This question and more was answered during the June 22 webinar. In this blog, we summarize the most important topics we discussed, such as the elements of effective control, the different roles within the P2P process and the consistent implementation of improvements.
Of course, you can watch this webinar again. That's what you do here.
If you prefer to read the information at your own pace, you've come to the right place!
Why actively control your P2P process?
It often happens that enthusiasm for a P2P project decreases when the project is (almost) completed. There can be many reasons behind this. Perhaps the go-live has been disappointing, or attention to the P2P process is decreasing.
Although you'd prefer to prevent these situations, that's not always possible. At the same time, similar setbacks kill enthusiasm for your P2P project, which, in the worst case, makes your P2P process less efficient than before the project. Fortunately, this can be prevented with active control of your P2P process.
The ingredients for a good start
The importance of constant control within your P2P process is becoming increasingly clear. Large organizations often employ P2P specialists as positions. This way, the P2P process is constantly improved and maintained. But for medium-sized companies, it is often not feasible to use a full function for the P2P process. In the next four sections, we provide a number of ingredients that will help you easily get off to a good start to make your P2P process function properly.
Ingredient 1: Goals
To keep improving your P2P process over a longer period of time, start by setting P2P goals. In other words: what do you want to achieve with your P2P process? Make sure that the P2P objectives:
- Aligning with organizational goals
- Be understandable and executable
- Be translatable to KPIs
- Giving direction to improvement teams
Objectives are often divided into quantitative and qualitative objectives. Almost every organization wants to achieve time and cost savings within the P2P process (quantitative). But we also see organizations, for example, where people want to improve cooperation with suppliers or increase user satisfaction (qualitatively).
Ingredient 2: Vision
To achieve your goals and thus achieve effective control of your P2P process, you need a vision. This sounds abstract, but with a clear vision, employees within the organization know how to tackle certain aspects of P2P, such as: how do we want to organize the processes? And how should the software be deployed? The process owner has a leading role in this; if employees get stuck with certain choices, the process owner is responsible for making choices. At the same time, it is easier for both employees and the process owner to make choices when there is a vision. In short: a strong vision facilitates action.
Ingredient 3: Data
In addition to vision, data is an important tool in making the right choices for your P2P process control. Understanding the current situation requires insight into the current situation. You get that insight with data and data analysis. These serve as a source of information for making and adjusting choices. In addition, you try to predict the future using data so that you can anticipate it.
To use data effectively, P2P&Verder uses the DIKW model. With specific questions in each of the four steps within this model, you will ultimately arrive at useful applications of data. And you can even try to predict future events.
Let's make this concept concrete with an example: suppose your data shows that half of the invoices do not match the purchase order (data). You know what happened, so now you're investigating why it happened. By studying the purchase orders, you may find out that purchase orders need to be further standardized (information). Otherwise, invoice matching remains a partly manual process (knowledge). With the necessary adjustments to the purchase orders, you expect them to flow automatically more often (wisdom).
The DIKW model can be applied to various parts of the P2P process but also to multiple layers of the organization.
Ingredient 4: Team, Owner, and Capacity
Of course, it also takes people and time to control and improve your P2P process. Essential roles for the P2P process include: process owner, process coordinator, process expert and a sounding board group. In addition, the organization must have time and capacity available to fulfill these roles.
The process owner looks at the P2P process from a strategic level and is responsible for controlling the entire P2P process.
The process coordinator controls the daily operation and is the link to the end users. Examples of the process coordinator's tasks include: putting new ideas into practice, talking to employees about the results of a data analysis, or having supplier discussions to integrate them with new software. The contact between the process coordinator and end users is very important, as this can help to use the software more efficiently and create support.
The process expert is often specialized in data analysis and/or the digital structures behind the P2P process. For example, the expert is onboarding suppliers for e-invoicing or providing training to new employees.
One sounding board group you often see you during projects to monitor changes and provide feedback. But... we also see that a sounding board group is often disbanded at the end of a project, while the P2P process never stops. That is why we recommend maintaining the sounding board group after completing a project.
Make improvements
Because there is often less time and capacity available within organizations than tasks to be performed within the P2P process, you have to make choices. In other words: make improvements with the available capacity as efficiently as possible.
To do this, we use the improvement matrix within P2P&Verder.
In this matrix, the effort is compared to the intended effect of a particular improvement.
Ideally, all improvement ideas are defined in a structured way and put into the matrix. To support this, you can ask questions such as: what is the bottleneck we want to solve? How much time does this take? And is the intended effect in relation to the (time) investment?
Then you can compare capacity and priority. Suppose that optimization has a high priority, but at the same time costs a lot of capacity, investigate whether an additional employee could possibly provide support.
Keep end users engaged
Support for change is important within every organization. This also applies to controlling and improving your P2P process. To achieve this, it is important that end users remain involved in the changes in the P2P process.
As we mentioned earlier, the sounding board group is a strong tool for making consistent improvements in your P2P process possible. But this is not the only way. For example, you can write a monthly blog, give a webinar, set up a decentralized P2P team or make it accessible to everyone on an intranet with data improvement. Whichever way you do it, make sure you have regular updates so that the end user stays up to date. The higher the engagement, the greater the support base.
Extra information and knowledge
Want to know more about P2P? Our website is full of similar blogs, white papers and webinars. All to support your P2P process. Of course, you can also contact us personally by contact to include.
On September 21, we are organizing the following webinar: P2P & change management. Do you want to be here? Then sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date.