How to Transition From an On-Premise to Cloud Procure To Pay Platform

Like many businesses, you are probably considering transitioning from an on-premise to a cloud Procure to Pay platform, you’re not alone. The steady decline of on premise hosting globally is continuing to accelerate globally, with a recent study by INAP identifying that 90% of organisations will move workloads off premises by 2022. Shifting technology to the cloud has been a little slower in Australia with only 42% of companies surveyed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported the use of cloud computing.

Couple this with recent research from the Hackett Group that found that 96% of companies surveyed are planning a finance transformation, there is a strong likelihood that this transformation will be shifting away from legacy, on premise platforms. The team at Valtatech have over 30 years experience in transforming source to pay operations across the globe and have helped may organisations transitioning away from their on premise legacy platforms. Using this experience we wanted to share our best practice on moving from on premise to a cloud procure to pay solution.

Get the strategy right

The temptation to look for what seems to be the easiest path is very real, for example looking at a different version or upgrading your system. However, this is a great opportunity to improve and transform your source to pay operations – rarely in business do you get a compelling event that forces you to consider your back-office functions. Take the opportunity and consider how you can use this as a springboard to transform your business.

Get the scope right

10 years ago invoice automation was a leading way to drive bottom-line gains for your business. Now, leading organisations are utilising technology to take a much more strategic view addressing all of their spend. Empowering your business to drive real business value and return on investment through procurement, contract management and sourcing.

Ensure fit for purpose

Consider your organisations key strategic objectives, how would this project contribute or delivery on those objectives? What is your organisations appetite for transformation? How might these impact your rollout and delivery timelines? There needs to be a strong connection between the project, your transformation appetite and strategic goals for the project to be successful.

User experience is key

We have seen time and time again, user adoption being severely hampered by a solution making technical and process sense but delivering a poor, disconnected user experience. Moving to the cloud creates a great opportunity for a big improvement in user experience by accessing through mobile apps, browsers and other devices. To ensure a smooth transition, make sure that you are mapping the current user experience against the future experience so you can identify and describe the gains that will be delivered.

Middleware requirements

Integration capabilities are becoming more and more in demand as user experience, business requirements and suppliers expect a more connected and integrated service. This will usually require data exchanges between systems like your ERP, People Data etc.

Change Management

Projects like this live and die on how well they are adopted by users and suppliers alike. Take the time to consider the communication needs both internally and externally and map out the impact on the way that these groups will interact with your business and processes.

Build a solid business case

We know that source to pay transformation is not seen as particularly sexy and typically doesn’t drive top-line growth. However, it can drive real value to your bottom line and a dollar saved is as good as a dollar earned. The key to this is taking the time to build a high-quality business case mapping out the return on investment and the value of the project over its a 3-5 year period. Doing a solid job on the business case helps in gaining a high level of internal sponsorship.