New Year Insights for the procurement solutions and services marketplace 2024: Tipalti

For several years now, Spend Matters has been collecting and publishing a series of articles about procurement, supply and services trends for the year ahead from expert tech and service providers in the market.

Our series runs from mid-December through January, and then our senior analysts will wrap up with their own take on the key themes that emerge.

Today let’s hear from the last of the submissions for this year: Ruth Orenstein, Senior Director of Product Management at Tipalti, a provider of supplier management solutions and one of Spend Matters 50 Procurement Providers to Know.

Increased focus on employee adoption and cross-department collaboration

As we usher in 2024, with economic uncertainty still a major concern, procurement and finance teams are increasingly tasked with enhancing their organization’s spend management. This is crucial to ensure financial stability and resilience against fluctuating macroeconomic conditions.

A growing trend is the shift towards a streamlined, decentralized P2P process, emphasizing the importance of employee experience and the adoption of procurement-related processes.

In particular, companies are streamlining their intake management process. For example, employees can request new software licenses through the P2P platform with requests routed to predefined approvers automatically, avoiding multiple departments and IT follow-ups and leading to faster fulfillment.

Similarly, submitting expenses like Uber receipts has been made more efficient; employees can use a mobile app for immediate reimbursement post-ride without having to wait until the end of the trip.

These changes are accompanied by increased collaboration across Procurement, Finance, Legal, IT, and Security teams, facilitated by a centralized P2P platform. This shift toward a more cohesive and employee-friendly process is expected to drive greater adoption of the P2P system.

One solution for the entire P2P workflow

Visibility and efficiency are becoming more critical in spend management, leading more organizations to adopt a unified P2P platform. Using separate systems for Procurement, Accounts Payables and Expense Management often results in data synchronization and workflow issues, disrupting finance and procurement functions and complicating ERP integration. This fragmented approach increases maintenance for Procurement and Finance teams and can reduce overall efficiency.

Increasingly, companies are moving to a single platform to manage the entire P2P cycle. The unified system acts as a centralized hub, extending workflows to other departments, reducing the need for offline processes and enhancing the consistency and reliability of the P2P process.

Leveraging GenAI capabilities in the P2P process

In 2024, generative AI is expected to advance the P2P process significantly with adaptive enhancements. We expect to see P2P users using GenAI as their ‘personal assistant’ or ‘co-pilot.’

For instance, procurement budget owners can quickly gather insights into their spending through a few simple prompts, the finance team will access data and conduct benchmark analyses instantly and employees can submit intake requests quicker, with AI guiding them in providing all necessary information upfront. The increased adoption of GenAI will enhance user experience, making P2P processes more intuitive and interactive.

Members can read our in-depth analysis of Tipalti’s solution here.

Many thanks to Tipalti for being a part of the series.

Read our senior analyst’s take on the key themes from the series here.

Access Spend Matters dedicated ‘Artificial Intelligence in Procurement’ page for more AI insights.

As always, reach out to discover how Spend Matters can help with your new year commitments and wishes.