At Hubwoo we believe in openness and value for all participants, committing that our business network is as equally focused on adding value to the sales and marketing side of businesses as we are to procurement and accounts payable; and our solution is open to integrate with all P2P and sales & marketing systems. Size matters to network value and therefore by extending integration to this community of over 250K ERP customers, the Microsoft partner ecosystem will catapult the critical mass of members and their transactions to scale the network effect benefits and help grow The Business Network by Hubwoo to even more commerce, more community, and more value.

Gregory A. Mark
CEO, Hubwoo

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However, this approach has been relatively siloed in that procurement and A/P have been taking separate approaches, including using mostly different specialist technologies for their designated areas of responsibility, for example invoicing and transactional procurement through separate solutions.

While these individual efforts by each department may be providing some immediate results in cost containment and increased efficiencies, there is an entirely other level of opportunity for cost savings and inter-enterprise business process efficiency that can and should be obtained through true collaboration between Accounts Payable and Procurement.

Increased synergy is indeed becoming more and more of a focus point for organizations, particularly recently through the development of shared services functions and CFOs taking a lead in overseeing procurement functions. This shift in process and reporting structure is visibly facilitating better collaboration between the two functions.

Why stop at sharing a process and communicating more but continue to use separate technologies to perform tasks? True collaboration means not only increased communication and working together towards aligned goals, which is a great start in the right direction, but collaboration in terms of sharing data and clear visibility on both sides which can only be achieved by working through one shared technology which supports a seamless course from sourcing all the way through to payment.

Today’s business networks bridge the disconnect between finance and procurement. Through their collaborative nature they not only encourage buyer/supplier collaboration, but the depth of intelligence through these platforms enables a seamless flow throughout the entire source to pay process, from supplier identification all the way through to invoice payment. In fact, according to McKinsey on Business Technology “Networked enterprises were 50% more likely than their peers to have increased sales, higher profit margins, gain market share, and be a market leader.”

Leveraging a business network as one combined platform for both functions means adding intelligence throughout the business process, extending this intelligence across trading partners, resulting in more on-contract purchases, more invoice automation, and importantly, more accurate transaction processing. According to Aberdeen Group, the use of business networks brings 17% more spend under management and results in 20% more contract-compliant spend.

By uniting procurement and A/P transactions, first time invoice match rates can reach percentages in the high 90’s and companies are seeing significant increased savings through the ability to take advantage of early pay discounts and eliminating manual invoice processing. These savings would not have been possible by just automating procurement and finance tasks in silos.

The question has been raised if Accounts Payable and Procurement are friend or foe. They are certainly shifting towards friend but they still reside separately, as individual entities rather than a unit. They are making good individual efforts but to really become best in class, the two functions must collaborate, share one seamless process, leveraging one shared technology, then and only then, will organizations be able to gain a handle on the millions of dollars they are leaving on the table by working separately.

To learn more about business networks

click here

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Andrew notes that while business networks in their simplest of forms have been around for years and have gone through a few waves of evolution already, the current wave is significant in that, unlike waves 1 and 2, today’s emerging business networks not only focus on the transactional but on the collaborative principles that drive significant business process efficiencies.

Ardent Partners research has found that 30% of CPOs are viewed internally as reactive, whereas 18% are seen as significant influencers. For leading CPOs success breeds increased expectations, today there is more pressure on CPOs to take a more progressive strategic approach. Over the past 2 years in particular, there has been a shift in focus from sourcing more, to prioritizing collaboration with business partners as well as suppliers.

Collaboration has not just become a priority for the procurement function. Business Networks are becoming more relevant to core P2P operation, the benefits impact much broader business functions than supplier networks have done in the past. Benefits gained from business networks extend to accounts payable, sales and even marketing. As Andrew highlighted in our webinar, they should be leveraged for a much broader scope of activities, taking advantage of real-time information and consumer-like usability.

The potential of business networks is dramatic and benefits are apparent even today, as Ardent Partners’ research confirms, 75% of businesses have already seen some level of impact on their organization through Business Networks.

As Andrew astutely recognizes: “Businesses must begin to activate the potential of Business Networks, the benefits are too great to ignore.”

To view the webinar, “STEP CHANGE: How Business Networks are Changing the Procurement Paradigm” on demand Click Here

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Given the amount of time and resources that are invested in mapping and exchanging data in the procurement arena, it is not surprising that best-in-class procurement professionals leverage the intelligence and efficiency of business networks, with usage growing on average 20% year on year.

Ardent Partners research found in its CPO Rising 2012: Keeping Score survey that 42% of all procurement departments report that business networks have had either a critical or significant impact on their business.  In their recent research,Ardent Partners found that procurement departments are using business networks more frequently and achieving greater results from their usage.  Read more on Ardent Partners’ insight into the business network trend.

On December 13^th, Andrew Bartolini of Ardent Partners will discuss How Business Networks are Changing the Procurement Paradigm on a live webinar.

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Per Spend Matters, “The Business Network is a major new release that brings new capability and vision to Hubwoo’s business-to-business network — and for P2P networks in general, for that matter. Perhaps most important of all, the announced release represents the first major product launch that Hubwoo has made to differentiate itself from the SAP ecosystem post-Ariba, positioning its new capabilities to serve the broader P2P and supplier network marketplace including (but not limited to) enhancing SAP MM & SRM initiatives. Prior to the launch, Spend Matters got to talk to Hubwoo all about it…”

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So is the Cloud more secure than on-premise for source-to-pay and order-to-cash applications?  Is the world ready to put its commerce online?  In a word, yes.

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