Monthly Archives: March 2014

On The Strip from Ariba LIVE 2014 – Part 3

Throughout last week PayStream participated in Ariba LIVE from Las Vegas, Nevada. This blog is part of a series detailing our experiences from analyst briefings, one-on-one sessions with SAP and Ariba representatives, and keynote and breakout sessions at this highly informative and entertaining conference.

The Ariba Network is a powerful B2B commerce tool that connects buyers and sellers. Organizations that utilize the Ariba Network further automate their billing and payment processes by importing network transactions directly into other Ariba solutions such as AribaPay or Ariba Invoice Management.

During their roadmap discussion attended by PayStream analysts, Ariba highlighted several areas in which the Ariba Network would see improvements in 2014. These included deeper collaboration between Ariba and SAP, increasing seller value, increased globalization, and improved infrastructure.

Deeper collaboration between SAP and the Ariba Network means platform consolidation and spot quote functionality. The ability to invoice service companies through mobile devices is also on the horizon. Ariba plans to increase the reach of the Ariba Network to include Brazil, Russia, China, Columbia, and Chile and maintain government compliance along the way with the use of archiving extensions and local 3^rd party tax integrators.

Ariba plans to increase the value to Network sellers by providing richer profiles to generate more leads, predictive sales functionality and spot quote matching capabilities. The Ariba Network will also be moved onto the HANA platform, for more info on this see Part 2 of this sequence.

One of the most memorable experiences from Ariba LIVE this year was the keynote session from Bert Jacobs, one of the co-founders of the Life is Good company. Jacobs told the story of how his company went from his brother and he selling t-shirts (and living) out of a van to an enterprise with 11 million in revenues in 2013. His company is founded on the principle that humans are naturally optimists; we desire to see the positive side of life and hence “life is good.” Jacobs’ mother would ask her children every night at dinner to describe one positive thing they achieved that day. This was but one of the many things that inspired Bert to create a t-shirt, a brand, an enterprise, and a charitable foundation.

In Bert Jacobs’ speech, he shared that once his company started to take off, Bert started to receive lots of fan mail, predominantly from children. These children were often overcoming life-changing or traumatic events and the Life is Good branding and ideology gave them hope and helped them cope with grief and tragedy. He shared one of these letters with the audience (see picture below). I won’t go into the details so that you can remain dry-eyed at your office (unlike half of the Ariba LIVE audience in the Chelsea ballroom). The letter told a story of two young twin brothers who relied on each other’s strengths to remain positive and optimistic about life and the inspiration they attained from the Life is Good ideology.

It was stories such as this one that led Bert to realize that optimism starts in your childhood. He started a foundation, Life is Good Playmakers, to help troubled kids have fun because having fun and the possibility of having more fun is the foundation of a life-long optimistic attitude. Life Is Good Playmakers uses teachers, social workers, and child life specialists to help children overcome poverty, violence and illness. These “playmakers” use the power of play to build healing, life-changing relationships with the children in their care. To date more than 310,000 children have been cared for by Playmakers throughout the United States and Haiti and the foundation continues to raise millions via 10 percent of all Life is Good revenues.

I suppose the takeaway from this speech was that the most productive and successful people and organizations are the most optimistic ones. With procurement and purchasing it is especially important to be optimistic about improving processes and the power of SAP and Ariba’s solutions will foster that improvement. There may have been frisbees thrown at the crowd.

On the Strip at Ariba LIVE 2014 Part 2

Opening day at Ariba LIVE included several educational sessions for industry insiders including an analyst briefing and roadmap discussion. PayStream had the benefit of attending this event and has much to report for what’s in store for Ariba in 2014.

Recently, SAP acquired Ariba to include them as part of their cloud-based suite of financial and business intelligence solutions. Both parties had much to gain from this partnership. SAP offered its talent, expertise, technology, and investment while Ariba provided their customer success, and procurement and purchasing cloud DNA to further SAPs reach into the cloud ecosystem.

The analyst briefing offered insight into what Ariba had in store for both the immediate (within 3 months) and not-so-distant (within 3 years) future. Improvements are planned for all facets of the Ariba solution including strategic sourcing, P2P, services procurement, and the Ariba Network.

Increased functionality and enhanced user experience were two areas that were frequently mentioned as new additions to the Ariba solution. Ariba’s Strategic Sourcing Application improvements included a strategic search function within the application so as to avoid the need for a separate search engine. Also mentioned were recent updates for Internet Explorer 10 64-bit and Office 2013 support. In the near future increased support for the public sector and suppliers will be added as well as an increase focus on contract risk management.

Two recurring themes throughout Ariba’s roadmap were the inclusion of SAPs HANA and Globalization. P2P and Procurement support are being updated in the immediate future to include invoice, discount, shipping, and allowances support for Russia, China, Brazil, and Mexico. Better handling of multilingual codes & characters are also a top priority. The Ariba Network will be extending its reach into new markets in South America and Asia and will include compliance updates as well as integration with local third-party tax providers to ensure seamless user adoption in these foreign markets. The enhancements don’t just end there, as one might assume. Ariba is beginning a transition onto SAPs HANA framework.

SAPs HANA (High-Performance Analytic Appliance) was released in 2010 and is an incredibly powerful tool for reporting and analytics. HANA is an in-memory column-oriented, relational database management system. Traditionally, databases are stored on hard drives where processors have to communicate back and forth to analyze data. With enterprise level organizations this means that running reports can take hours or even days. For example, let’s say a supplier offers you a new arrangement involving new terms on one billion widgets. Before the introduction of HANA, running a report to see if this were in your best interest could take hours or even days; you would undoubtedly be calling them back (all the while they’re offering this exclusive offer to someone else). With HANA, instead of moving billions of records from hard-drives to a processor to be analyzed, the data is stored in-memory so you can analyze billions of records in seconds, not hours. With HANA, you’ll be able to make decisions faster and smarter. Ariba plans to have at least 90% of its application on the HANA platform by 2017, meaning faster reporting and increased efficiency for Ariba users.

PayStream is excited about the roadmap that Ariba has projected. The partnership of SAP and Ariba has merged two of the industry leaders in procurement and P2P to offer a solution like no other seen before. Stay tuned for the third installment of On the Strip at Ariba LIVE 2014 later this week. Topics will include a roadmap discussion about the Ariba Network and highlights from keynote speaker Bert Jacobs of the Life is Good Company.

Speaking of must-attend purchase-to-pay events, check this out.

On The Strip at Ariba LIVE 2014 Part 1

Throughout this week PayStream participated in Ariba LIVE from Las Vegas, Nevada. This blog is part of a series detailing our experiences from analyst briefings, one-on-one sessions with SAP and Ariba representatives, and keynote and breakout sessions at this highly informative and entertaining conference.

Ariba LIVE 2014 was held at the fabulous Cosmopolitan Hotel and Conference Center in the heart of the Las Vegas strip with keynote sessions inside the prestigious Chelsea concert hall. Procurement and purchasing professionals from around the world gathered to discuss emerging industry trends, technologies, and best practices. Keynote speakers included Bert Jacobs, Co-Founder of The Life is Good company, Mark Loring, Director and Global Head of Source to Pay for Deutsche Bank, and David Maley, Vice President of Strategic Sourcing and Procurement for Kohl’s Department Stores among others. Sponsoring organizations included PayStream’s sponsoring partners BillTrust and Scan One as well as suppliers within the Ariba Network such as Staples, Grainger, and many more.

This year marked the 15^th anniversary of Ariba LIVE and was by far the largest one yet with an attendance of over 2000 registrants. This year also marked the first year the conference led industry-specific educational sessions. These industries included the retail, financial services, and utilities and natural resources sectors. Accordingly, keynote and breakout session included representative speakers from each industry. These included Deutsche, ING, and Union Bank representing the financial services industry; American Eagle Outfitters, Coach, 7-eleven, and Kohl’s representing the retail and consumer services industries; and Rio Tinto, ExxonMobil, and Southern California Edison representing the utilities and natural resources sectors.

Stay tuned to PayStream Voices for segments 2 & 3 of “On The Strip from Ariba LIVE 2014.” Topics will include keynote speaker discussions, what SAP’s acquisition of Ariba will mean in 2014, and Ariba Strategic Sourcing, P2P, & Procurement roadmaps.

Conquering Big Data

Big Data, Business Intelligence, and Purchase to Pay: Each concept is overused yet and unrealized to many procurement professionals. Today’s ERPs just don’t give purchasers the granular information they need to fully monitor their spend.

Purchase visibility and analytics can yield a lot of value in Purchase to Pay, but only if you can get the spend information. In today’s environment with data stored in disparate systems – procurement system, ERP, and at vendor’s sites, “Big Spend Data” for many of us is a pipe dream. Imagine you want to analyze hardware spend about employee laptop purchases from your Dell web and CDW portal. Frankly, without an Application Integration or data feed from your suppliers, you cannot easily do so. With Kofax’s Kapow screen-scraping application integration platform, you can now grab the data from both web sites and populate a report in minutes. Even better, with Kapow Kaplets you can run that report every month.

Kapow puts the power of big data, social media, cloud, and mobile directly into the hands of users so that employees are informed, agile and empowered without the need for consulting, coding or APIs. Finally! We can get big data without the corresponding big IT project and budget. Kapow Kaplets are synthetic application interfaces that are created in minutes with very little IT knowledge. More than ever, procurement professionals are now able to harness the power of reporting and forecasting tools and transform spend management.

The benefits of Kapow don’t just end with procurement or even finance applications. Kapow connects applications not meant to be connected; it transforms big data into actionable insights. Maybe your organization relies heavily on social media trends and is looking to scrape subscriber data, or perhaps you are a corporate P2P professional looking to analyze utility fluctuations amongst dozens of satellite offices. Kofax Kapow has pioneered a simple solution to help you connect the dots and assimilate current processes.

Be sure to join PayStream’s lead finance automation guru, Henry Ijams and guest faculty and industry expert Art Sarno, Product Marketing Director for Kofax to discuss the power of Kofax Smart Processes for AP. Topics will include best practices for workflow architecture, essentials of smart processes, using synthetic interfaces for procurement analytics, and increasing connectivity and efficacy where you least expect it. For more information and to secure your seat, click here.

Strategic Collaboration Between U.S. Bank and Nexus

U.S. Bank and Nexus Systems recently announced that they are entering into a strategic agreement to establish a new standard for end-to-end electronic invoice processing and payment. Combining Nexus’ invoicing software expertise with U.S. Bank’s market-leading payment processing capabilities, the collaboration will produce completely automated accounts payable management solutions.

This partnership will combine U.S. Bank’s Payables solution with the Nexus Invoice Automation Network to offer cloud-based paperless processing at a lower operating cost. The collaboration also presents an increase in early payment discounts and working capital and enhances current audit control capabilities of both solutions. The companies are market leaders in their environment and together will provide a incredibly powerful AP solution. PayStream is very excited to see this relationship develop and expect increased levels of adoption given the increased efficacy of their products.

PayStream recently released the 2014 Electronic Invoice Management report. As seen in Figure 1, our survey reports that about one in four organization in the United States utilize electronic invoicing tools. This is an increase from about one in five from 2012. We also found that over forty percent of organizations surveyed are looking to automate at least 50% of their invoices in 2014 (see Figure 2).

Figure 1

Figure 2; 2014 eInvoice Automation Goals

Nexus Systems CEO and Founder Thomas Coolidge says, “This joint effort will enable organizations to save significant amounts of time and money when processing invoices. By combining U.S. Bank’s market-leading corporate payments offering with Nexus’ procurement, purchase order, and invoice offering, we have created a new industry standard. We’re thrilled to be collaborating with U.S. Bank in this endeavor and are eager to get started.”

US Bank will be joining PayStream at our Purchase to Pay Summit, PayStream Innovate 2014. The Purchase to Pay Summit is the can’t-miss purchase to pay conference for industry best practices in automation, collaboration, and process improvement. Be sure to join us for PayStream Innovate 2014 September 8-10 at the Hyatt Regency San Antonio River Walk. Spots are filling quickly, click here to reserve your seat!

The Tyranny of Credit Cards: Highlights from The BillTrust User Summit

PayStream Advisors’ financial process guru, Henry Ijams, spoke last Monday at the Inaugural BillTrust User Summit at Philadelphia’s Hotel Monaco. Joining him on the stage were Joe Lucas, Vice President of SRS Distribution, a growing independent roofing distributor, and Ken Bruch, Manager of Accounting and Treasury for Ultradent, a leading developer and manufacturer of high-tech dental materials. The three spoke on the “Tyranny of Credit Cards;” a discussion on the pains of accepting credit card payments and strategic remedies. Below is a brief summary of the presentation:

Utilizing purchasing cards (P-Cards/credit cards/rewards cards) is an attractive method of payment among suppliers because they yield faster payment, providing quicker access to capital that may otherwise cost more to achieve. However, the merchants that accept the payments generally fund the benefits that purchasers receive (usually a discount percentage of 1.9 to 2.5 percent). As Figure 1 illustrates, even though credit card payments can account for as few as 10% of annual collections, the total cost to process card payment often more than doubles the costs of processing check and electronic payments (ACH) combined. For these reasons, businesses need to think strategically to continue to receive the benefits of a speedy payment while avoiding the high processing fees to do so.

Using the correct tactics, an organization can influence customers to use the lowest cost payment method. Convenience fees are a perfect example; they are a popular and time-tested way to both absorb some of the costs of accepting credit cards as well as persuading customers to resort to lower cost transactions such as ACH.

Joe Lucas presented his own company, SRS Distribution, as a case study. SRS Distribution is a group of 18 branded regional roofing supply distributors with over 100 branches nationwide. They have over 1200 employees and distribute over 50,000 bills per month. SRS takes credit cards with no fee at branch locations when paying at the time of purchase. In June 2011, SRS went live with an online Invoice Gateway. They offered complimentary ACH payments but charged a convenience fee for credit card transactions. They also excluded credit card payments from early payment discounts or incentive programs. On average, SRS estimated that credit cards were costing 2.25% of purchases. They charged a convenience fee of 1.5% for these purchases and in 2013 achieved a savings of over $40,000 from this fee. The results of this change were quite compelling. ACH payments grew ten times as fast as credit card payments in just two short years. Only 8% of SRS clients were continuing to use credit cards when paying through the online gateway.

SRS Distributing presents a fine example of how strategic policies can help relieve the pains associated with accepting credit cards. Of course, this is just one of many options. Encouraging sales and customer service staff to promote low-cost payment methods or optimizing your web site and communications to promote the lowest cost option are also viable alternatives. Whatever the method, credit card usage will continue to grow and thus it is essential that an organization develop a strategy to combat the costs of accepting these payments.

PayStream Advisors will be publishing a report that discusses purchasing card strategies in greater depth in early Q2 2014. To read the abstract click here.PayStream Advisors’ financial process guru, Henry Ijams, spoke last Monday at the Inaugural BillTrust User Summit at Philadelphia’s Hotel Monaco. Joining him on the stage were Joe Lucas, Vice President of SRS Distribution, a growing independent roofing distributor, and Ken Bruch, Manager of Accounting and Treasury for Ultradent, a leading developer and manufacturer of high-tech dental materials. The three spoke on the “Tyranny of Credit Cards;” a discussion on the pains of accepting credit card payments and strategic remedies. Below is a brief summary of the presentation:

PayStream Advisors will be publishing a report that discusses purchasing card strategies in greater depth in early Q2 2014. To read the abstract click here.

A CFOs guide to the Black Box of IT

Apptio, a leader in Technology Business Management (TBM) software has recently joined PayStream for a new research report: Reinventing Technology Business Management: A CFOs Guide to the Black Box of IT. The underlying question here is “What if a CFO knew exactly why every dollar was spent on IT?” This report will focus on providing CFOs with a tool set to effectively analyze and influence IT spending.

Every CFO is told time and time over that increasing an organization’s technology is necessary. Often they are left with arduous decisions while being given little insight into the true value that new technologies bring to the table. New IT management solutions allow CFOs to effectively partner with CIOs to increase the ROIs of technology spending and improve IT workflow.

Technology Business Management software provides access to real-time, consumable data that illuminates the consumption and ROI of technology investments. CFOs often view IT spending as an uncontrollable or fixed cost. With the use of TBM software, IT departments can be transformed into profit centers at a granular level by decreasing the costs associated with server allocation, labor, and energy consumption. Going further, a breakdown of expenditures into unit costs provides CFOs with the necessary information to make sound IT spend decisions that decrease unnecessary spending and increase revenues.

PayStream is excited to work with Apptio on this educational report set to hit the presses this April.

Don’t forget to secure your spot at PayStream INNOVATE ‘14. Located at the beautiful Downtown River Walk in San Antonio, Texas. INNOVATE ’14 is the can’t-miss purchase to pay conference for industry best practices in automation, collaboration, and process improvement. Click here to register.

The Drive Towards Straight-Through Processing

In an effort to optimize invoice management, more companies are moving to touch-less or straight-through processing (STP). This requires moving from a paper-based system to a fully digitized and automated system, resulting in time and money savings in the form of fewer errors, less exceptions and a reduction in calls from suppliers.

Straight-through processing automatically matches and validates submitted invoices and allows suppliers to self-correct errors before the invoice reaches the buyer, resulting in payables being processed quickly, efficiently, and at a much lower cost. Suppliers can also quickly access payment status information themselves, which saves AP a great amount of time fielding supplier phone calls. This frees up AP staff to engage in more strategic activities.

PayStream analysts are witnessing a trend towards more companies migrating to STP, and these companies are aiming high when it comes to AP automation goals. According to PayStream’s new eInvoice report titled Electronic Invoice Management: A Move to the Middle, the top accounts payable automation goals for 2014 is automated workflow for invoices (36 percent) and increase eInvoicing (31 percent), see figure below.

Download a complimentary copy of the Electronic Invoice Management: A Move to the Middle report today to learn more about ADP and their eInvoice solution functionality.

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