Controllers Council recently hosted a panel discussion entitled, How to Harmonize Procurement and Accounts Payable, sponsored by BILL.
BILL is a leading financial operations platform for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). As a champion of SMBs, BILL automates the future of finance so businesses can thrive.
Our expert panelist was Ali Hadar Tayyab. Ali is a senior account executive for BILL and was in the SMB category and mid-market as well. Ali earned a Bachelor of Science and Finance from San Diego State University.
Following are key takeaways to this discussion. If you are interested in learning more, view the full webinar archive video here.
What are the primary reasons growing businesses set up procurement teams?
It’s kind of the same thing that customers think about when they’re buying something. It’s cost and quality and making sure that you are being strategic about the cost that you’re incurring and the quality of goods and services that you’re receiving for that money that you pay. And so those obviously are some high-level things that can be a lot of different points that fit into that topic, such as
- Strategic sourcing: that ties into cost control and efficiency.
- Risk management, more so an internal process: making sure that you’re meeting your compliance.
- Time management: the more efficiency that you can create from your team, the more standardization that you can create in these workflows, the easier it’s going to be for you to meet your compliance and legal requirements in a manner that’s efficient for your team.
What are the clearest indications that a growing business would benefit from setting up a dedicated procurement function?
I think what’s important to highlight here is that we’re talking about a procurement function here, not necessarily setting up a dedicated procurement team. Procurement is going to be a cross-departmental thing with operations, with accounting, with your supply chain, and making sure that you have the insights and the cross-functional collaboration that you need.
Some key indications include:
- Complex sourcing needs
- Rising costs or decreasing cost efficiencies
- Supply chain disruptions
- Lack of standardization
- Expansion into new markets or regions
How can companies define and reinforce clear roles, responsibilities, and processes for finance and procurement?
You must have the key stakeholders get together and create a game plan. And I think a lot of that is cross-departmental, so you have to get the people that are relevant together and have a conversation about what needs to be in place is really the first step. Then, the executing part is really what makes it work. And that’s where software is such a big help. If you can kind of figure out what it is that you require in terms of internal controls and internal compliance, then you can then go and find a solution like bill.com, like many others on the market that can automate, streamline, and make that workflow easy to accomplish for you. Who is responsible for doing these tasks? That’s a big thing to figure out – what are this individual’s responsibilities in this workflow? Then giving them an easy way to accomplish those tasks while also tying into our second bullet point here of being held accountable to completing those tasks.
Obviously, when it comes to implementing new processes, especially when it comes to buying new software and making new purchases, there are other decision makers and stakeholders involved, so making sure that you understand internally what your roadblocks and red tape are for you to be able to accomplish what you need to do will make it that much easier for you to be able to execute on those things. Some more processes include:
- Map out key processes on which finance and procurement teams work together
- Develop standard operating procedures
- Identify opportunities to streamline processes
- Schedule regular meetings
- Share platforms
- Align metrics
How can finance executives facilitate successful collaboration between finance and procurement teams?
When you give your team a mission, it’s a lot easier for them start taking action and executing on the things that need to happen to make that a reality. But ultimately, if there’s a leader in the room that can say that this is the direction that we’re going to go in, it takes a lot of the indecision out of things because it’s never going to be a perfect fit. The more that you can kind of come to an agreement of what’s best overall, the easier it is for these two parties to align. That’s really where executive leadership is the most important to kind of hear what’s important from both parties and kind of come to that middle ground of here’s what’s going to be best and most scalable and most cost efficient for us overall. And that’s going to come from doing the following things:
- Establishing clear roles and responsibilities
- Aligning strategic goals and objectives
- Encouraging open communication
- Outlining clear processes and procedures
- Fostering a culture of mutual respect
To view the complete webinar, download here.
ABOUT THE SPONSOR:
BILL is a leading financial operations platform for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). As a champion of SMBs, we are automating the future of finance so businesses can thrive. Our integrated platform helps businesses to more efficiently control payables, receivables and spend and expense management. Hundreds of thousands of businesses rely on BILL’s proprietary member network of millions to pay or get paid faster. Headquartered in San Jose, California, BILL is a trusted partner of leading U.S. financial institutions, accounting firms, and accounting software providers. For more information, visit bill.com.
