Monday 20th May, 2013

When I think of some of the best collaborations - Simon & Garfunkel, Noel & Liam.......Blair and Brown (?) - in all cases, the whole is better than the sum of its parts. And quite often neither party is aware of the magnified power and strength they are able to generate together - at least not until it's too late and the solo album bombed..

The same is true of financial operations. In the past, when processes weren't even described as "mired in paper" - because paper was all there was - the case for collaboration was less obvious. As a result each function developed on its own, and each tranch became defined by a certain way of doing things - and to an extent - a certain hierarchy too...

Of course if you're sitting in AP, AR or Procurement today - you may feel that not a lot has changed, and in some cases that's likely to be right. However, increasingly organisations are waking up to the power of combined financial strength - brought about largely by the centralisation of processes, the growth of shared services, automation and cloud technology.

Which is a topic we've been following closely at APN during the Basware Roadshows taking place this year in Manchester and London. Organisations such as Flint Group, the Co-Op and this Wednesday (22nd May) - NEC Group, share their experiences in moving towards a more efficient, and ultimately more collaborative way of working.

"collaboration" of course, is a fairly loose term - what does it really mean in practice? For the organisations above it's meant taking a more cost-effective and streamlined approach - sometimes with the help of someone within those organisation challenged with overseaing the function as a whole ensuring that the different areas of finance are far less likely to operate in unproductive silos.

That each of the Basware sessions has been so popular - highlights on the one hand how collaboration across P2P is increasingly becoming a part of people's working lives - but on the other, still one they need to find out more about. One thing's true though, those organisations who are savvy enough to see the strength in working together are likely to be the ones in organisations which grow and survive. P2P is a constanting evolving industry and as I'm sure someone has said before..... we're better together