. And after the excitement settles down it will be back to the numbers. The impact on the British economy of having four public holidays in two weeks. The money spent on security and the cost of clearing up.

28 Apr

Posted at 17:23h in News, Purchase to Pay by
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Enterprise purchase-to-pay specialist Palette has extended its partnership with ReadSoft, a world leader in document process automation, to provide advanced, closely-integrated solutions to customers internationally. The partnership will integrate PaletteArena, a complete purchase-to-payment suite, with ReadSoft’s advanced document capture solutions.  This will enable users to achieve rapid, significant cost savings and efficiency gains by automating their supplier invoice and sales order processing, from scanning through to approval and archiving.

25 Apr

Posted at 04:58h in Electronic Invoicing, P2P Europe, Purchase to Pay by
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Those following developments on electronic invoicing will be very familiar with the news from earlier this year that the rules in Germany are about to be relaxed. From 1st July 2011 the technical requirements imposed on the use of electronic invoices in Germany will be abandoned. Great! But so what! What's so important about Germany? Let me explain why it's important.

22 Apr

Posted at 06:53h in Vendor Risk Management by
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In the last 12 months or so there has been a number of natural events that have had unpredicted consequences to business. There was the Volcano that grounded Europe and created significant disruption to some global supply chains.  There was (and still is) unrest in northern Africa that made many business question the safety of their assumptions when selecting locations for low cost country outsourced operations and there was the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan with it enormous human cost and the lingering consequences to any business reliant on Japanese industry. Procurement and sourcing organizations play a vital role in helping to mitigate and manage the risks inherent in operating in a fragile global economy. Risk management is regrettably under valued sometimes but these events should have brought into crisp focus the necessity of ensuring that backup strategies are in places - not just for the routing, mundane and predictable events but also for the unthinkable. And this is why it's so shocking to have seen the massive disruption cause by Amazon cloud crash this week.

14 Apr

Posted at 01:48h in Financial Supply Chain Management by
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Receivables Exchange announced this week that they and Coupa - the cloud based e-procurement player - have combined forces to offer small and medium enterprises greater access to working capital through the Exchange's innovative cash flow solution. The Receivables Exchange allows suppliers to auction their receivables invoices to gain on average 98-99% of their value - according to the Exchange - and receive full value in as little as 2 days.

12 Apr

Posted at 08:43h in Electronic Invoicing, Financial Supply Chain Management, Purchase to Pay, Social Media by
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Charles Dominick - nextlevelpurchasing.com - recently published his top twenty online resources for procurement pros. It's an interesting list, ordered by Alexa ranking (notoriously unreliable but as a relative rank guide, there or there abouts). There's the obvious resources that you'd expect to be well ranked such as Supply Chain Management Review and Supply Management and there's no surprise to see Spend Matters and Peter Smith's  Spend Matters UK up there with Procurement Leaders. But what I found particularly interesting is the specialist niche resources that are exerting an influence.

07 Apr

Posted at 14:33h in Purchase to Pay, Purchase to Pay Process by
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This is the second part of a two piece article on the touch points between purchasing and finance. You can read part 1 here

Purchase to pay plumbing manual – part 2

Purchasing InsightKnowing your end of the purchase to pay process is all well and good but, if you are at the purchasing end for example, which part of the payment end do you need to be joined up to? Here’s a few more of the purchase to pay touch points that should help get the P2P plumbing in place.