Digital Procure-to-Pay Process in SAP

Build your digital procurement process with SAP products from d.velop

Using SAP? Then you already have the perfect basis to completely digitalize your Procure-to-Pay process, also sometimes referred to as Procure-to-Pay. But why would you want to go digital?

Procuring materials is complex, comprising five individual steps – from purchase requisition to payment (Procure-to-Pay, or P2P for short). The graphic shows all the different components involved.

Not so complicated, right? Remember that the individual sub-processes include incoming documents such as purchase orders, delivery notes and invoices. These must be processed and approved, all by different employees across different departments.

SAP offers some solutions for a few sub-steps. However, the procurement process is not considered as a whole. Individual workflows are not connected to form an end-to-end process. Switching between digital and analog processes and all the risks that entails is part of the design.

It’s time to invest in an all-encompassing Procure-to-Pay process based on SAP.

No continuous SAP P2P process in use?

This leads to the following problems in companies:

15 % of additional cost on average due to Maverick Buying
75 € is the average process cost per purchase order
87 % of procurement executives believe that digitization will improve the purchasing process

Functions of the digital Purchase to Pay process in SAP

The Purchase to Pay process in SAP is fully digitizedThe entire procurement process of a company can

The entire procurement process of a company can be digitally represented from the request for needs to payment and booking of the order. The process steps such as Purchase Requisition, Purchase Order, Order Confirmation, Goods Receipt, and Invoice Receipt are natively integrated within your SAP system.

Purchase Requisition: The digital purchase requisition

In the company, the need for goods is coordinated and reported through a Purchase Requisition (PR) via SAP. This is automatically forwarded to the responsible processor to place the order with the right supplier under the negotiated conditions.

Order & Order Confirmation

After placing an order based on the purchase requisition (PR), the order confirmation and purchase order data are electronically matched to avoid manual verification processes and minimize errors. The workflow-based verification and approval processes can be monitored through an SAP cockpit.

dvelop employees talking in the officesap

Purchase to Pay White paper

In 4 steps to an automated procurement process

18 pages how to automate your procurement process. From the as-is analysis to the digitization of the individual sub-processes.

step: Create purchase requisition & trigger order
step: Check goods receipt
step: Check & release invoices
step: Trigger purchase order & document storage

Get insights into what a digital procurement process looks like and the advantages it offers over a traditional process.

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Process the goods receipt digitally

After the arrival of the goods, the delivery note is also electronically captured and compared with the underlying order and order confirmation. There is an immediate overview of goods receipts in SAP, and any deviations and subsequent processes are accelerated.

SAP invoice workflow: A seamless process

The SAP invoice workflow concludes the P2P process. Invoices are extracted, classified, and automatically compared with process-relevant documents and SAP master data. They are then assigned to responsible individuals for approval and invoice verification in SAP. Right from the beginning of the entire purchase-to-pay process, process-relevant documents are archived in a legally compliant and GDPR-compliant manner. This allows each individual process to be traced using an SAP document.

The P2P process is archived in a legally compliant manner.

At the beginning of the entire purchase-to-pay process, the process-relevant documents are archived in a tamper-proof and GDPR-compliant manner. This allows for the traceability of each individual process through an SAP document.

Archieving in a legally compliant manner

If the procure-to-pay process is not mapped end-to-end in SAP, there will be stumbling blocks:

A lack of checks in purchase order processes can result in wild buying behavior (the maverick buying effect). This means a department can end up buying goods or services without involving the purchase department.
Long waits for approvals and the resulting long processing times lead to reminder fees and the loss of cash discounts.
A lack of transparency in the process increases the loss of control and leads to breaches of company guidelines.
Manual steps in the process are very time-consuming, which often leads to dissatisfied employees.

These stumbling blocks ultimately have a negative impact not only on employee satisfaction, but also on the company’s bottom line. Potential advantages cannot be leveraged – advantages your competitors may have already secured. You too can reap the benefits of an optimized P2P process with a document management system integrated into SAP.

Advantages of a digital Procure-to-Pay process

Reduce process costs. Electronic procurement reduces process costs in purchasing by an average of 30% (BME e.V. study).
Enjoy discounts for early payment and avoid fines for late payment.
Gain full transparency across all procurement processes in SAP and the DMS. Overview of all orders, invoices, goods, and payments.
Lower purchase prices. Stopping maverick buying reduces purchase prices by an average of 7% (according to a study by the Association for Supply Chain Management, Procurement and Logistics).

High level of process automation. Direct pre-entry in the SAP system eliminates the need for manual data transfer.
No wasted time. Authorized parties and deputies are clearly defined to avoid deadlocks.
Audit-compliant archiving All important information such as purchase requisitions, approvals, and purchase orders are automatically archived in accordance with legal requirements.
Free up capacity. Reducing time spent on manual tasks frees capacity for more important things.

SAP competence by d.velop

Are you looking for a team of experts who’ve been working in the SAP ERP environment for years? Then you’ve come to the right place.

SAP is a fixture in d.velop’s own strategy. The company also has its own SAP center.

d.velop is a long-time certified SAP partner.
More than 700 customers use d.velop products in the SAP environment
Our SAP customers include:
Westfleisch SCE mbH, Weber GmbH & Co. KG, Eismann Tiefkühl Heimservice GmbH
Dedicated SAP centre with experienced SAP advisors and SAP developers.

Our internal processes were rigid and flawed. d.velop helped us define our Procure-to-Pay processes more clearly and dramatically improve our processing time.
Bernd Raabe
Messer Information Services GmbH

Would you like to learn more about the procure-to-pay process in SAP? Read more in the d.velop blog.

SAP purchase requisition

Creating a SAP purchase requisition and placing an order as the first steps of the procurement process can be optimized at large – comparing a classical purchase requisition with the SAP purchase requisition shows the benefits of digitalization.
SAP incoming goods

Why you should check and post deliveries digitally: Potential risks of the paper processes and the advantages of the digital incoming goods process.
SAP invoice verification

How to implement the digital process: Check and approve invoices and initiate transactions with automated SAP invoice verification. Benefit from process transparency using the incoming invoice journal.

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