Companies constantly seek ways to streamline operations and drive maximum value from technology investments. One area that has become increasingly crucial is effective spend management – the ability to optimize procurement, invoicing, and payment processes to boost efficiency and profitability.
Harnessing the Power of Two Best-in-Class Solutions
Dominate Your Digital Supplier Ecosystem with SAP Business Network
The powerful combination of SAP Business Network and SAP Invoice Management by OpenText (VIM) is at the heart of this transformation. SAP Business Network is SAP’s supplier portal solution for customers running SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA, providing a proven platform for digital supplier collaboration. On the other hand, VIM is SAP’s best-in-class invoice reconciliation solution, residing directly within the digital core.
The synergy between SAP Business Network and VIM extends beyond invoice reconciliation. Together, they manage their respective strengths, creating a holistic spend management solution:
- SAP Business Network: Optimizes supplier collaboration, communication, and visibility across the entire procurement process.
- VIM: Automates and streamlines the invoice processing lifecycle, ensuring accuracy, efficiency, and faster approvals.
This powerful integration eliminates the need for paper, email, and phone-based communication between suppliers and customers. In today’s digital landscape, such antiquated methods hinder efficiency and transparency, leading to delays and errors. An intelligent enterprise cannot operate on the foundations of email, phone calls, and paper-based processes. These methods are slow and error-prone, limiting collaboration and visibility across the procurement process.
For companies running SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA, the SAP Business Network isn’t just a supplier portal; it’s the cornerstone of Digital Supplier Collaboration. This industry-leading B2B network fosters seamless communication and collaboration with your supplier base. Imagine a centralized platform where you can:
- Effortlessly onboard new suppliers: Streamline the registration process, eliminating manual setup and paperwork.
- Simplify purchase order management: Electronically send and receive purchase orders, confirmations, and advanced shipment notices (ASNs), ensuring customers and suppliers get information early on delivery commitments.
- Enhance communication and collaboration: Foster real-time communication with suppliers through a secure online portal, reducing reliance on email and phone calls.
- Boost transparency and visibility: Gain real-time insights into supplier performance, inventory levels, and potential delivery delays, enabling proactive decision-making.
More companies are recognizing the immense value of this integration, which represents a natural progression in their automation journey. Organizations can dramatically improve their spend management capabilities and unlock significant ROI by moving away from outdated, paper-based processes and embracing the SAP Business Network and VIM ecosystem.
Unleash Automation Efficiency with VIM (Vendor Invoice Management by OpenText)
The standard, out-of-the-box integration between SAP Business Network and VIM is a game-changer. This bidirectional integration ensures that invoices seamlessly flow from the supplier network into VIM, where they can be efficiently reconciled and processed. Moreover, the integration leverages the advantages of exchanging other preceding documents, such as Purchase Orders, PO Confirmations, and Advance Shipping Notices, over the network. This helps to alleviate potential invoice-related issues, like price discrepancies and PO line matching, early in the process.
Complementing this powerful network is VIM, recognized as SAP’s best-in-class invoice reconciliation solution residing within the digital core. VIM automates and streamlines the invoice processing lifecycle, ensuring accuracy and efficiency. Here’s how VIM empowers your accounts payable department:
- Automated Invoice Processing: Extract data from electronic invoices submitted through the SAP Business Network, eliminating manual data entry and the risk of human error.
- Intelligent Exception Handling: VIM automatically identifies discrepancies between invoices and purchase orders, flagging potential issues for quick resolution.
- Automated Workflows: Streamline approval processes where necessary with automated workflows based on pre-defined rules and user roles.
- Improved Payment Efficiency: Accelerate invoice processing and payment cycles, which can improve supplier relationships and potentially offer early payment discounts.
A Natural Progression in Automation: Move Beyond Outdated Practices
By integrating these two robust solutions, companies can eliminate the reliance on paper, email, and phone-based communication between suppliers and customers. This streamlines the invoicing and payment process and empowers businesses to truly become intelligent enterprises, where automated, data-driven workflows replace manual, error-prone tasks.
A growing number of companies are embracing this dynamic duo. They’re moving away from the inefficiencies and frustrations of:
- OCR-dependent processes that rely on emailed invoice attachments often lead to errors and delays due to poor image quality or inconsistent formatting and the fact that OCR is not a perfect technology.
- Paper invoices and the associated manual data entry, filing, and storage requirements. This consumes valuable resources and introduces the risk of human error.
- Cumbersome 1:1 EDI connections with individual suppliers. Setting up and maintaining these connections can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
SAP Business Network offers a many-to-many collaboration that allows companies to connect to new suppliers and act both as a supplier and as a customer, and have an instant digital connection with their current supplier base already enrolled on the network.
Take full advantage of your SAP S/4HANA RISE investment
The SAP Business Network connection is included in the SAP S/4HANA RISE package, making it an attractive and accessible option for companies adopting the move to S/4. By embracing this integration, organizations can unlock the full potential of their SAP investments, driving increased efficiency, improved supplier collaboration, and tangible ROI.
SAP Customers moving to S/4 with RISE will be able to evaluate the SAP Business Network as a proof of concept and then decide on a rollout plan once they have seen the benefits. Once the connection is in place, companies are in an excellent position to drive tangible savings with continued rollout and supplier adoption!
Transformative Spend Management
The integration of SAP Business Network and VIM represents a transformative step in effective spend management and supplier collaboration. By leveraging the strengths of these complementary solutions, companies can dramatically improve their invoicing and payment processes, ultimately enhancing their overall financial agility and market competitiveness.
Optima Consulting is your trusted advisor on the path to success in digital transformation. Let’s explore how integrating SAP Business Network and VIM can revolutionize your spend management and unlock significant ROI for your enterprise.
