Thursday 9th April, 2015

Think of Vegas, and what comes to mind - bright lights, Caesar’s Palace, a town that never sleeps? Popping up like a neon mirage out of the Mojave desert, Las Vegas has long been a mecca connecting people looking for fun. And on the list of many is the chance to take in a Cirque de Soleil show while they’re there. So it was great to see a little taster at AribaLIVE’s opening session, and as I watched the dancers twist and spin with eye watering flexibility, one thought that was furthest from my mind was the workings of their supply chain.

And yet as their Director of supply chain, Nadia Malek took to the stage, she managed to bring the whole process to life, and although their procurement needs are pretty unique (fake monkey fur anyone..?), the process needed to get the show on the road was a familiar one. Luckily for Cirque, automating that (and the decision of which solution to use) was made easier when they discovered that many of their suppliers were already on the Ariba network. As for the internal process, Nadia stressed the importance of imposing some strict business rules, but said that most of all, people should understand why they have to change and the benefits of doing things differently. Ultimately she wanted to make it easier for people to come to procurement, rather than go round them.

In fact, understanding the importance of working together and collaborating is a common theme here at AribaLIVE, and in a conversation with Ariba’s Senior Director Solutions Marketing, Drew Hofler this morning, he pointed out that linkage between procurement, AP and treasury is something that CFOs increasingly recognise as crucial in their drive towards gaining strategic insight. One of the main reasons an organisation decides to automate their processes is to raise the levels of visibility of transactions, and the more collaborative an organisation is, the better the quality of the data and reporting that is able to be extracted.

And if we’re moving to a more strategic, analytical role within P2P, the skill sets of the people within it are going to have to change. So perhaps, as Andrew Bartolini of Ardent Partners said in one of the breakout sessions, it really is “an exciting time to be in AP.” Those who want to, and have the ability to, have the opportunity to make a career within the payables space, and, as Andrew said, although we may not be about to see a Chief Payables Officer anytime soon, the realisation at C level of the importance of the department to the rest of the business is going to ensure a better place at the table.

One of the ways to get there is to make sure that key stakeholders within the business have a clear understanding of the central role P2P is able to have. In fact, "education" is one of the recurring themes of the conference, something we love helping out with at APN. So over the next week or so we're going to be taking a closer look at the major themes that have come out of the event:

• Collaboration
• Change Management
• Education
• Visibility
• Supplier onboarding
• Strategic analytics