Grip on Purchase-to-Pay for ROC Central Netherlands
ROC Midden Nederland was faced with the challenge that their existing Purchase-to-Pay application no longer met the needs of Procurement and Finance. Processes were cumbersome, inefficient and insufficiently user-friendly. With an ambitious plan and a tight schedule, ROC Midden Nederland set to work to optimize the P2P process organization broadly and successfully. “It's a relief that closing the year is now so easy and smooth.” - Finance, ROC Midden Nederland.
What were the challenges in the existing P2P process?
ROC Midden Nederland noticed that the existing Purchase-to-Pay application was no longer in line with the organization's daily practice. Both the Procurement and Finance departments encountered restrictions that made the work unnecessarily complex. Processes were fragmented, unuser-friendly and highly dependent on manual actions. This led to delays, increased sensitivity to errors and insufficient overview of the entire chain.
In addition, ROC Midden Nederland is an organization with multiple colleges and services, each with their own dynamics and needs. The lack of sufficient standardization made it difficult to work uniformly throughout the organization and to focus properly on legality and efficiency. At the same time, there was little further development on the existing Purchase-to-Pay application, and the links with the financial system were complex.
The central challenge was therefore to find a future-proof solution that works for the complexity of the organization, but at the same time ensures simplicity, insight and better cooperation between Procurement and Finance.
Good preparation proved crucial. ROC Midden Nederland asked S2P & More to analyze the current process and start an improvement process for optimization. During the analysis and baseline measurement, all relevant stakeholders were involved and the bottlenecks and areas for improvement were identified. Based on the analysis, it quickly became clear that tendering for new software was the most logical choice.
ROC MN formed a project team with representatives from all departments and worked with S2P & More to prepare the tender.
This resulted in:
· A tightly formulated description of the current and desired situation
· Clear requirements, wishes and use cases
· Through a market consultation, good insight into the possibilities and impossibilities of software solutions.
In the market consultation, we tested early whether suppliers were really able to meet our specific requirements. That saved a lot of time later.
What did the new P2P approach mean in concrete terms for ROC Central Netherlands?
Thanks to the thorough preparation, the tender went smoothly. Visma SpendCloud emerged as the best solution.
ROC Central Netherlands consciously chose a big-bang implementation: switch to the new system at once, for all modules and organizational units.
Although the implementation period of three months was ambitious, this approach made it possible to do the 2023 annual work directly in the new system and saved an enormous amount of time.
I wouldn't have wanted to do this any other way.
What can other educational institutions learn from this approach?
S2P & More provided an external project manager, who worked closely with ROC MN's internal project manager. This combination ensured that progress remained good, stakeholders remained well engaged and that the substantive knowledge about the process was also secured.
“Thanks to the active involvement and enthusiasm, everyone stayed engaged and we kept our agreements.” — Elisabeth Varkevisser, Financial Specialist
In addition, ROC Midden Nederland worked with small project groups and organized webinars and Q&A sessions to include the rest of the organization in the new process. This not only created support within the organization, but had the added advantage that you immediately notice it if elements were not properly set up after going live.
“Take people by the hand. Continuing to ask, explain and repeat takes time, but pays off.” — Marjon Rietveld, Purchasing Advisor
Plan an introduction
Whether you're in the middle of an ERP implementation, or just want to know if your current purchasing process is still future-proof, S2P & More will help you out. From baseline measurement and requirements analysis to market orientation, software selection and implementation. Feel free to contact Ewald.
