As a Procurement Leader, the first time you learn of your organization’s intent to replace its ERP system may be when they ask you to buy it. Procurement will play a vital role in the sourcing and contracting process for this large investment, but it also features largely in the implementation and user experience changes that accompany a new ERP.
Source-to-Pay cloud solutions have matured over the past two decades to deliver a user-friendly shop and request experience. Meanwhile, ERP cloud solutions primarily invest in HR and Finance usability, workflows, and analytics, and tend to have less developed functionality in the procure-to-pay domain.
The ERP dialog in your organization is likely to be multi-faceted, containing many layers and involving many different stakeholders, all with their own individual needs, goals, and interests.
Here are three focus areas that will help Procurement Leaders navigate the new ERP terrain in your organization:
- Project & Operational Mission Alignment
- User Experience
- Volume & Impact
Project & Operational Mission Alignment
ERP Replacement projects typically come with a mission statement that goes beyond “replace the ERP.” To gain executive leadership buy-in, tangible, large-scale problems must be solved.
Knowing the mission statement and supporting goals/objectives of your organization’s ERP is vital to Procurement engaging in the productive dialog, building strategic alliances, and gaining support.
Ideally, the ERP project’s objectives align with an improved user experience for business and financial processes. If there is no mention of that, there is an opening for Procurement Leaders – who have been highly focused on making user experience gains – to appeal to executive leadership to include improved usability into the ERP project goals.
Improved user experience then becomes an anchor for which to compare the ERP Cloud solution’s source-to-pay functionality to existing solutions already in place.
Most ERP projects also commit to increasing the automation and efficiency of business processes. This is another excellent anchoring point for Procurement Leaders to compare existing automation to what the ERP solution can do.
Many ERP project objectives include a desire to reduce the number of systems and integrations. Even if not formally stated in the project charter, HR, IT, and Finance executives prefer less technical complexity, due to the additional licensing costs and support costs that come with multiple systems. This is where Procurement Leaders may face the most challenge in demonstrating that their existing source-to-pay cloud solution is worth the technical complexity.
The benefits of User Experience and Business Process Efficiency tend to outweigh the desire for reduced technical complexity. But Procurement Leaders should expect to be held accountable for demonstrating that the User Experience is truly worth the technical complexity.
User Experience
The Cloud ERP Procurement strategy battleground lies in user experience and its downstream impact to the large, decentralized population of employees who buy goods and services at an institution.
Over the years, the term User Experience has morphed into code for “I like or don’t like it” in many organizations. The term is used loosely and without much rigor or specificity. However, when an ERP replacement effort starts, it’s critical for Procurement Leaders to drill into what works or doesn’t work about a given process or experience.
The key to measuring User Experience is describing the behaviors that make a process good. For example, what makes a good non-catalog request experience? The answer to that will vary by organization, but will likely include functionality like the ability to:
- Fill out all questions and required data on a single form before submitting
- Ask for additional information when a question is answered a certain way
- Attach documents
Once Procurement Leaders and their teams identify behaviors and features that define a particular experience, they can then compare and rate how those behaviors function in their current Source-to-Pay solution vs. the ERP Cloud solution.
Another way to approach user experience details is to list the most important functions that your current process performs today, and to observe how those functions work in the new ERP. Produce a three-column grid that lists the specific function, how it works today, and how it would work in the ERP. Highlight green (good), yellow (ok), or red (showstopper), for each functionality in the ERP to keep track of your functionality review.
Volume & Impact
The User Experience exercise described above must be placed in the context of impact, to properly resound with the ERP project team and other various stakeholders in the project. Executive leadership is most interested in where there will be criticism and pain in any new processes.
Let’s say that you compare the new ERP’s non-catalog process to your P2P solution’s non-catalog process and find that there are five additional clicks with the ERP and no ability to add custom fields to the form. How much pain is that, really? If 25% of your requisitions are non-catalog, that’s a lot of pain.
Take the data points further than percentages, though, to create a more tangible impact with the data. What does 25% average out to per day? Let’s say it equates to 15 requisitions per day across 7 departments. That means that every day, 7 different departments will experience those additional clicks and inability to answer all the detailed questions that make it easier to complete the order.
Coming up with nuanced data points that help tell a real story about impact is vital to understanding true impact and conveying it to a variety of audiences.
It’s equally important for Procurement Leaders to look at less-than-ideal but low-impact process changes as opportunities to give wins to the project. You cannot win every battle.
Procurement Leaders can define both User Experience behaviors and Volume/Impact indicators immediately. You don’t have to wait for a specific phase of the ERP project to start that work. In fact, getting an early start helps organize and focus the Procurement team, and boosts morale as everyone prepares for the large-scale effort of replacing the ERP.
For more ideas and support in optimizing your user experience and impact data, register for our webinar: “Elevating Your Source-to-Pay Tech Strategy in 2023.“
About the Author: Jennifer Glassman, Procurement & Payables Consultant, has supported Higher Ed and Non-Profit organizations for 22 years, cultivating supply chain and payment strategies and implementing the technology platforms that fuel them. She started working with JAGGAER in 2000 as a pilot program. She then spent a decade with the University of California, San Diego implementing source-to-settle, supplier management, tax, and payment solutions. In 2017, she and her family relocated to Virginia where Jenn worked with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute supporting Workday procurement. Jennifer moved to the University of Virginia as Director of Procurement and Supplier Diversity Services where she led major aspects of the Workday Financials implementation, incorporating JAGGAER into the renewed systems strategy. Jennifer now works as an independent consultant.