P2P – End-to-end process

The ultimate goal for the Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) process is to seamlessly send purchase orders to suppliers, and to receive and process invoice data without any human intervention. Most customers using SAP seek an end-to-end process with high degree of automation.

Today’s paper-based process, containing the cumbersome steps of containing scanning, interpretation, validation, enrichment and approval is clearly outdated. The cost for processing a single incoming invoice is remarkably high. Tasks like scanning and adjusting interpreted invoice data is definitely not value-adding in any sense. And it’s even worse getting incorrect invoices out of the system, invoices that shouldn’t have entered the system in the first place. We all know too well, the annoying process of having to deal with credit invoices.

A fully functional end-to-end process should include:

• that all invoices are received electronically, instead of in paper format or as PDF-attachments
• that SAP only receives legitimate invoices (incorrect bounces back)
• that invoices contains all necessary information for seamless processing in SAP, including ERP-specific settings, VAT-codes, organizational data etc.
• that SAP automatically, without human intervention, process matching (against PO), booking, accounting and archiving

A complete end-to-end e-Invoice process goes way beyond receiving simple PDF-files or raw interpreted data. An automated process requires “SAP-ready” data quality!

Get Quality – Not Crap!

All of the requirements above can be realized today. Your invoice management process can be highly electrified. With a robust and well-proven solution will you be able to receive High-quality, SAP-ready invoice data for seamless processing in your SAP-system.

The solution capable of to deliver on this high expectations is called “Pagero Online”. Pagero Online is a safe, cloud-based service for e-invoice data processing. Traditional e-invoice management brokers (VAN’s) simply pass on invoices from a supplier to a customer; a simple message hub with basically sender/receiver determination capability: crap out – crap in. And definitely not ready for processing in an ERP-system. Pagero instead, understand end-to-end processing and the true meaning of high data quality.

Rather than simply delivering an invoice, Pagero Online analyze the data within and determines Quality, Correctness and Completeness, based on the receiver’s specification. If something is wrong or incomplete, Pagero tries to adjust the content as far as possible – before sending the invoice to the customer’s ERP-application. If an invoice is completely wrong (again according to the receiver’s specification), Pagero notifies the supplier of the errors. Incorrect invoices will not be passed to the customers SAP-system.

Fundamentals for seamless processing

Pagero Online has two unique capabilities, two fundamental pre-requisites enabling seamless processing: Validations and Enrichments:

• The validation step first verifies if an invoice fulfill basic characteristics (does it meet the elementary expectations to quality as an invoice, at all?). Then continues the validation step analyzing if the invoice meet the expectation determined by the receiver (for instance, does it include an employee number, PO-number according to a specific format?). If the invoice fails to pass this step, Pagero Online rejects it and notifies the supplier. Incorrect invoices will never hit your SAP-system! If it passes, the Enrichment step is next in line.
• Enrichment makes invoices “SAP-ready”. Even how hard customers try to get their suppliers to deliver high-quality invoices, the suppliers will never be able to meet all of your settings in SAP. These settings are unknown to them, and should so be. The Enrichment step is the link in between. Pagero Online automatically Translate, Transform and Enrich invoices with new information matching customer’s specification for later seamless processing. Pagero Online can for instance add organizational units, determine VAT-codes etc. First when the invoice quality fulfills “SAP-readiness” are the invoices passed on to your SAP-system.

This sounds like too good to be truth, or? Well there is more! Do continue read at section Connect & Reach Partners.