As I rode my bike (a deep red metallic Pinarello Treviso from 1984 with the group set removed and replaced by a pair of Campagnolo track hubs) to work this morning I passed a queue of cars slowly making their way along Strandvägen being held up by one of the royal horse carriages. Marveling at the historic advances of transportation – horse, bicycle, automobile – it got me thinking about how far one can take automation.
Many have championed the full automation of the procure-to-pay cycle; yet few have actually been able to show any real and substantial benchmarks that go beyond the pre-implementation business case.
Last year, I had the privilege of working alongside some of the senior purchasing executives as they prepared their presentations for the IBX Purchasing Executive Summit. One interesting findings that was presented was that it was very hard to create a business case for full automation of the procure-to-pay cycle. Instead, a hybrid model that included scanning, workflows, automated matching as well as a shared service center in a low cost location to process some of the invoices manually was presented as the best cost alternative. The streamlined process cost was in the low double digits with retained quality and while expanding on the subject in the presentation, the switching costs were ruled to high to go further into full automation even though it was technologically possible.
I think there is a great lesson to be learned from this; while technology might dazzle us with its might, one should not forget the human alternative as it may still be able to do the job faster and at a lower cost (be it to process invoices or as in my case – get me to work quickly and in style).
