Purchase to Pay

We work with many purchase to pay solution providers and they’re quite a mixed bunch when it comes to practicing what they preach. I won’t name and shame. One business, very well-known and respected that advocates prompt payment is the worst payer of its own suppliers I have ever come across. Another, offering a very slick P2P solution has the least impressive P2P processes themselves.

This kind of corporate hypocrisy (a bit harsh, I know) is not uncommon but I don't think it makes a solution provider a bad company just because they don’t always take their own medicine. What is impressive however is a company – perhaps not best known as a P2P solution provider – that has the best reference site you could wish for – themselves.

Today, another post from Richard Manson from CloudTrade The limited use of SMEs by local government has for many years been flagged as a problem. There are 4.8m SMEs in the UK, making up around 50% of the private sector with an annual turnover of £3 trillion. Yet SMEs are often discouraged from public sector deals due to the bureaucracy that comes with working with them and the associated costs which can price SMEs out of this market space. In a bid to increase the use of SMEs, UK government and the European parliament have introduced initiatives to make it easier for SMEs to do business with the public sector. Yet the success of these has been limited. Initiatives have mainly focused on the use of technology and frameworks to reduce the barriers SMEs face in doing business in the public sector. Although a step in the right direction, the myriad of frameworks and poor adoption rates within government has hindered success.