Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ Series

Creating Efficiencies in Procurement

 About This Book
The Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ eBook
Series is meant to give readers a sense of the
variables at play in various aspects of their supply
chain, in an effort to help improve decision making
and management insight. Specifically, they are meant
to help improve your ability to understand the issues
involved at the intersection of supply chain and
technology. In this edition of the series, we explore
the procurement function and how it’s possible
to optimize sourcing and procurement processes
through digital connectivity. We’d love your feedback
on this learning tool, and are always looking for ways
to improve future editions.

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • About This Book 2

 This book is dedicated to the procurement
professionals who put in hard work on complex
projects, often without recognition, to help
organizations and their people thrive.

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • About This Book 3

Contents
Procurement Defined 5
Key Procurement Transactions 6
Procurement and Industry 4.0 8
ERP vs. Supply Chain Solutions 11
Procurement KPIs 12
Common Inefficiencies with Conventional Processes 17
What’s at Stake? The Value of Procurement Optimization 19
Procurement Optimization Classes 20
Automation and Supplier Relationships 21
On the Issue of Accuracy 22
Procurement Process: Strategic Sourcing 24
Procurement Process: Purchase Order Management 26
Procurement Process: Optimizing Scheduling Agreements 30
Procurement Process: Non-EDI Purchase Digitization 32
Procurement Process: Supplier Visibility 34
Procurement Process: Supplier Quality 36
Procurement Process: Inventory Optimization 38
Procurement Process: Efficient Invoicing 40
Reporting and Data Management 42
Project Implementation Approaches 43
Six Keys to Procurement Automation Success 45
Recommended Reading 47
Glossary of Terms 50
Citations 56

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Contents 4

Procurement Defined
Procurement is the broad business function comprising strategic leadership and
stewardship over an organization’s sourcing and purchasing processes and decisions.
Procurement is a core business function,
with the same level of strategic importance
as other core functions such as operations,
sales and marketing, human resources,
research and development, etc. Procurement
is often differentiated from purchasing as a
discipline in that purchasing is a more narrow
subset of functions charged with the actual
administrative task of buying goods and
services from vendors—requesting quotations,
issuing purchase orders, etc.
Procurement is composed of a variety of
functions, processes and disciplines, the
specific definition of which can vary greatly
between industries and organizations. In
general, specific responsibilities within the
field of procurement can include things
such as:
• Strategic sourcing
• Purchasing execution
• Supplier negotiations
• Contract management
• ESG compliance support
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Defined
Each of these procurement areas could
comprise dozens of tasks and responsibilities.
For the purposes of this book, we will not dive
too deeply into every potential transaction
within every major procurement function.
Rather, we will address some of the
biggest challenges we’ve found
among our customer base, which
comprises some of the world’s
leading corporations, and we’ll
explore the biggest opportunities
commonly found to add value
through supply chain digitization.
Specifically, we’ll go into greater
detail regarding matters of sourcing
and procurement, since these
particular functions typically offer
the opportunity to add the most
value in the shortest amount of
time through digitization.
5
Key Procurement Transactions:
A Closer Look
There are hundreds of procurement
functions that can be improved through
automation. Let’s look at some of the key
transactions that tend to burden many an
enterprise with excessive administration,
risk and inefficiency.
Issuance of a Request for Quotation
Before anything fancy happens, an
organization must communicate a
demand. Typically this happens by issuing
blanket RFQs to a variety of preferred
and qualified vendors.
Transaction Negotiation and Vendor Selection
After a short list of more highly qualified
vendor candidates is created, prospective
vendors negotiate the pricing and terms of
the specific transaction at hand. This can
involve transaction haggling or bigger-picture
strategic alliances. Lastly a vendor is formally
awarded the business.
New Vendor Admin and Issuance of a
Purchase Order
Next comes final selection of a vendor for
the sale, commencing the process of setting
the company up as a formal supplier in the
buyer’s ERP system, issuing that vendor a
purchase order and other admin.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Key Procurement Transactions:
A Closer Look 6
Confirmation of Goods/Services Receipt
Then you need to confirm that you received
the goods or services as outlined in the
transaction, so that the supplier can start the
invoicing process if applicable.
Management of Supplier Quality
You’ve received the goods and services, but
do you accept them as meeting your needs
and standards? Procurement professionals
must also ensure that goods and services
received are both on spec and up to quality
standards—whether the order entails 10 tons
of hot-rolled steel plate or merely having the
company grounds regularly landscaped.
Invoice Processing
Depending on the terms and structure of a
purchase, you’ll receive an invoice after you’ve
expressed acceptance of the order. This will
begin the process of reviewing, confirming and
entering the invoice for remittance.
Transporting with Visibility
From weather to traffic to human error, life
can sometimes upend even the most efficient
and elegant of supply chains. As goods
are shipped to buyers, specific logistical
milestones are met along the way and each
party is in need of status information until
there is a confirmation of final delivery.
Performance Review and Auditing
Outside of transactional functions,
procurement professionals periodically review
the performance of specific vendors—or
conduct other various audits surrounding the
procurement function.
Sourcing and Vendor Optimization
In addition to vendor-specific auditing, Fun Facts:
procurement departments may also look to Procurement Lessons from the Movies
strengthen or optimize various aspects of their Want to see procurement and purchasing
sourcing protocols. For example, if a chemical get its due on the silver screen? Stream
company regularly purchases high volumes of these titles on your next movie night for
a mission-critical feedstock, they may vet and some lessons learned.
partner with alternative suppliers as a means
of building a more robust supply chain to War Dogs (2005)
Lesson: Manage vendor quality; also pay
prevent disruption.
your vendors.
In an organization with a high degree of
procurement efficiency, these processes Office Space (1999)
Lesson: Too much admin turns good
are integrated and digitized—exhibiting
employees bad.
comprehensive platforms and a high degree
of automation. Many organizations deploy an
Terminator (1984)
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system or Lesson: The best AI puts people at its core.
other procurement platforms to help manage
these functions efficiently. In organizations Extract (2009)
with a low degree of procurement efficiency, Lesson: It’s worth checking on supplier
these processes involve the manual efforts of safety records.
a large number of people, complete with long
cycle times and lower-than-desirable metrics Tommy Boy (1995)
for administrative and capital efficiency. Lesson: Purchase orders are legal contracts.
These organizations may use a patchwork of
homemade systems and spreadsheets in lieu
of a more comprehensive and interconnected
procurement platform.

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Key Procurement Transactions:
A Closer Look 7
Procurement in the Age of Industry 4.0
We are living on the cusp of one of the most
exciting times in the history of procurement
as a business discipline. In modern times,
the first Industrial Revolution cemented
procurement as a core business function as
mechanized scalability took hold in the late
1700s and early 1800s. Charles Babbage
(1791–1871), early icon of computing and
mathematics, made note of the demand for a
“materials man” to track the goods demanded
by an operation such as a mine.
The second Industrial Revolution took hold in
the mid-1800s, with advances in engineering
enabling more complex machines and the
proliferation of manufacturing operations
throughout the Western world. As World War I
rolled around in the early 1900s, the need for
efficiency at scale prompted a new respect
for administrative acumen. The world was
coming to realize that savvy procurement
administration and supply chain management
was not merely the executive arm of bigger
thinkers—they were the people actually
getting things done. Building fortunes. Winning
wars. Making great achievements possible.
Innovative and disciplined administrators
were making all of the difference between
success and failure for corporations, nations
and institutions. It was in these years that
procurement as a professional discipline truly
began to take shape.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement in the Age of Industry 4.0
During the post-WWII years, the field of
procurement was twinned with the maturation
of computing technology. This quantum
improvement in industrial productivity is
referred to as the third Industrial Revolution.
Spearheaded by government-driven research
and investment in processing power, soon
corporations had much stronger data
management and analysis infrastructure to
support procurement professionals in their
duties and objectives. Companies such as
IBM, U.S. Steel, ExxonMobil, Procter & Gamble,
General Electric and General Motors leveraged
data to improve procurement performance
assessments, conduct scenario modeling,
assess budgetary impacts and support
decisions in strategy, finance and operations.
“
Businesses are able to
leverage these technologies
in revolutionary ways to
redefine processes and
potential progress across
the balance sheet.
”
8
This leads us to today. Contemporary
procurement professionals have now
embarked on what’s being referred to as
Industry 4.0, or the fourth industrial revolution.
What we’re seeing today is a phalanx of
scalable, flexible and affordable technologies
made possible by advances in computing
power, business process, corporate
finance and transformative communication
technologies. Businesses are able to
leverage these technologies in revolutionary
ways to redefine processes and potential
progress across the balance sheet—and
within our personal lives. Among the most
groundbreaking Industry 4.0 technologies are:
• Cloud Computing
• Powerful Data Processing
• Artificial Intelligence
• Robotic Process Automation
• The Internet of Things (IoT)
• Augmented Reality
• Simulation Software
• Advanced Cybersecurity
• Additive Manufacturing
This isn’t news to anyone, of course. Nobody
in the 2020s finds it unusual that you can
order a sandwich on your phone and then
watch in real time as it’s delivered, or use
a combination of satellite triangulation and
third-party mobile platforms to avoid a
speeding ticket. But when you explore the
possibilities within a narrow business field
such as procurement and supply chain, the
potential is astounding.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement in the Age of Industry 4.0
For procurement professionals, Industry 4.0
advancements mean a complete redefinition
of expected efficiencies within a number of
core tasks and responsibilities, especially
within the world of purchasing. It means
connectivity with suppliers that replaces
guesswork and promises with visibility and
automation. It means more data and less
disappointment. And it means less paperwork
and more empowerment. Dozens of
procurement functions can now be digitized,
connected and automated to fractionalize the
amount of time, resources and risk they entail.
Still, one thing the confluence of procurement
and Industry 4.0 technologies does not
mean is supply chain dehumanization. While
technology can provide essential data, strong
procurement professionals are still needed to
make both everyday and big-picture decisions.
Interconnectivity can provide visibility, but
companies still need suppliers they can
trust. Customers still want humans on the
other end of the computer or phone to help
solve problems. And everyone across the
procurement function and beyond still needs
strong leadership, whether they serve in a
warehouse, an accounts payable department
or on the Board of Directors.
All of this technology is here to help people,
and make their lives easier both at home
and on the job. In fact, catering this intensely
connected technology environment to your
specific needs is said to be the foundation
of Industry 5.0. But for now, let’s explore
what today’s interconnected supply chain
environment can do to help you optimize, de-
risk and make the most of your organization’s
procurement function.
9
Industry 4.0 technologies such as cloud
computing, artificial intelligence, Robotic
Processing Automation (RPA), RFID, the
Internet of Things (IoT) and others are
revolutionizing processes across the supply
chain. After a purchase order was issued, but
before your order was received, used to be a
nerve-wracking black box. Now Industry 4.0
technologies are bringing more intelligence to
procurement activities.
• Review QA/QC documents pertaining
to all orders while they’re still at the
supplier facility, preventing non-compliance
before shipment
• Track shipments of all these products in
real-time for tighter planning
• Apply advanced analytics that help
you optimize category management,
ensuring the best value possible in
every purchase category

The beauty of Industry 4.0-enabled From RFID-enabled shipping pallets to

procurement is made manifest in a scaled- the ability to track remote carriers delivery
up, global operation. Say you run a server components via boat from a remote
farm in Iceland and make regular purchases Indonesian island, these technologies
of $14,000 servers from a company in Austin, are making it one of the most exciting
as well as switches, routers, power supplies, and efficient times in history to manage
coolant and biometric security components procurement activities.
from suppliers across Europe and Asia. Not
having the components or support services
you need could create an outage—causing
your business to suffer as well as complicating
operations for hundreds of customers.
Industry 4.0 technologies could let you:

• Order major goods and services from your

iPad at home
• Get visibility into all of your trading partners
and their carriers
• Look into the manufacturing facility building
your server for real-time progress
• Access a more comprehensive provenance
of every piece of hardware, processor,
wiring or other component that goes into
your product
• Get real-time notifications as products
move across various order, manufacturing
or service milestones

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement in the Age of Industry 4.0 10
ERP vs. Supply Chain Solutions
With their roots dating back to the 1960s,
today’s modern ERP systems have
revolutionized organizational efficiency. The
market for ERP systems is forecasted to
reach $49.5B by 2025, and approximately
50% of companies claim to soon be
acquiring, upgrading or planning to update
their ERP systems. SAP alone has more
than 200 million cloud users—with an
estimated 77% of all global transaction
revenue touching an SAP system at some
point. Oracle has topped more than 25
million users and 10,000 customers. We
owe these platforms a great deal when it
comes to running more efficiently, safely,
profitably and responsibly.
Most conventional ERP systems either
have ready-made procurement modules
or enable you to build these functions
to fit your needs. These systems include
many ways to let an enterprise optimize
purchasing processes, manage suppliers,
create and populate essential documents,
manage sourcing and vendor-related
data, manage contracts and share
essential procurement-related data with
stakeholders throughout the enterprise.
ERP systems have been true game-
changers in making all business functions
more efficient in recent decades, and
those capable of streamlining procurement
capabilities are no exception.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • ERP vs. Supply Chain Solutions
For all that ERP systems have done for
practically every efficient enterprise on the
planet, their focus has traditionally been
optimizing activities within the four walls of
an enterprise. Only relatively recently have
these systems begun establishing digital
connectivity up and down the supply chain
between trading partners. This ability to
digitally integrate with other organizations
represents the next phase of digital process
efficiency, not just across the procurement
function but within all supply chain-related
functions, capabilities and processes.
Establishing digital connectivity with suppliers
means not just asking if they have what you
need in inventory but seeing it firsthand. It
gives procurement professionals the ability
to submit orders directly. It allows you to
firm up your inventory against stock-outs by
automating the purchase of key materials and
components whenever you’re running low. And
dozens of other streamlined processes that
have never before been possible even in the
age of high-performance ERPs. Now these
ERPs can connect with digital supply networks
to see, do and know more than ever all across
the supply chain worldwide—ushering in a
new era of competitive advantage through
digital collaboration.
11
Procurement KPIs
Any organization that implements procurement
automation should insist on understanding
how their investment has impacted
procurement-related metrics. So if you’re
not already tracking these metrics within
your procurement department, here are a
dozen procurement-related indicators that
can help you benchmark and analyze various
aspects of your procurement efficiency and
effectiveness. Some of these are more tactical
in nature, others are more strategic. But no
matter which procurement-related tasks your
organization decides to automate first, you’ll
see improvement in a variety of metrics both in
the short-term and over time.
PO Accuracy Rate
This metric is merely a measurement of
the percentage of purchase orders your
organization issues that contain a mistake or
oversight. An acceptable PO accuracy rate will
be somewhat dependent on the industry and
specific organization. When your team issues
a purchase order that’s incorrect in some
way, it can cause big problems. When you
think about it, a 99 percent PO Accuracy Rate
sounds great. But if you issue multiple 100-
line purchase orders each day, that means on
average every order has a mistake. Whether
it’s an incorrect item, quantity or vendor
information, it’s important to track mistakes
and bring them out into the open.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement KPIs
PO Cycle Time
This is a measurement of how long it takes to
create and submit a purchase order, from the
time a requisition is submitted by an internal
stakeholder to the time the purchase order
is received by the vendor. This is usually
measured in days. Purchasing departments
may classify different vendors as having
different PO cycle time needs; emergency
callout vendors such as people who fix
leaks at an oil refinery may demand a high-
priority short PO cycle time while a company
that is delivering a new set of furniture for
a corporate break room may have a longer
acceptable PO cycle time.
Cost per Purchase Order
Just what it says on the tin: How much does
it cost your organization to issue a single
purchase order? This means all-in expenses:
The annual cost of all of the people and
processes involved in the creation and
issuance of a purchase order—FTE costs,
software, overhead, everything divided by
the number of purchase orders issued in a
year. From the creation of a requisition to the
execution of required changes to the purchase
order after creation, develop a cost for each
step. According to a benchmark study by the
APQC, the cost for manual purchase order
creation can range between $35.88 and
$506.52.
12
Average Supplier Lead Time
The supplier lead time measures the time
it takes for your suppliers on the whole,
expressed as an average, to deliver an order
from the time your order is submitted until
official receipt of the goods or materials.
Acceptable Average Supplier Lead Times
vary by industry, and tend to be shorter in
organizations with a greater percentage
of Spending Under Management by the
procurement department (less maverick
spend). According to the APQC, top performers
have an average supplier lead time of four
days while bottom performers have an average
supplier lead time of about 11 days.
Spend Under Management
This is an organizational metric that considers
the overall spending for a specific period
of time that is proactively controlled by the
company’s procurement department. This
includes both direct and indirect spending
categories, as well as service-related
spending. It is calculated by dividing the
current dollar amount of controlled spending
by the total amount of spending, expressed
as a percentage. The opposite of Spend
Under Management is known as “maverick
spending,” buying from suppliers without
following established procurement department
processes and protocols. Research by the
Hackett Group indicates that among world
class companies, an average of 97.4 percent
of direct spend is Spend Under Management.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement KPIs
Supplier Compliance Rate
In a perfect world, suppliers are always willing
and able to deliver exactly what you need,
when and as needed, 100 percent of the time.
Unfortunately, the real world is a little more
messy. This metric measures the instances
of contractual or compliance problems among
suppliers; specifically compliant transactions
versus non-compliant transactions. Typically,
you’ll have an umbrella agreement with a
supplier outlining pricing, terms, etc. and
any transaction falling outside of this
agreement will count as non-compliant. Some
research indicates that mid-size companies
should shoot for a compliance rate of no less
than 50 percent.
Supplier Defect Rate
The Supplier Defect Rate measures the
number of a supplier’s transactions that fail
to meet quality assurance standards. The
number is calculated by dividing the number
of defective products received by the provider
by the total number of products received
by the provider in the same period of time
expressed as a percentage. Small increases
in the supplier defect rate can translate into
massive increases in a variety of costs, so
finding new ways to improve this number
through either supplier management and
smart selection is a good investment.
Acceptability varies by industry and business,
but 2.5 percent is a common generic
benchmark for an Acceptable Quality Level
(AQL) of major defects, with around 4 percent
for major defects.
13
Vendor Rejection Cost
This metric measures the financial impact
of a product rejection. Data regarding a
single purchase can be used for planning
or negotiating purposes. However, viewing
these numbers on a vendor-by-vendor or
enterprise-wide basis can also be helpful for
bigger-picture trend analysis. For example,
a satellite manufacturer demands a specific
type of chip for an upcoming launch. It hires
three providers. If the Turkish supplier of
boron required to manufacture the chip
delivers substandard quality product that
cannot be used, the manufacturer may not
only incur transactional and operational costs
relating to the order but also the overall cost
of a lost sale to its customer. All of these
costs combined would comprise the Vendor
Rejection Cost.
Emergency Purchase Ratio
Emergency purchases are expensive
purchases. Typically unplanned orders cost
more, are more expensive to deliver and
represent a higher degree of overall sourcing
uncertainty. This metric represents the number
of emergency purchases, divided by total
purchases—expressed as a percent. The
lower you can get your Emergency Purchase
Ratio, the more avoidable cost and risk you’ll
be able to drive out of your supply chain.
Sometimes last-minute changes simply
can’t be helped. But a higher-than-normal or
increasing Emergency Purchase Ratio could
be an indicator of planning processes that
need a rethink.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement KPIs
Procurement Cost Reduction
This metric is a dollar amount that represents
the amount of money that’s been saved
on any particular transaction as a result of
negotiations or discounts. This number can
be derived in a number of ways, including a
comparison of the previous price of a good
or service with the newly negotiated price.
While it’s impressive to see a total number
of dollars that strong procurement practices
have saved for all goods and services
annually, it’s often more useful to view this
metric in light of specific spending categories
or vendor classifications.
Procurement Cost Avoidance
Similar to Procurement Cost Reduction,
this metric tracks the dollar amount of
additional expenses that were saved due to
the application of responsible procurement
practices. For example, the additional cost
of expediting a shipment of timber and
other building materials from Georgia to the
construction site of a new lifestyle center in
Denver will run $37,200. However, accelerating
the procurement cycle in various ways will
allow for three extra weeks of delivery time,
negating the need for shipment expedition.
So on this transaction the Procurement Cost
Avoidance would be $37,200.
14
Procurement ROI Invoice Processing Cost
Pairing numbers such as Procurement Cost This is pretty straightforward, simply the total
Avoidance, Procurement Cost Savings and number of invoices your organization issued
other value-based metrics with procurement in a specific period of time divided by the total
overhead numbers can help you benchmark amount spent on the processing of invoices
and track the return-on-investment from during that same period. Components of
your organization’s procurement function. invoicing spend could include things like labor
This number would be used to calculate costs, supplies such as paper (the cost of
the total financial and operational costs which is increasingly expensive), technology
of your procurement department versus and infrastructure such as computers
the total financial and operational savings and access to specialized administrative
that it generates. According to research by applications, software and environments, etc.
Bain & Company, world-class procurement According to research by the American Quality
organizations can reduce purchasing costs by and Productivity Center, top performers have
an average of 8–12 percent while also adding an average cost-per-invoice of around $2.07
additional annual savings of 2–3 percent. USD, while poor performers can average $10.
That’s a lot of value. For highly complex invoices involving
extreme compliance, the cost
Total Number of Suppliers by Category can be even more.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early
2020, the focus of much supply chain
optimization went from cost cutting to adding
resilience. Global stock-outs of everyday
essentials reminded the world of the
importance of not just economics but also
depth in a supplier base. Tracking the total
number of available suppliers within specific
supplier categories can help you fight back
against the prospect of sourcing issues.
The point isn’t to have as many suppliers as
possible, because that creates other sorts
of problems. The point is to ensure enough
available, quality suppliers to minimize the
risk of sourcing problems while still optimizing
your economic position with each category
of vendor.

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement KPIs 15

Days Payable Outstanding
This is simply the average number of days it
takes for a company to pay a supplier once
it receives an invoice. For a specific period
of time, it is the average of the days it took to
pay all of the company’s supplier bills. Usually,
this is merely a measure of how efficient an
organization is at simply paying its bills. Some
companies assume a strategy of intentionally
raising its DPO in order to employ the short-
term cash that would otherwise have made
its way directly to suppliers. Companies with
an extremely high DPO make people nervous
because it can sometimes be seen as an
indicator not of a specific strategy but that the
company cannot pay its bills.
The Experts Say
“It’s important not to let your procurement
digitization effort stray into the realm
of the subjective. The capture of hard
metrics and other key performance
data before and after implementation
is essential to gauging implementation
success and getting leadership buy-in
for future digitization efforts. Never force
stakeholders to determine the success
of an initiative based on whether or not it
‘felt’ successful. Get the data you need for
the credit you deserve.”
—Arun Samuga
Elemica Chief Technology Officer

Payment Error Ratio

This metric merely measures the number
of incorrect payments divided by the total
number of payments within any given period
of time—multiplied by 100. Payment errors
obviously cause both direct, avoidable
cash loss as well as a number of potentially
complex supplier problems. Common errors
include incorrect amounts, incorrectly applied
tax rates, incorrect vendor information
(address, etc.), incorrect terms, duplicate
payments and other oversights.

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement KPIs 16

Common Inefficiencies with
Conventional ProcessesHigher Administrative Costs
If you’re reading this, you likely have some
existing stake in procurement and are
generally familiar with the processes and
issues at hand. So what’s wrong with the
way conventional procurement processes
usually work? Well, more often than not, the
many processes comprising a company’s
procurement function still demand a lot of
manual engagement.
By engagement we’re talking about simple
things like vendor selection, issuing purchase
orders and sending invoices. When a
procurement department does not have a
large percentage of its capabilities digitized,
interconnected and automated, a lot of easily
avoidable risk, waste, delay and overhead is
baked into the department’s performance.
It’s not that automated systems are preferable
to people when it comes to the work; it’s
actually that automated systems help the
people do a much better job at the work—
and even make their roles less stressful
and volatile. Here are some specific problems
with how conventional procurement
workflows operate for a number of
enterprises even today.
Sluggish Procurement Cycle Times
From the time your department receives a
requisition to the final delivery and acceptance
of the goods and services, manual-intensive
procurement takes longer. Much longer. In
fact, according to research from the APQC,
digital procurement platforms can take cycle
times from seven days to two.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Common Inefficiencies with Conventional Processes
More manual processes mean higher
administrative costs, which can significantly
increase overhead. Even if the manual
component of a task takes just ten minutes,
when considered at scale and across the
enterprise the time and money that can be
tied up in manual procurement tasks really
adds up.
Overspend
Any spend under management is in a better
place in that at least it’s controlled and
managed. Your procurement department is
better able to avoid things like fees, contract
non-compliance, expedited shipments and
other avoidable spend—as well as ensure
the enforcement of discounts—if it’s digitally
connected to suppliers.
Suboptimal Vendor Selection
A procurement department with an all-manual
vendor selection process is perfectly capable
of choosing the right supplier for a particular
purchase, service or role. After all, that’s
the way it’s been for hundreds of years. But
digitization and automation optimizes the
process, making it data-driven and much
more efficient.
“
Digital procurement platforms
can take cycle times from seven
days to two.
”
17
Less Informed Negotiation
Even with personnel who are best-in-class
negotiators, manual procurement processes
often fail to deliver a transactional advantage.
Digital, automated systems that are connected
to suppliers put real-time data regarding
prospect and supplier compliance, pricing,
performance, inventory, quality and other
aspects of their offering at hand to help you
come out ahead.
Delayed QA/QC Performance
For those responsible for ensuring that
supplier goods are on-spec and up to the
required quality standards, manual
processes make everything take longer.
Digital, automated processes often catch
deviances from order specification,
certification or quality standards before
they even arrive at the buyer facility.
Documentation Inaccuracies
Purchase orders. Invoices. Contracts. Even
with the best teams available, manual
processes translate into more inaccuracy
for every type of documentation within the
procurement value chain. Digitizing and
automating the creation and sharing of
documentation improves the accuracy of
documentation without fail.
Less Supplier Trust
All other things being equal, it’s more difficult,
and less rewarding, to do business with a
buyer tied to manual procurement processes.
They cut purchase orders with incorrect
information or terms, issue payments in the
wrong amount and are more prone to call
you with rush crises that could have been
avoided. These factors could lead to less
advantageous supplier terms or a less
desirable supplier pool.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Common Inefficiencies with Conventional Processes
Lower Customer Satisfaction
Automated procurement systems drive risk
and delay out of procurement. Without this
safety net, buyers could experience more
inconsistency in lead times, less confidence in
product or service quality and more potential
for product unavailability.
Reduced Team Productivity
Burdening high-value people with low-value
manual processes such as data entry or
laborious supplier communication makes
everyone less productive. There is an
opportunity cost associated with all of the
things your procurement team could be doing
if not lumbered with avoidable admin tasks,
and companies with manual processes pay
this price every day of operation.
Greater Risk of Stock-Outs
Automated supply chains are more robust
and far less prone to stock-outs. With manual
systems it’s more cumbersome and time
consuming to line up redundant suppliers in
each category, get red flags when certain key
inputs are at risk or receive an early warning
when a supplier is having issues of its own.
Delayed Procure-to-Pay
In a company with manual procurement
systems, everything takes longer. Sometimes
significantly longer—we’ll get to the details
later. But, as a result, the entire procure-to-pay
cycle is stretched out leading to a potentially
significant lead time for essential services.
18
What’s at Stake?
The Value of Procurement Optimization
So we’ve shared the downsides of manual, • According to reporting by McKinsey,
old-school procurement processes. But what’s industry benchmarks show “most
really on the line? Why bother automating organizations waste 3 to 4 percent
these processes? After all, if there’s anything of their overall external spend
on excessive transaction costs,
mankind has proven it’s that nobody much
inefficiency, and noncompliance.”
likes change. But in this case, change is worth
the effort. Our team has helped hundreds of • Kearney reports that, at current
organizations automate their procurement adoption rates, 60 to 70 percent
processes. Consider these facts: of existing processes at leading
procurement organizations could be
• According to Procurement Leaders, a fully automated within three years.
automated procurement function worldwide
could save the Global 5000 up to $86 billion
each year.
• The Boston Consulting Group reports that By the Numbers:
the digital transformation of procurement
can deliver incremental material cost “...9 of the top 20 companies
savings of 5 to 10 percent and productivity on the Fortune 500 list indicated
increases of 30 to 50 percent. in their annual reports to shareholders
that digital technologies are crucial for
• PwC Digital’s Procurement Survey, 3rd
edition (2020–2021), reports that 79 percent their procurement operations.”
of purchasing departments say that they Source: Boston Consulting Group
have seen improvements in business
performance, as well as organizational
benefits, as a result of deploying digital
procurement solutions.
• The Boston Consulting Group’s BCG
Strategic Procurement in the Digital Age
series states that 9 of the top 20 companies
on the Fortune 500 list indicated to
shareholders that digital technologies are
crucial for their procurement operations.

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • What’s at Stake? The Value of Procurement Optimization 19
Procurement Optimization Classes
Now let’s explore the specific processes
within the procure-to-pay cycle and some
specific transaction types that could be
optimized through digitization, connectivity
and automation.
Strategic Sourcing
Digitizing and automating your sourcing
function can radically transform both vendor
management, and vendor data management,
metrics. Augmenting your team with
automated sourcing capabilities gives them
an edge in finding, keeping and optimizing the
best vendors.
Purchase Order Automation
The automation of purchase order creation
and issuance exponentially improves the
accuracy and speed involved in the process.
You’ll also be able to get your team out from
under the mind-numbing process of purchase
order creation and management so they can
add more value.
Optimizing Scheduling Agreements
Scheduling agreements are a common tool to
manage repeat or bulk purchases. Automating
these structures also mitigates risk, cost and
delay from the purchasing process. Automated
delivery forecast tools let you ditch homemade
scheduling agreement spreadsheets and take
some of your life back.
Non-EDI Purchase Digitization
Most platforms tie in trading partners via a
direct EDI connection with major suppliers,
but there are tools available to digitize and
integrate long-tail suppliers too for more
awareness and control. This ability means you
can digitize suppliers like never before and
improve overall procurement visibility.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Optimization Classes
Supplier Visibility
Simply being able to access basic information
about your suppliers and various transactions
makes an enormous difference to purchase
efficiency, forecasting, customer service and
overall procurement performance.
Supplier Quality
Automating a number of supplier quality
management functions can let you detect
potential issues and problems before they
cause a disruption for you or your customers.
Put the power of visibility, data and analytics
to work for your procurement team.
Inventory Optimization
Automating certain functions through tools
such as Vendor Managed Inventory can help
optimize working capital, right-size inventory
and help prevent stock-outs. Supplier
digitization, integration and automation helps
break down barriers and build more strength
into your supply chain and operation.
Efficient Invoicing
Automating invoice quality and connectivity
helps accelerate invoice processing time,
speed up the procure-to-pay process and
improve invoice accuracy and compliance
levels overall. This can be an easy win in
the fight against preventable administrative
work, back-office complexity and customer
service risk.
20
Automation and Supplier Relationships
Many of the world’s leading corporations Supply chain automation is not meant to
have come to us because we can automate be weaponized against your suppliers as
the entirety of their supply chain in different a way to digitally nickel and dime them to
ways—collecting data to use in negotiations, death. It actually brings suppliers closer,
getting more insight into supplier products enabling tighter teamwork and more strategic
and operations and helping quantify and alliances. It lets you understand where they
commoditize various transactions to name may be struggling so you can plan around
a few ways. Supplier transactions that any potential problems. And it lets you tell
might have been negotiated over weeks a them what they, and you, can do better so that
few decades ago could now occur digitally, everybody wins.
automatically and sometimes with a ruthless
mathematical immediacy. This is just the free Sure, you want the best deal possible for
market going about its work. But let’s press every transaction, and suppliers need to
pause on all of this procurement automation be competitive to earn your business. But
talk for a brief reminder of something that is procurement automation tools bring you
essential for procurement teams to remember. undeniable commercial and operational
power. Use that power in a way that lifts all
Your suppliers are important. Very important. boats, empowering suppliers to do the best
And all of this technology and automation is job possible at the best price and with the
there to help collaborate more efficiently with best responsiveness.
suppliers so you can, sure, get the best deal
possible, but also get closer with suppliers in
a way that brings you competitive advantage.
According to recent work by IBM, up to 50
percent of a company’s value can depend
on its supplier relationships. In the past,
these relationships would have been called
“priceless.” Only today, digital supply chains
can tell you exactly what kind of value your
suppliers are bringing to the table; and it’s
usually a staggering number.

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Automation and Supplier Relationships 21

On the Issue of Accuracy
When many organizations first consider
automating their procure-to-pay cycle,
transactional efficiency is typically top of
mind. These are the sorts of functions that
streamline operations and help eliminate
administrative cost and time-wasting. Fair
enough. But often amongst all this talk of
streamlining, the issue of accuracy seems to
be minimized. In fact, digitizing and automating
procure-to-pay processes can have a huge
positive impact on your operational and
financial performance just through the
improvement of accuracy alone.
Across the procure-to-pay cycle, automation
can improve procurement-related accuracy in
a number of ways, including:
Generating More Accurate
1 Purchase Orders
Purchase orders containing errors
may not be approved, delaying
procure-to-pay cycle time and
creating operational or customer
service risk. Even worse, inaccurate
purchase orders may be approved—
paying for the wrong products, or
an incorrect number of products
or sending the whole shipment
somewhere it’s not needed.
Ensuring Accuracy within
2 Delivery Schedules
Recent research also indicates that
much like with purchase orders,
digitization and automation allows
buyers to ensure that all parties
are 100 percent on the same
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • On the Issue of Accuracy
page when it comes to products
purchased using delivery schedules.
Inaccuracies introduced when both
parties are shuffling around homemade
spreadsheets can have costly
ramifications in the form of rework,
avoidable hard costs, delays and poor
customer service. Automating to ensure
accuracy minimizes this risk.
Maintaining Correct Vendor Information
3 Sure, this sounds basic. Of course we
have accurate vendor information.
Right? Well, we all do in the beginning.
But did you keep the information
accurate going forward? Even from
long-tail vendors from whom you
don’t make frequent purchases? Even
amidst mergers and acquisition?
Even as COVID-19 reshuffled the
corporate landscape across hundreds
of industries? Automated procurement
environments allow you to keep more
accurate vendor information in an
efficient manner so everyone across
the supply chain can run efficiently.
Improving the Accuracy of Invoices
4 in General
Incorrect invoices are a fantastic way
to infuriate customers, both in the
business-to-business and business-
to-consumer arenas. In fact, research
shows that 49 percent of all disputes
that break out between a buyer and
seller are due to an incorrect invoice.
In addition, 61 percent of all late
22
 payments are a result of incorrect
invoices or invoices not issued in a
timely manner. When invoices can be
generated using automatically populated
data from supply chain partners, these
risks and costs shrink considerably.
Introducing Less Invoice
5 Compliance Risk
In addition to the invoice data itself
containing the correct transactional
content relating to the goods and
services at hand, an invoice can also
fail to be accurate from a compliance
standpoint. From correctly applied taxes,
duties, fees and other mandatories
to basics such as clearly established
authenticity, legibility and integrity,
missing or incorrect invoice information
can create big problems for your
organization. Automated invoicing
can ensure that you accurately apply
the correct standards to each
customer’s invoice, even when the
transaction has many moving pieces
in multiple countries.
Enabling More Accurate Vendor
6 Performance Analysis
On the aggregate, especially with
strong communication with the internal
stakeholders who requisition their goods
and services, procurement teams have
a general idea of how most vendors
are doing. But accurately assessing a
vendor’s performance relative to their
peers gets trickier as your organization
and its vendors scale. When you have
hundreds of vendors, and several
dozen within a specific category,
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • On the Issue of Accuracy
how can you efficiently and fairly
evaluate performance and position
yourself for negotiation of terms and
pricing? Automated procure-to-pay
lets you keep real-time data on hand
surrounding transactional performance
across the history of the vendor
relationship so you can make data-
driven decisions rather than relying on
more subjective approaches.
Ensuring Tighter Contract
7 Management
If automated procure-to-pay
environments allow you to tightly
manage and assess transactional
details, they can also do the same for
the bigger picture contracts that bind
trading partners. This is especially
important as supplier relationships,
and the needs or policies of your
organization, develop over time. From
matters of liability and indemnification
to privacy or special clauses relating
to blanket rates, fees, terms or service
levels—automated environments
ensure that you always know where
you stand so you can make the best
possible procurement decisions.
23
Procurement Process:
Strategic Sourcing
Strong sourcing can make or break an
organization. But conventional sourcing
demands a staggering amount of
administrative work. This admin weighs on
procurement teams, bogging them down
in relatively low-value tasks and keeping
them from the more strategic aspects of
their jobs. For those charged with ensuring
their organization has a high-performance
sourcing function, they might spend their day
performing any of the following things:
• Potential supplier identification
• Supplier due diligence
• New vendor setup
• Supplier relationship management
• Supplier contract management
These are all things that are critical for
maintaining business preformance, but
they are absolute time killers. For larger
organizations, each of these sourcing areas
is often its own job function; for smaller
enterprises one team, or even one person,
may wear every hat. That’s especially painful.
What’s more, procurement professionals
who take up the sourcing function are often
hounded by every prospective vendor from
cleaning crews to component manufacturers
working hard for precious facetime to pitch
them on why their company is a highly-
strategic, value-adding partner worthy of
premium pricing and terms.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process: Strategic Sourcing
The good news is that your team can leverage
automation to get those responsible for
sourcing out of the weeds and into a position
to add more value while taking a lot of the
stress out of sourcing tasks. In fact, according
to research by McKinsey, it's possible to
automate 47 percent of vendor selection and
negotiation activities.
Building out digital infrastructure for suppliers,
and developing a digitally connected network
of certified providers, can replace time-
intensive admin with smart automation.
Leveraging technologies such as artificial
intelligence, robotic processing automation,
optical character recognition, advanced
modeling and more, your team can get out
from under endless voicemails and paperwork
to start better applying their expertise.
Sourcing automation can be enabled in a
variety of ways. In conjunction with supplier
ERP environments, trading partners can
establish a direct digital connection with key
strategic suppliers. Even if you only connect
the 20 percent of mission-critical suppliers
which provide the 80 percent of your core
purchases, you have completely reinvented
supplier transaction efficiency.
By the Numbers:
47 percent of vendor-selection and
negotiation can be automated.
Source: McKinsey
24
For those suppliers with whom purchases are
less frequent, or with less important supplier
categories, companies can deploy proprietary
technology into a sourcing environment
that captures and digitizes key sourcing
intelligence for use in automation efforts. This
approach typically requires no back-office to
back-office connectivity implementations, and
in some cases trading partners are not even
aware that a digitization effort is taking place.
Digitizing functions surrounding sourcing can
help you:
• Build an interconnected network of
trusted suppliers
• Leverage buying power and model best-
case purchase scenarios
• Capture and analyze sourcing-related
ERP master data
• Drive avoidable sourcing admin out of
your procurement department
• Get more value from supplier
relationships of all kinds
When all prospective and existing suppliers
are connected, your sourcing efforts go from
being a pain point to a competitive advantage.
Your team goes from stressed out and busy
to empowered and informed. Your supplier
options in each category take you from having
more questions to having more options. And
the whole function can be managed in a way
that cuts admin down to the bone.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process: Strategic Sourcing
The Experts Say
“Over the course of one’s career, it’s
amazing how much business processes
evolve. Mid-century sourcing issues
often involved golf or a three-martini
lunch. Today, advances in things like
robotic process automation, complex
modeling and artificial intelligence mean
purchasers can be smarter and more
strategic about how they source. Buyers
come armed with definitive insights,
strong positions and substantive
questions. In fact, AI on both sides of the
prospective transaction might confirm
optimal sourcing decisions automatically
for both parties, without humans having
much of a role.”
—Brett Renken
Elemica Marketing Director
Fun Facts:
Advertisium Gladitorium
An official endorsement has always
gone a long way toward making
purchasers feel better. Prior to the
start of their deadly festivities, Roman
gladiators used to read out product
endorsements prior to fighting. So how
come these warrior pitches weren’t
included in the 2000 film Gladiator,
with Russell Crowe? The filmmakers
were afraid audiences wouldn’t believe
that was really a thing back in the day.
25
Procurement Process:
Purchase Order Management
Purchase orders are a critical business
document, enabling procurement departments
to communicate specific demands to
suppliers in a way that outlines the agreed-
upon transaction in an organized fashion so
that both the buyer and the seller of goods
or services are on the same page. It’s not a
contract yet, at least until it’s accepted by
the seller, but rather a way to standardize the
sales process. From the buyer’s point of view,
purchase orders bring more control to the
transaction—communicating what exactly they
wish to buy and how they wish to buy it.
As a seller, purchase orders are valuable as a
way to document a customer’s intention to buy
for the purposes of getting credit, forecasting
or the performance of operational planning.
When an airline buys a Boeing 787 Dreamliner,
it doesn’t just Venmo Boeing $300M or write
a check as one would when buying an SUV.
The airline will instead issue a purchase
order, enabling all parties involved in the
transaction to carefully track and plan each
step until a series of milestones are reached
and, eventually, the $300M will be remitted to
Boeing according to the agreed-upon terms.
Enterprise-specific processes vary. But in a
conventionally run procurement department,
purchase orders come into play once both
procurement and internal stakeholders agree
upon a specific quotation from a vendor.
Multiple RFQs will have been sent, leading to
several competitive quotations having been
issued by multiple prospective suppliers.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Purchase Order Management 26
In-depth analysis of the vendors and their
respective products and services will have
taken place. At the end of the competitive
process, final negotiation with a selected
vendor will take place resulting in a final
quotation and its pricing, terms and conditions.
Based on the information in this final
quotation, a member of the buyer’s
procurement team will create a purchase
order by entering this information into the
company’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
system. Various internal procurement and
finance stakeholders will review the purchase
order and approve it before it’s issued to the
vendor. The PO is then dispatched, and could
go through a round of required changes based
on either internal or external feedback. An
Advanced Shipping Notice is issued. The buyer
receives the goods or services, inspecting
them and formally accepting them. A notice
of receipt is issued, prompting the seller to
issue an invoice. The buyer checks the invoice,
authorizes it and disburses the funds to the
seller. In all, there are more than a dozen steps
and several dozen sub-processes involved in
the deployment of a purchase order. And each
of these processes involves, on the aggregate,
significant administration.
Purchase orders can be automated in a
number of different ways. The good news is
that most enterprises have automated the
creation, sharing and approval of purchase
orders within the enterprise. Research
shows that 96 percent of companies have
automated the purchase order processes.
Now enterprises are going beyond in-
house digitization to automate PO-related
functions outside of the supply chain. This
can work in a number of different ways.
For large-volume suppliers, purchase order
automation involves establishing a direct
connection with suppliers’ back-office
systems. This can be done in a system-
agnostic way between buyers and sellers
with completely different IT environments,
ERP systems or procurement/sales
platforms. Making this happen from a
technology standpoint could involve—
depending on your enterprise and supply
chain—proprietary platforms, flexible
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs),
Robotic Process Automation, machine
learning and a bit of data alignment and
enrichment programming to ensure that
data quality is preserved across the supply
chain. It also demands some advanced
conversion programming to reconcile
structured vs. unstructured transaction and
vendor data.
Establishing multiple connections with
major suppliers in this way creates a digital
supply network that serves to strengthen
your supply chain and bring multiple
economies to your company’s procurement
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Purchase Order Management 27
function. Buyers will be able to manage the
entire purchase order lifecycle digitally, and
with a high degree of automation. According
to research by the APQC, top performing
companies approve 98 percent of all purchase
orders automatically while bottom performers
only automate around 55 percent. When
automated, almost every step in the process
will now happen in a matter of seconds,
requiring only perfunctory review.
Automating the creation, sharing and
processing of purchase orders can affect
three primary aspects: cost, accuracy and
speed. The creation and management of
purchase orders is often a stealth cost, whose
significant administrative demands eat up
far more resources than most organizations
realize. According to the APQC, the cost to
generate a purchase order ranges from $35.88
to $506.52. Some industry estimates that the
potential cost is even higher on average. Of
course, these costs vary quite a bit depending
on your specific industry. What really matters
is the time, money, resources and opportunity
cost it takes for your enterprise to deal with
purchase orders effectively and efficiently.
“
The cost to generate a
purchase order ranges
from $35.88 to $506.52.
”
How can purchase order problems add up?
Let’s look at this hypothetical example of a simple purchase of a $1000 widget from Germany.
While the details may not track with your specific supplier, the general accrual of delays and
axtra costs will be the same.

Manual PO with Errors Error-Free and Automated

PO Creation $200 PO Creation $40

Product $1000 Product $1000
Sales Tax $0 Sales Tax $0
Duty $42.50 Duty $42.50
Shipping $175 Shipping $175
***INCORRECT ORDER***

Priority $50
Fulfillment

New PO $200
Product $1000
Restocking $100
Shipping $700
(Expedited)
Duty $42.50

Total $2,510 Total $1,257.50

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Purchase Order Management 28
From an accuracy standpoint, automating the
purchase order lifecycle takes the percentage
of documents containing errors down to
practically nil. High-quality data from the
trading partners’ own systems are used to
automatically populate purchase order fields,
which then provides high-confidence data to
all other phases of the transaction. And the
entire procure-to-pay cycle is accelerated,
with steps that previously took days now
taking mere seconds or minutes. Everything
from receipt notifications to three-way
matching—a method to compare a PO with
an invoice and what’s been received—is
chain automation has saved the world’s best
companies billions of dollars, and will only
become more commonplace as corporate and
investor pressure demands better business
performance and lower SG&A costs for all
classes of enterprise.
By the Numbers:
The world’s best companies automate
the approval of 98 percent of all
purchase orders.
Source: AQPC

performed automatically.

All things considered,

automating PO-related
functions outside of the
enterprise is a natural and
profitable extension of
the PO automation that’s
taken place within the
enterprise via ERP
systems over the last
few decades. This
aspect of supply

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process: Purchase Order Management 29
Procurement Process:
Optimizing Scheduling Agreements
Scheduling agreements are a useful tool for
certain types of businesses and industries. A
scheduling agreement is basically a type of
purchasing agreement, usually a long-term
and recurring one, that lays out an itemized
and specific quantity of goods or services to
be delivered or performed within a specific
time period. These agreements bring structure
to a supplier relationship. For example, a gas
station may engage in a scheduling agreement
to purchase 28,000 gallons of fuel per week.
The nature of the business means these
recurring purchases will be essential. So rather
than merely create a disparate but essentially
identical purchase order for fuel every week,
the gas station would develop a scheduling
agreement that serves as a blanket ongoing
order. These agreements are typically used in
conjunction with a larger purchasing contract.
Conventional Scheduling Agreements
In a conventional, manual scheduling
agreement a surprising number of businesses
still use a homemade spreadsheet. The buyer
or seller will create a document, either a
version-controlled static document or a live
one on Google Docs or some such platform,
stating the proposed product or service types,
delivery quantities and specific dates on which
the buyer would like their order delivered. The
buyer will submit this document with all of the
proposed transaction details, or send an email
asking the seller to please review the online
document. The two parties will go back and
forth solidifying the agreement for a certain
period of time until they come to terms on
what each is willing and able to do.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Optimizing Scheduling Agreements 30
The problem is that maintaining these
spreadsheets becomes a job in itself,
eating up a ton of time—especially when
you scale up the process for multiple trading
partners. So if our gas station also had
scheduling agreements with providers of
snack foods, CO2 for the soda machines,
ice deliveries and a dozen others then it
would basically be someone’s full-time job
to just manage this patchwork of scheduling
agreement spreadsheets.
Automating These Recurring Purchases
Procurement departments can eliminate
spreadsheets for scheduling agreements by
taking them out of the world of documents and
into an integrated digital platform. This can be
established through a direct EDI connection
with key suppliers, or by other means such
as advanced data capture applications. A
centralized system would integrate data from
trading partners in a variety of formats and
provide “one truth” for the agreement and its
subsequent transaction statuses.
By establishing a direct digital connection
with trading partners, procurement teams
can gain a number of efficiencies. In addition
to all trading partners looking at the same
data, buyers could actively change, cancel
and initiate orders actively without the need
for cumbersome email chains or voicemails.
Whenever a vendor makes a delivery that
satisfies the terms set by the scheduling
agreement, buyers would be able to get a
real-time ship notice. Users could check where
orders stood compared to the scheduling
agreement at any time. And all of the
agreement’s data and activity could be stored
securely in the cloud for tighter analysis. All on
an automated basis with no time-consuming
back-and-forth communication.
And, most importantly, the procurement
team can get out from under the endless
spreadsheets. If your team has just three
separate scheduling agreements, and each
demands a dozen hours a week to change,
share, etc., you’re close to saving an entire
week’s worth of effort your team could be
putting into something with greater strategic
value. In addition, integrating and automating
scheduling agreement activity keeps data
quality high—ensuring fewer errors and
oversights. That means protecting your
operational continuity and reducing overall
enterprise risk. Much like the automation of
purchase order management, automating
scheduling agreements can make a big
difference in overall procurement and
business performance.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Optimizing Scheduling Agreements
The Experts Say
“Sometimes people ask me who
Elemica’s biggest competitors are. That’s
a tough question because most of what
we do doesn’t compete against other
technology platforms or supply chain
consultancies—it merely enhances
whatever environment or tools our
customer already has in place. Our
biggest competitor is actually ‘The Status
Quo.’ It’s easy to get into the habit of
doing something a certain way, even
when that method or tool is clearly
suboptimal. It’s just human nature. Even
within organizations, we are creatures of
habit and it takes a real wake-up call to
get away from a broken-but-familiar way
of doing something.”
—Matt McAluney
Chief Commercial Officer
31
Procurement Process:
Non-EDI Purchase Digitization
Every enterprise has key suppliers that are
critical to their business and its operations.
From a Pareto analysis standpoint, your
essential 20 percent of vendors who supply
mission-critical inputs and products to your
business warrant a significant procurement
process automation investment. It’s worth
the time and money to engage in extensive
collaboration with the corporate, operational
and technical leadership of these trading
partners so that you can deploy rigorous
digital supply chain efforts that will ensure
continuity of supply, effective forecasting
and better protections against stock-outs on
the whole.
But what about the other 80 percent? How
about those “long tail” suppliers? These are
suppliers you don’t buy from frequently, or
for whom your purchase volume or spend is
modest. Because you’re not always buying
everyday essentials from these suppliers,
they may not be top of mind. But when you
look at a list of all of your suppliers you may
realize that, taken on the aggregate, they are a
large part of your overall supplier base. From
a procurement digitization and automation
standpoint, this is a problem. While it’s worth
investing in an EDI connection with a supplier
from which you buy millions of components
every single month, it’s likely not worth it
to launch a platform integration effort with
the company that sells you $5,000 worth of
warehouse coatings every two years.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Non-EDI Purchase Digitization
Still, it can cost a lot of money and incur
a significant amount of avoidable risk and
delay to just ignore these types of vendors.
Your enterprise may have hundreds, or even
thousands, of them. Optimizing that essential
20 percent and intentionally letting purchases
from the other 80 percent take too long,
contain too many errors and cost too much
just isn’t a good plan for any enterprise.
This is especially true given that, when their
spend or purchase volume is added together,
these long-tail vendors can have a significant
impact on your overall operational or financial
purchasing profile. Most enterprises that do
not intentionally seek to digitize and automate
purchasing with these smaller vendors
typically only do so because they are unaware
that they have a choice.
Fun Facts:
Your Tax Dollars at Work
Who is the largest procurer of goods
and services on the entire planet?
The United States government. The
Department of Defense accounts for
most of its purchasing.
Source: Cornell
32
The good news is that technological advances
are giving purchasing departments new
By the Numbers:
options in digitizing the purchasing data
surrounding these long-tail suppliers. One On average, payroll costs, or the cost
way that’s often overlooked by procurement of labor, is the single greatest spending
departments is to capture email-based data category that a business has—easily
and use that to automatically populate your accounting for 70 percent of all
procurement-related ERP functionality. Using spend and sometimes more.
optical character recognition, you could deploy
Source: Spendesk
an application that captures data from order
confirmations and other communications

“
via email, PDFs, spreadsheets and other
documents and formats. This data can be run
through a quality control process and then Transactions can be entered
entered into your ERP in real-time based on into your system more quickly
when these communications are received. and with greater accuracy than
ever before.

”
With technology like this in place, now
previously “dark purchases” from vendors for
whom it wouldn’t be worth a conventional EDI
digital supplier connection can be captured
and digitized at scale. Transactions can be
entered into your system more quickly and
with greater accuracy than ever before for
this class of customer. Order status from
these providers can be updated in your ERP
like never before, and transaction data will be
automatically captured for easier performance
analysis of the supplier. All in a way that
doesn’t disrupt business as usual;
the installation of this sort of application
requires only a simple test. Otherwise
suppliers wouldn’t even be aware that anything
has changed.

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Non-EDI Purchase Digitization 33
Procurement Process:
Supplier Visibility
Digital supply chain technology can do a lot
of impressive, and technically complicated,
things for an organization. But, sometimes,
the most value-adding aspect of a digital
procurement tool is the simple ability to tell
you what’s going on with a specific vendor
or order. Without the means to see inventory
or order status directly, you’re at the mercy
of the supplier’s sales and customer service
team. Everything takes longer, there is the
potential for miscommunication and, let’s face
it, sometimes nobody wants to tell the buyer
potentially bad news until it may be too late.
Supplier visibility refers to the capability of
an organization to access timely information
about raw materials, components and other
manufacturing inputs—as well as finished
products—before they are received by the
buyer. The buyer may be a manufacturer,
distributor, retailer or end user. Because of the
prevalence of ERP systems today, suppliers
often have the data you need to optimize your
procurement and supply chain efficiency on
hand. Only that information is often trapped
within the enterprise, and not available to be
shared across the supply chain on demand.
The lack of supplier visibility can create a
number of challenges. The highest-profile
challenge is, of course, the risk of supply chain
disruption. 2021 reveals a global Fortune
500 landscape in which organizations are
attempting to stack every category deep in
an effort to prevent disruption. Continuity and
redundancy are key issues. And buyers are
hungry to monitor the progress of supplier
materials, inputs and orders on an almost
hourly basis. Because supplier issues can
cause stock-outs, manufacturing disruptions
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Supplier Visibility
and other catastrophic problems organizations
will go to great lengths to achieve visibility for
this reason alone.
However, there are other great reasons to want
to improve supplier visibility for all classes of
vendor. These include:
• To monitor product quality in a
proactive fashion
• To track materials and components
from cradle to grave
• To help verify social responsibility and
ESG compliance
• To streamline logistics when needed
• To help optimize inventory planning
and spending
The Experts Say
“Digitizing across the supply chain to
achieve increased supplier visibility
used to be something that progressive
enterprises did to gain a competitive
advantage. Today, at a certain caliber of
company, stakeholders and investors
expect this kind of supply chain
awareness and intelligence. And today’s
environment of supply chain friction and
complexity is only reinforcing the need
for organizations to, at a minimum, see
what’s going on.”
—Valerie Kearns
VP Product Management
34
Since COVID-19 began pressure-testing
supply chains in 2020, the resulting lessons
learned have been touted as cautionary tales
of why companies need to improve their level
of supplier visibility. The truth is, however,
that companies have craved more supplier
visibility far before the COVID-19 supply chain
crunch. A study way back in 2013 reported
that roughly half of all manufacturing execs
didn’t really have much visibility beyond their
Tier 1 suppliers. Only around 60 percent of
larger businesses ask their largest suppliers
about matters of business continuity (smaller
suppliers got even less attention).
Today the push is on to access supplier data
to fuel a variety of decisions regarding not only
procurement and purchasing but also general
operational strategy and contingency planning.
By establishing access to digital supplier data,
organizations can streamline operations and
improve decision quality by:
• Staying plugged into real-time order
status for more accurate operational risk
assessments of potential stock-outs and
disruptions)
• Getting ahead of supplier-driven supply
chain problems so you can communicate
early with customers to manage
expectations in light of potential delays
• Accessing real-time quality, inspection
and certification data of incoming goods
to ensure that they are on spec and meet
quality mandates
• Getting early warning detection of
potential supply chain issues on the
part of the supplier, so you can make
informed and proactive decisions
surrounding contingencies
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Supplier Visibility 35
• Providing more accurate data that can be
used to assess supplier performance and
help better negotiate pricing and terms
• Early warning detection of potential issues
Aside from all of these operational
disruptions and risk management drivers, the
need to ensure that suppliers can confirm
their Environmental, Social and Governance
(ESG) credentials has become a major driver
for improved supplier visibility since the mid-
2000s when the movement began gaining
widespread popularity following a major
push by the United Nations. Organizations
concerned with ESG can access digital
supplier data to confirm antitrust and
competitive practices, health and safety,
environmental performance and several
other aspects of a supplier’s ESG position.
So before your organization’s procurement
group feels the need to create all kinds of
fancy digital supply chain implementations,
keep in mind that there is a lot of peace
of mind to be had simply by knowing the
answer to the question: “What’s going on
with my order?”
By the Numbers:
A more recent study showed that
around 9 percent of companies
didn’t even know who their key
suppliers were.
Procurement Process:
Supplier Quality
A company is only as good as its suppliers.
That’s why it’s so advantageous for
organizations to digitize and automate supplier
quality assurance and quality control functions
wherever possible. In a manually intensive
supplier QA/QC process, goods are received
and inspected at the buyer plant. For many
products, it’s not always easy to catch items
that might be out of specification or that do
not quite meet their required quality standards.
The buyer’s team will check the paperwork,
if they can find it, and review all of the
required certifications.
Manual Supplier Quality Processes
If something is clearly off, they will not accept
the goods and return the order. The seller will
be responsible for returning the unacceptable
items and the buyer will experience a delay
as acceptable products are then re-deployed
from the vendor. In worst-case scenarios, this
delay could result in stock-outs or production
disruptions. What’s more, this sort of problem
then creates a whole new chain of tasks for
all trading partners involved. Your team must
inform the seller what needs doing prior to
acceptance of a new order. Everyone must get
on the same page and then, as remediation
occurs, keep all parties updated via a long
chain of emails, texts and conference calls.
Even if the buyer is being proactive in
performing supplier quality audits, and no
specific order is involved, pulling together all
of the seller’s compliance and certification
work represents a significant undertaking
when manual processes are involved. This
process gets even more cumbersome when
performing a supplier quality analysis across
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Supplier Quality 36
your supplier base as a whole, since an
accurate analysis is only as strong as the data
at hand. Pulling individual statistics across
dozens or hundreds of suppliers can quickly
become a full-time job.
Digitally Connected Supplier Quality
Establishing a direct digital connection with
suppliers, or engaging suppliers on a shared
digital platform where order data can be
captured, changes everything when it comes
to supplier quality processes. According to
research performed by Boston Consulting
Group, digital technology can help reduce
procurement quality issues by as much as
60-70 percent. Rather than wait for a problem
shipment to arrive, a direct digital connection
to key suppliers will mean that you can
cross-check supplier goods for key quality
assurance and quality control metrics before
they leave the supplier facility. Specifications
such as sizes, gauges, configurations, options,
etc., and quality checks such as inspections,
documentation, certification, etc. can be
confirmed. Know everything about what you’re
getting and prevent unacceptable products
from being delivered before it happens.
Digitally integrated supplier quality processes
streamline practically every aspect of this
function—saving time, risk, delay, money and
frustration for all parties involved. By getting
the chance to double-check order details and
qualifications before giving them the green
light for shipment, the percentage of out-of-
specification or unusable orders shrinks to
practically zero for suppliers that are digitally
connected. When there is an issue, a digital
platform connecting buyers and suppliers
lets all parties communicate the specific
required corrective actions it will take to make
things right. And this happens all in one place,
with all of the contextual data at hand—no
confusion, voicemails or ambiguous statuses.
And auditing the quality performance of one or
all suppliers becomes much more simple, as
digital records can be accessed instantly.
What’s more, supplier traceability can be
easily traced throughout its lifecycle. For
example, an automobile manufacturer can
trace a specific shipment of microprocessors,
paint or plastic components and quickly
access which specific vehicles now contain
these materials or components from the plant
to the parking lot. This sort of accountability
exists in manual supplier quality assurance
and control programs as well, but the
process is much more cumbersome and
time-consuming.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Supplier Quality
Practically every manufacturer and distributor
in your supply chain is doing its absolute best
to improve the quality of its work within its own
four walls. But true excellence in quality takes
a village—extending beyond the enterprise
and across every trading partner in the supply
chain. That means collaboration. As Deloitte
reported as a “key takeaway” in its 2020
quality report The Automotive Industry’s View
on the Current State of Quality and a Strategic
Path Forward, “The effort to implement
improvements should be shared across the
entire supply chain, as should the cost (time,
resources, and money) of quality.”
By the Numbers:
According to research by the Boston
Consulting Group, manufacturers
who digitized procurement saw a
cost savings of 5 to 10 percent
on materials.
Source: Boston Consulting Group
37
Procurement Process:
Inventory Optimization
Another way to automate procurement is to
make reordering easier and more economical
through automation. With a lot of these
procure-to-pay functions, digitization of a
specific transaction type is transformed
through automation; there was an old,
manual way to do it and now there is a new
and more efficient way that’s comprising best
practices worldwide. But this level of real-
time inventory supplier collaboration has only
been made possible at this level of efficiency
through the latest digital procurement
automation technology.
Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI), also known
as managed inventory, supplier-assisted
inventory or continuous replenishment, is
a program whereby your suppliers can see
when you are about to stock out of a certain
item or material and can then automatically
replenish them without your having to do
anything. With these systems, suppliers are
able to access a special portal that lets them
view your inventory levels in real-time within
the context of the buyer’s ERP environment.
So you’ll basically be looking at a customer
screen within their SAP, Oracle or whatever
ERP system the buyer uses.
Suppliers can then proactively manage your
inventory levels through that portal based on
either real-time demand or forecasting data.
You can implement business rules that make
it easier to optimize these replenishments
over time, including demand-variable
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Inventory Optimization
safety stocks, vendor-dependent lead times,
seasonal market dynamics and more. And you
can balance your need for continuous supply
with your need to not overstock with inventory
that might not move in a timely fashion. These
programs can be absolute lifesavers, saving
your team time and money, as well as giving
you the peace of mind that you’ll probably
never have to worry about keeping sufficient
stocks of inventory on hand.
Some procurement departments are more
comfortable than others when it comes to
VMI arrangements. For those who place a
premium on ensuring that they always have
the inventory levels to ensure continuous
availability of products, they make life
much easier. The buyer gives the supplier
permission to deliver a new order of goods
or materials when inventories reach a certain
pre-negotiated trigger level. These should be
no surprises. Remember, you’re in total control
of when ordering takes place. Some buyers
avoid these programs because they feel they
want more control over the goods and services
involved. But if you’re satisfied with the
restocking levels and terms, and you trust the
supplier to live up to their commitment, there’s
really very little downside.
Buyers can also set upper limits to inventory
too, so that sellers can digitally check how
much of something you have on hand and
help you avoid over-buying. This may not
seem like much. But, at scale across many
38
product types and volumes, this automated
optimization of inventory levels can go a
long way in helping make the most of
working capital.
In all, these programs are a great way to
accelerate and optimize procure-to-pay
processes for a certain percentage of sales.
Orders are placed directly and automatically,
minimizing the chance of errors. And it makes
for a more resilient supplier environment.
Many businesses carry minimal inventory
in a just-in-time fashion. After global
supply chain complications arose from
the COVID-19 pandemic, an estimated 62
percent of manufacturers said they expect
implementation of inventory-light models to
decrease. Regardless of inventory strategy,
however, VMI could be a good way to ensure
that you’ll always have what you need
for business continuity—delivering more
confidence in sourcing with the freedom to
make adjustments as they see fit.
Fun Facts:
Giganormous
What is the largest warehouse in the
world? It’s the Tesla Gigafactory just
outside of Sparks, Nevada. At 5.3
million square feet, this beast of a
warehouse is so big that you could fit
almost 2,000 average sized American
homes inside of it. The facility broke
ground in 2014, bumping the Boeing
factory in Everett, Washington down
to second place at 4.3 million square
feet. The world’s largest building in
general is the New Century Global
Center in Chengdu, China at a massive
18.9 million square feet.

VMI Program Implementation

Many of the world’s leading corporations
implement these programs with great success.
However, it’s important to remember that while
it’s useful to “set it and forget it” for some
purchasing categories, don’t forget to maintain
strong communication with trading partners.
It’s important that any major demand changes,
for example, are communicated to suppliers
so that the appropriate level of supply is
ensured. Don’t open 12 new manufacturing
plants without telling the suppliers who will
now have to replenish inventory at a much
faster pace.

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process: Inventory Optimization 39

Procurement Process:
Keeping Invoices in Check
Properly and efficiently processing invoices
is also a critical part of procure-to-pay.
Though each enterprise is structured
differently, many procurement teams play
a critical role in working with finance and
accounting departments to ensure that
invoice processing supports contractual
obligations, responsible cash management,
the fair treatment of suppliers, strong credit
management and efficient accounts payable
department operations. In a conventional
manual process for invoice processing, a
number of things must happen along the way.
These include:
• Receipt of the invoice via mail, email or
other means
• Entry of the invoice into the ERP
environment or accounting software
• Confirmation of invoice information
against the purchase order
• Verification with internal stakeholders
that transactional needs have been met
• Formal invoice approval by all
reviewing parties
• Submission of the invoice for final
processing and payment
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Keeping Invoices in Check 40
As with other manually intensive processes,
the time and effort to perform all of the
necessary administration of this paperwork
really adds up—not to mention the avoidable
risks introduced into the process. It takes a
lot of administration to perform each of these
steps manually, even when using an ERP
system. On average, 30 minutes is required
for someone on the accounts payable team
to enter an invoice into the system. Industry
research places the cost of processing a
single invoice at between $6.73 and $40. For
extremely complex invoices, the cost can be
even higher. While these figures seem benign
on the surface, they can have staggering
implications at scale.
“
Industry research places the cost
of processing a single invoice at
between $6.73 and $40.
”
Automating Invoice Processes
By digitizing supplier invoice data and
automating many of the routine checks,
approvals and processes involved in invoice
administration, your business can improve the
effectiveness of your overall AP function while
minimizing and simplifying the processing
of incoming invoices. Whether through a
direct EDI connection or the deployment of
an application that captures incoming invoice
data, your business can:
• Automate the entry of invoice data into
your ERP
• Eliminate human error relating to invoice
data entry
• Digitally check the invoice against the PO
upon receipt
• Get an automated confirmation that the
invoice should be paid
• Approve and submit the invoice
for processing
• Get digital confirmation that payment has
been made
Rather than burying your team in mind-
numbing invoicing tasks, they can simply
perform quick quality checks of the
automated data and then spend their
time doing more interesting and value-
added tasks. By eliminating the excessive
administration surrounding conventional,
manual invoicing you will fractionalize the
cost of processing each invoice. Some
enterprises could get their cost-per-
invoice numbers below $10, and maybe
even below $3.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Procurement Process:
Keeping Invoices in Check
Automated, digitally connected invoice
processing also means that your business
will save on fines and fees due to late or
incorrect payments. Your procurement team
can be more strategic about the timing and
precision of payments. With the time it takes
to process a single invoice now going from
30 minutes to 30 seconds, your team can
completely rethink the way it approaches
invoice processing. It takes, on average,
more than $50 in administrative costs to
correct just a single invoicing mistake. So
eliminating human error will also reduce
rework costs. In all, automation goes a long
way in helping you improve both invoicing
efficiency and performance.
By the Numbers:
The APQC’s Open Standards
Benchmarking Accounts Payable
Survey shows that on average, even
top performers report that .8%
of all annual disbursements
are either duplicates or
contain errors.
Source: APQC
41
Reporting and Data Management
Purchase orders. Inventory. Invoicing. It’s easy
to get caught up in the details of functional-
specific initiatives when searching to automate
and streamline your procure-to-pay cycle. But
it’s also good to take a step back and explore
how procurement automation can help you
transform the way you’re able to manage
procurement activity as a whole.
One managerial aspect of procurement
management that’s greatly improved through
automation and supply chain connectivity is
the reporting function. Whether performing
assessments on your own departmental
performance, or that of a trading partner, a
lot of high-quality data is required to plan,
organize and control your organization’s
procurement function. Automated procure-
to-pay systems can make accessing that
powerful, real-time data easier. Sure, your ERP
system will be able to give you a snapshot of
current enterprise procurement statistics and
historical data; maybe even forecasts. But only
through digital connectivity can you simplify
the process of complementing this data
through real-time trading partner insights.
In addition, procurement functions that are
digitally connected across the supply chain
make auditing and forensics much more
manageable. There are industries in which
teams spend weeks pulling together metrics
and data from a number of suppliers and
departments to satisfy auditing requirements.
You’ll be able to find all of your essential
documents in one place, and feel good
knowing that everything has been stored
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Reporting and data Management
securely and in a cost-effective manner.
Digital platforms can also help streamline the
management, maintenance and negotiation of
contracts between trading partners.
Fun Facts:
Crypto Goes Corporate
Long exclusively the purview of the
tech world, cryptocurrencies are now
getting more and more attention for
corporate interests. More than 15,000
businesses now accept Bitcoin, as
well as other cryptocurrencies. More
than 300,000 Bitcoin transactions take
place daily.
The Experts Say
“Optimizing a company’s procurement
department is both an art and a science.
They straddle the fence between internal
and external stakeholders, and have
a significant impact on a company’s
operational and capital efficiency.
Automation is helping them be more
strategic. They’re centralizing and
focusing their data for more efficiency,
insight and competitive advantage.”
—Ryan Borland
Elemica Director of Sales and
Business Development
42
Project Implementation Approaches
According to research by Bain & Company,
80 percent of executives believe they need
to do more to take advantage of the latest
digital procurement tools. Almost everyone
understands how valuable these types
of initiatives are. The problem for many
organizations is not quite knowing how to
get started. What would a project like this
look like? How would you tackle such an
implementation? Do you overhaul all of your
procurement processes at once? How would
you get customers, suppliers, carriers and
other trading partners on board? How much
of their participation would even be required?
One Process at a Time
Typically the automation of your procurement
function is not performed all at once but
rather one project at a time—taking on single
processes within the cycle one by one. This
is for a variety of reasons, some technical
and others practical. Practically speaking
these projects are easier to champion and
receive approval to initiate one-by-one
than they are as one large implementation.
Typically, one process is automated, and
then data is collected proving out the
return on investment. Once the hard-dollar
value of automating that process, has
been established the company will move
on to automated the next process in the
procurement cycle and so forth until the
entire cycle is automated.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Project Implementation Approaches
Which Processes Should You Automate First?
That depends. The quick answer is that most
organizations choose to automate the process
within your procure-to-pay cycle that delivers
the most value, the most quickly. This depends
on a number of factors, including an honest
assessment of the current state of each
process within the cycle—purchase order
processing, invoicing, etc.—and how already
streamlined or suboptimal each might be.
Elemica actually performs a
consulting service known as a Digital
Transformation Journey workshop,
in which we work closely with your
team to map out the most profitable
order in which to automate various
processes across your supply
chain, including your procurement
processes. At the end of this
engagement, your team will get a
customized Digital Transformation
Roadmap, which will detail the order
in which you should digitize, connect
and automate various projects.
43
Elemica Digital Transformation Journey

Take an initial procurement snapshot. Explore what actions it would take to

1 Initially we seek to create a snapshot
of your current procurement
processes. This includes mapping
suppliers, partners, customers, etc.
end-to-end across the supply chain
as well as detailing the systems,
platforms, technologies and teams that
currently make it all happen. The goal
is 100 percent accuracy and honesty.
Identify procurement problem areas.
2 The next step entails identifying
problems. How closely does your
snapshot align with an ideal situation?
What problems and challenges exist?
What is broken and what, in a perfect
world, would this all look like? At
this stage, we’re just talking about
limitations and objectives, and
aren’t yet worried about the specifics
of solutions.
3 fix things.
Once we have soft spots identified,
we can explore what it takes to right
the ship for various aspects of your
procurement processes. This means
outlining very specific actions to
improve very specific KPIs across the
procure-to-pay cycle.
Determine your final roadmap
4 and priorities.
Finally, we’ll build a detailed
procurement connectivity roadmap.
This will include the most logical
and profitable connectivity starting
point, which other areas to prioritize
based on near-term revenue or profit
impacts, forecasted outcomes and
even a long-term map delineating
connectivity initiatives by upcoming
year. You can focus this exclusively on
procurement or extend the scope to
your supply chain in general.

Depending on the specific process, and the individual trading partners involved,
it may or may not be necessary to engage directly with trading partners through a
back-office to back-office supply chain connection. In some cases, it’s possible to
structure a digital environment that captures order, invoicing or shipping information
by extracting the data from various emails, forms and data formats as it is received. In
these cases, customers, suppliers and carriers may not even be aware that anything
has changed—your systems are simply updated with the relevant data in real time or
near real time. Ask your Elemica consultant about how these types of systems can
work, or to schedule a Digital Transformation Journey consultation for your team.

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Project Implementation Approaches 44

Six Keys to Procurement
Automation Success
Want your procurement automation process
to go smoothly? Here are six tips that Elemica
experts have shown can help get your
initiative off to a smooth start, and make sure
it reaches the finish line, while minimizing risk
and delays.
Get Leadership Involved.
1 Your company’s technology team will
be the core people who will make
this initiative a reality. A successful
implementation will require not
only their support but also their
expertise. However, it will be in every
stakeholder’s interest to go beyond
the IT team when garnering support
for the project. After all, procurement
automation isn’t just a technology
initiative; it’s a strategic initiative
with big-picture financial impact. It’s
a business development initiative
that will help protect your brand
and reputation. And it’s a customer
service initiative that will help improve
retention rates. Get senior leadership
to understand the strategic importance
of this project so that you can protect
corporate support from any potential
political, priority or funding headwinds.
Capture Before and After Metrics.
2 It’s important during the up-front part
of this project that your team goes
out of its way to capture as many
metrics as possible relating to the pre-
implementation performance of each
function that you intend to automate.
These could be anything relating to
each process: number of vendors,
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Six Keys to Procurement Automation Success
percentage of invoices entered
containing errors, average cost per
invoice—even bigger picture metrics.
It’s true that capturing uncomfortable
metrics on the front end isn’t always
fun. But layering on the much
improved Key Performance Indicators
(KPI) enabled by a fully automated
procurement function not only makes
your team look good but also proves
out the ROI on these projects—paving
the way for future initiatives.
Elect Project Champions.
3 Many a worthwhile technology
initiative has died on the vine because
there simply was no specific person
elected to advocate for the project.
In your project’s early days, when
you’re determining the roles and
responsibilities for each team member,
don’t forget to designate project
champions at your organization to
help keep people excited, informed
and educated on the project and its
goals and potential. Ideally you’d have
a champion within each business
function that you seek to automate
within the procure-to-pay cycle. So
someone in purchasing who deals
with purchase orders, someone in
accounts payable, someone in the
warehouse or procurement who deals
with logistics, etc. These people will all
be vital in making sure the project gains
and keeps its momentum throughout
implementation.
45
 Keep Project Management Tight.
4 Just like any other technology project
that you implement, don’t take project
management for granted. Make sure to
put strong project managers in place
for the initiative. These professionals
can make sure that as the project goes
forward, you:
• Put a firm, written project plan
in place
6 These projects generally save their
• Stick to milestone timelines and
detailed budgets
• Are realistic with project assignments
• Make sure everyone knows the
project’s objectives
• Monitor time, cost and risk
constraints at regular intervals
• Make sure everyone understands
their role in the process
• Communicate issues and
delays quickly
Set Realistic Expectations.
5 Every organization wants each of
its technology projects to be done
immediately, on the cheap and with
zero complications. Yet, this just isn’t
realistic. Teams need time to properly
plan and execute the project. There
is some level of investment involved,
though the returns on automating
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Six Keys to Procurement Automation Success
procure-to-pay are considerable and
quick to pay dividends. And oftentimes
there are complications, usually due to
a failure to communicate. But by setting
realistic goals and timelines for each
phase of procurement automation, you
can get through the transformation of
each process and radically improve
overall procurement performance.
Attempt to Over-Communicate.
companies a lot of time and money—
and make everyone look good. So
people usually want to help however
they can. But sometimes they fall short.
People get busy. They get distracted.
They misunderstand things and don’t
pay attention to the details. If you go
out of your way to tell stakeholders
what you’re going to tell them, then tell
them several times, and then remind
them what you’ve told them again after
the fact, it could be annoying. But,
just maybe, everyone involved in the
project will understand what’s going on
and what they could be doing to help.
When you try to over-communicate, you
usually end up merely communicating.
46
Recommended Reading
Between the Spreadsheets: Classifying and Fixing Dirty Data
Susan Walsh
Facet Publishing (September 16, 2021)
ISBN-13: 978-1783305032

Disruptive Procurement: Winning in a Digital World

Michael F. Strohmer, Stephen Easton, et al.
Springer; 1st ed. 2020 edition (May 4, 2020)
ISBN-13: 978-3030389499

Essentials of Negotiation, 6th Edition

Roy Lewicki, Bruce Barry and David Saunders
McGraw-Hill Education; 6th edition (January 14, 2015)
ISBN-13: 978-0077862466

Futureproof Supply Chain: Planning for Disruption Risks and

Opportunities in the Lifeline of the Global Economy
Jason Schenker
McGraw-Hill Education; 6th edition (January 14, 2015)
ISBN-13: 978-0077862466

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

Roger Fisher, William L. Ury, Bruce Patton
Penguin Books; Updated, Revised edition (May 3, 2011)
ASIN: B0051SDM5Q

The Supply Chain Revolution: Innovative Sourcing and

Logistics for a Fiercely Competitive World
Suman Sarkar, Christopher Lane, et al.
Brilliance Audio (June 22, 2017)
ASIN: B0714DF241

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Recommended Reading 47

Procurement at a Crossroads: Career-Impacting Insights
into a Rapidly Changing Industry
Jon Hansen, Kelly Barner, David Clevenger
J. Ross Publishing (January 1, 2016)
ISBN-13: 978-1604271171

Procurement, Principles & Management, 11th Edition

Baily, Peter, Farmer, David, Crocker, Barry, Jessop, David,
Jones, David
Prentice Hall (August 29, 2015)
ASIN: B014I8Q9XQ

The Procurement and Supply Manager’s Desk Reference,

2nd Edition
Fred Sollish, John Semanik
Wiley; 2nd edition (July 31, 2012)
ISBN-13: 978-1118130094.

Purchasing & Supply Chain Management, 7th Edition

Robert M. Monczka, Robert B. Handfield, Larry C. Giunipero,
James L. Patterson
Cengage Learning; 6th edition (January 1, 2015)
ISBN-13: 978-1285869681

Resilience by Teaming in Supply Chains and Networks

Rodrigo Reyes Levalle
Springer; 1st ed. 2018 edition (May 29, 2017)
ISBN-13: 978-3319583211

The Procurement and Supply Manager’s Desk Reference,

2nd Edition
Fred Sollish, John Semanik
Wiley; 2nd edition (July 31, 2012)
ISBN-13: 978-1118130094.

Supply Chain Metrics that Matter

Lora M. Cecere
Wiley; 1st edition (December 22, 2014)
ISBN-13: 978-1118858110

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Recommended Reading 48

Spend Analysis: The Window into Strategic Sourcing 1st
Edition
Kirit Pandit & H. Marmanis
J. Ross Publishing; 1st edition (March 1, 2008)
ISBN-13: 978-1932159936

Supplier Evaluation & Performance Excellence Illustrated

Edition
Sherry Gordon
J. Ross Publishing; Illustrated edition (April 1, 2008)
ISBN-13: 978-1932159806

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging

Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and
Our Lives.
Part of: Exponential Technology Series
Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler, et al.
Simon & Schuster (January 28, 2020)
ISBN-13: 978-1982109660

Strategic Supply Chain Management: The Five Core

Disciplines for Top Performance, Second Edition
Shoshanah Cohen and Joseph Roussel
McGraw-Hill Education; 2nd edition (June 14, 2013)
ISBN-13: 978-0071813082

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Recommended Reading 49

Glossary of Terms
Agent
Someone acting on behalf of another.
Agility
The attribute of a system to be able to move or
react quickly.
Arbitration
The settlement of a dispute through the use of
a third-party intermediary.
Artificial Intelligence
Computer systems able to perform activities
or tasks that are traditionally performed by
human beings.
Automation
A system or technology that minimizes human
involvement.
Benchmark
Measuring business, operational or technology
metrics with the intention of comparing these
metrics with future performance.
Bill of Lading
A shipping document that lays out the
specifications, quantity and other details of a
purchase and where it is being shipped.
Blanket Order
A type of purchase order that typically covers
a small variety of items but establishes
ongoing predetermined delivery dates that
allow the purchase order to simplify ordering
large quantities over time.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Glossary of Terms
Blockchain
A shared, decentralized and digital
ledger that records and keeps track of
transactions securely.
Breach of Contract
When one party in a valid, binding contract
fails to live up to the terms of their agreement.
Broker (n.)
One who buys, sells or trades goods or assets
on behalf of others.
CAPEX
Refers to capital expenditure—investments
in physical assets such as machines, trucks,
equipment, land, tools, etc.
Capital Costs
One-time fixed costs incurred through the
purchase of assets such as equipment,
machinery, land, buildings, etc. that will be
used over the course of business over a
longer period of time.
Change Order
A document used to modify, add to or
remove something from an original order
that’s been placed.
Circular Economy
An economic model of production and
consumption which optimizes the sharing,
reuse and management of resources from
carbon to waste in a way that helps address
global challenges such as climate change.
50
Commodity
A basic, fungible good or service.
Cost Driver
The direct cause of the creation of a cost.
Data Cleansing
Identifying and correcting problem data from a
database or data environment.
Decentralization
The strategy of spreading out resources,
processes, power or information out over a
series of places, parties or systems.
Demand Signal
A communication within a supply chain
indicating that somebody wants something.
Delivery Schedule
An agreement between trading partners
regarding the type and quantity of goods
delivered and other selling terms including
when, exactly, delivery will take place. Often
used to streamline repetitive bulk purchases
over time.
Discount
A reduction of the usual cost of something
issued by the seller.
Disruption
The interruption of an event or process
because of a change or problem.
Economies of Scale
Cost or competitive advantages earned when
a system is scaled to a large volume.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Glossary of Terms
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
A system that exchanges digital information
between organizations using a standardized
format.
Enterprise
A business organization.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
A software platform that integrates
business processes across an organization,
enabling you to manage business activities
in one place.
Fiscal Year
A 1-year period that businesses use for the
purposes of financial planning.
Force Majeure
Sometimes known as an “act of God,” an
unforeseeable event preventing a party from
meeting a contractual obligation.
Forecast
Predicting the future state of business events
such as sales, profits, etc.
Forward Buying
Buying more than you need now to avoid
future price increases.
Gap Analysis
The process of comparing current,
substandard performance with future,
desired-state performance.
Good Received Note (GRN)
A document acknowledging delivery of a good
and its receipt.
51
Guarantor
A person or organization that guarantees
something.
Hazardous Goods
Materials or objects that could present a
danger to people, animals, communities or the
environment if not properly managed.
Hedge
A financial tool that places limits to lock in
a price.
Holding Costs
Any costs associated with storing and
managing unsold product inventory.
Industry 4.0
Referring to the fourth industrial revolution, the
transformation of industrial potential through a
number of progressive technologies that have
matured and propagated in recent years such
as the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence,
cybersecurity and other advances.
Infrastructure
Fundamental systems that enable functionality.
Input
Anything taken in by a system for its use
in operation.
Invoice
A billing document that delineates all of the
goods and services that have been provided
in a transaction, when they were provided and
how much money the buyer still owes
the seller.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Glossary of Terms
Just In Time (JIT)
A system of inventory management wherein
supplier deliveries are timed to provide
manufacturing materials as needed for
making a specific order—minimizing
on hand inventory.
Key Performance Indicator
A quantifiable metric used to measure a
specific aspect of operational or financial
performance with the intention of improving
that metric over time.
Last Mile
The last stage in the process of
purchasing something.
Lead Time
The time that lapses (or is estimated to lapse)
between the initiation of a process and its
completion. Often referring to the time it takes
to receive a product from a supplier.
Lean Processes
Processes deployed using a production
management approach that focuses on
minimizing waste and creating value.
Machine Learning
Applying the creation of automated analytical
models for decision-making and optimization.
Material Variance
The difference in the usual cost of a material
and what your business actually paid.
Standard cost minus actual cost.
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
A discipline within artificial intelligence
concerned with the interaction between
humans and computers using language.
52
Net Present Value
The present value of cash outflows minus the
present value of cash inflows.
Net Price
The actual price your business will pay after
any discounts, deals, etc.
On Time In Full (OTIF)
A metric used to measure how often
customers got exactly what they needed, at
the quantity they needed and at the location
and time requested fulfilling all requirements
of the transaction.
Operational Expenses (OPEX)
Expenses incurred through the course of a
business’s operation such as rent, utilities, etc.
Optical Character Recognition
Technology that recognizes printed text in the
physical world and captures it into data that
can be used digitally.
Order Accuracy
The numer of correct orders processed
versus the total number of orders processed
expressed as a percentage.
Point of Origin
The place from which a delivery originally came.
Post Tender Negotiation
Negotiation that happens after tenders were
issued but before the contract is awarded to
any specific party.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Glossary of Terms
Procure-to-Pay
All of the processes involved with buying,
receiving and paying for products.
Procurement
The business function of obtaining goods and
services for an organization and its operations.
Purchase Order
A document issued by a potential buyer to
a potential seller indicating a list of desired
products and their related quantities,
specifications and other details.
Qualified Vendor
A supplier of goods or services that has a
contract granting it permission to sell goods
or services to an organization; entities having
been vetted and recognized as qualified to
provide goods and services.
Quality Management System
A structured, systematized set of processes
designed to enaure the delivery of consistent
customer satisfaction with regard to products
and services.
Quotation
A business document that states the
estimated cost for a particular good,
service or project.
Remittance
A payment for a good or service.
Request for Proposal
A statement of desired goods from a
prospective buyer to a prospective supplier
laying out the buyer’s needs and requirements
for the purposes of getting a formal proposal
for the pricing, timing, etc. of a sale.
53
Requisition
A formal, intra-organization request for goods
or services.
Request for Information (RFI)
A request for general information about a
prospective supplier and its capabilities.
RFX
A collective term that refers to Requests
for Proposals (RFPs), Requests for
Quotations (RFQs) and other procurement-
related requests.
Robotics Process Automation (RPA)
A type of business process automation that
uses rules-driven software to perform tasks for
the purposes of automation and optimization.
Scheduling Agreement
An agreement to deliver a predefined,
recurring amount of goods or services
repeatedly over a period of time.
Sealed Bid
A type of auction whereby bidders do not know
the content or amount of competitors’ bids.
Source-to-Pay
Procure-to-pay processes, but extending
the front end to include finding, vetting and
negotiating prospective suppliers as well as all
transactional processes.
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Glossary of Terms
Sourcing
The process of identifying and choosing
potential suppliers.
Specification
The details surrounding the size, type,
design, materials, workmanship and other
documented, specific requirements of
a product.
Supplier
A trading partner within a supply chain who
provides the goods or services to the buyer,
distributor, carrier and other parties.
Supply Chain
A collective term for the total network of
trading partners involved in the making and
delivering of a product or service.
Terms and Conditions
Rules that serve as a contract between buyers
and sellers including such matters as what
goods and services are involved, pricing,
payment terms, liability and many other
purchase details.
Validation
The process of confirming data, contracts,
invoices, vendor selection or other supply
chain transactions as being a valid part of the
sale allowing it to go forward.
54
Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI)
An inventory management approach whereby
the manufacturer or other supplier of goods
is alerted as customer inventory runs low and
can automatically replace that stock when
it hits agreed-upon levels. The practice
basically empowers suppliers to control buyer
inventory levels to help prevent stock-outs
and other disruptions.

Visibility
The ability of a supply chain participant to
know what’s going on within the system. More
specifically the attribute whereby a participant
can get information on the location, status,
specifications, quantity and other attributes
relating to an order, product, material,
assembly or other supply chain component.

Warranty
A written guarantee issue by a seller to the
buyer promising a specific set of conditions
that will be filled.

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Glossary of Terms 55

Citations
Gartner Sales Partner Glossary
https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/glossary/
procurement
Why Investing in Procurement Makes
Organizations More Resilient
Rafael Ramírez, Ciaran McGinley, and Steve
Churchhouse
https://hbr.org/2020/06/why-investing-in-
procurement-makes-organizations-more-
resilient
What Exactly Is Procurement? And What is
Purchasing?
Supply Chain Game Changer Blog
https://supplychaingamechanger.com/
what-exactly-is-procurement-and-what-is-
purchasing/
Business Processes and Business
Functions: a New Way of Looking
at Employment
Sharon P. Brown
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/12/art3full.
pdf
Purchasing vs. Procurement:
Key Differences
SCM Dojo
http://www.scmdojo.com/purchasing-vs-
procurement-difference-between-purchasing-
and-procurement/
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Citations
Automation And AI Are The ‘next big things’
For Procurement
Shefali Kapadia
Supply Chain Dive
https://www.supplychaindive.com/
news/automation-ai-procurement-SAP-
Ariba-survey/521975/#:~:text=Dive%20
Brief%3A,have%20%22highly%20
automated%22%20
processes.&text=Among%20the%20450%20-
respondents%2C%2063%25%20have%20
automation%20on%20their%20roadmap.
The Future of Procurement in The Age of
Digital Supply Networks
Deloitte, Digital Procurement
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/
Deloitte/us/Documents/process-and-
operations/us-cons-digital-procurement-v5.
pdf
Automation in Procurement: Your New
Workforce is Here
KPMG
https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/xx/
pdf/2019/11/automation-in-procurement.pdf
AP Automation: Procurement Data, The
Elephant In The Room
Michael Higgins
Forbes Technology Council
https://www.forbes.com/sites/
forbestechcouncil/2021/02/02/ap-automation-
procurement-data-the-elephant-in-the-
room/?sh=7aab814b2a70
56
Artificial Intelligence-Powered Procurement
Bridget McCrea
Source Today
https://www.sourcetoday.com/market-
insights/article/21157222/artificial-
intelligencepowered-procurement
Getting Insights from Data
Accenture
Intelligent Operations Blog
https://www.accenture.com/us-en/blogs/
intelligent-operations-blog/ruehle-detwiler-
procurement-data-insights
Procurement Survey
PwC Digital
3rd edition
https://www.pwc.com/m1/en/events/
enabling-procurement-4-in-the-middle-east-
survey-2021.pdf
How to Evolve Procurement Into a Source of
Competitive Advantage
EY Americas
https://www.ey.com/en_us/consulting/how-
to-evolve-procurement-into-a-source-of-
competitive-advantage
Digital Procurement: From Myth to
Unleashing the Full Potential
Oliver Wyman
https://www.oliverwyman.com/content/dam/
oliver-wyman/europe/france/fr/Publications/
Digital_Procurement.pdf
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Citations
Delivering on Digital Procurement’s Promise
Martin Högel, Wolfgang Schnellbächer, Robert
Tevelson and Daniel Weise
Boston Consulting Group
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/
delivering-digital-procurement-promise
The Journey to Intelligent Procurement
Accenture
https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-
154/Accenture-IntOps-Procurement-POV-
Final.pdf
Digital Procurement: The Benefits Go Far
Beyond Efficiency
Coleman Radell and David Schannon
Bain and Company
https://www.bain.com/
Metric of the Month: Accounts Payable Cost
Perry D. Wiggins, CPA
CFO Magazine
https://www.cfo.com/expense-
management/2018/02/metric-month-
accounts-payable-cost/
Average Procure-to-Pay Cycle Time in Days
The American Productivity & Quality Center
https://www.apqc.org/what-we-do/
benchmarking/open-standards-
benchmarking/measures/average-procure-
pay-cycle-time-days
Four Fundamentals of
Workplace Automation
Michael Chui, James Manyika, and
Mehdi Miremadi
McKinsey
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-
functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/four-
fundamentals-of-workplace-automation
57
Procurement Matters: The Future is
Already Here
James Pearce, Ana Conde and Shakil Nathoo
Kearney
https://www.kearney.com/procurement/
article/?/a/procurement-matters-the-future-is-
already-here
Unlocking Opportunities in
Procurement Automation
KPMG
https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/se/
pdf/komm/2020/Procurement-Automation-
KPMG-Sweden.pdf
Procurement’s Next Frontier: How
Intelligent Automation Dramatically
Reduces Cost and Transforms the
Growth Agenda
Accenture
https://www.accenture.com/
t20180223T092928Z__w__/sg-en/_acnmedia/
PDF-71/Accenture-Procurements-Next-
Frontier-PDF.pdf
Can You Automate Procurement?
Supply Management
https://www.cips.org/supply-management/
analysis/2021/may/can-you-automate-
procurement/
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about
Purchase Order Automation
ProcureDesk
https://medium.com/@ProcureDesk/
everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-
purchase-order-automation-2170f7ff52f4
Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Citations
The Path to a Thinking Supply Chain
Written by: Simon Ellis, Program Vice
President, Supply Chain Strategies
IBM
https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/
PKQXXQJM
Percentage of Purchase Orders Approved
Electronically Grows
Metric of the Month
The American Productivity & Quality Center
https://www.sdcexec.com/sourcing-
procurement/blog/20999107/apqc-metric-of-
the-month-percentage-of-purchase-orders-
approved-electronically
Procure to Pay Analytics
Deloitte, Risk Advisory
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/
Deloitte/in/Documents/risk/in-ra-procure-to-
pay-analytics-noexp.pdf
What Great Category Strategies can do
for Procurement
Jim Morabito, Daniel Weise, Dan Belz and
Nino Mori
Boston Consulting Group
https://image-src.bcg.com/Images/BCG-
What-Great-Category-Strategies-Can-Do-for-
Procurement-September-2019_tcm9-228115.
pdf
Resetting Supply Chains for the
Next Normal
Knut Alicke, Richa Gupta and Vera Trautwein
McKinsey & Company
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-
functions/operations/our-insights/resetting-
supply-chains-for-the-next-normal
58
Contracting for Performance: Unlocking
Additional Value
Roman Belotserkovskiy, Jayant Sewak, Adina
Teodorian, and Britta Lietke
By McKinsey & Company
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-
functions/operations/our-insights/contracting-
for-performance-unlocking-additional-value
Purchasing
Glossary
INC Magazine
https://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/purchasing.
html
Cornell Law School
Legal Information Institute
Government Contracts
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/government_
contracts
A Seat at the Table: Bain & Company
Identifies Digital Solutions to Help
Procurement Executives Accelerate
Innovation
Bain and Company
https://www.bain.com/about/media-center/
press-releases/2018/digital-procurement-
report-2018/

The Four Technologies Shaping Next-Gen

Supply Chains
Danny Shields
Supply Chain Brain
https://www.supplychainbrain.com/blogs/1-
think-tank/post/33709-the-four-technologies-
shaping-next-gen-supply-chains

Metric of the Month: Detect and Prevent

Duplicate or Erroneous Payments
Perry D. Wiggins, CPA
CFO Magazine
https://www.cfo.com/payments/2020/03/
metric-of-the-month-detect-and-prevent-
duplicate-or-erroneous-payments/

It’s a Small World: The Complexities of

Global Invoicing, Compliance
Sushmitha Koka
Global Payroll Management Institute
https://www.gpminstitute.com/publications-
resources/Global-Payroll-Magazine/
december-2018/it%27s-a-small-world-the-
complexities-of-global-invoicing-compliance

Elemica Digital Supply Chain Basics™ • Citations 59