Some of the Ardent Partners analyst team (Bob Cohen & myself) journeyed to Chicago last week to attend Basware’s North American User Conference, Basware Connect, one of the few user conferences that is positioned for both procurement and AP professionals. Here are some key takeaways:
Visible Commerce
The Day One Keynote was delivered by Eric Wilson, Basware’s Senior Vice President & General Manager of North America, whose presentation introduced the concept of “Visible Commerce,” an idea that adds a new layer of transparency and context to the traditional B2B transaction world. He began with a quick history lesson on the evolution of global trade (the silk road, industrial revolution, birth of the internet, and the rise of supply management technology, etc.) before diving into the heart of the matter. According to Eric, the results seen by the adoption of technology have been faster, cheaper, and more efficient transactions, but, Eric asked, “Is that enough?” Eric believes that transparency is needed into all transactions – the who, not just the what under these transactions.
Eric cited a recent study that showed that 78% of consumers want to buy from a company that has both “a purpose and values” and drew that link to other businesses and P2P professionals. Eric continued that the goal should be “a transparent, connected, and responsible economy where data equals visibility.” As an example, Eric cited the consolidation of the supply of saline bags in Puerto Rico (50% of the US market) and the impact that the 2017 hurricane had on that supply chain. He then linked the argument for a Visible Economy to Basware’s solutions that deliver critical visibility into the transactions made across its open network and empowers them to “make better financial decisions and more-informed human decisions.”
Customer Case Study: HCR ManorCare
HCR ManorCare delivered a breakout that discussed their move from Basware’s legacy installed AP solution to its cloud-based solution in 2016. Although the project happened a few years ago, I assume Basware gave this customer a primary slot because of the large scope of the project and its overall success and because Basware is still working to get customers to migrate from its legacy applications to its newer suite.
When HCR Manor Care was considering its path forward for AP automation in 2015, it was a current Basware customer but decided to issue a new RFP nonetheless. The results validated what it already knew about Basware’s solution capabilities and the team selected Basware because of its “overall integration capabilities and its budgeting management and integration capabilities.” The project took roughly 18 months and has been in place since Q4, 2016.
AP Transformation Objectives
HCR ManorCare’s goals in upgrading to a new cloud-based AP solution were:
- To take advantage of new functionality
- Reduce invoice processing costs by expanding the use of eInvoicing and reducing the cost of inbound invoices
- Reduce the costs associated with managing and supporting the AP solution (including internal IT and user admin)
- Enhance the user experience
- Improve reporting capabilities
- Expand the project to include eProcurement, Budgeting, and Vendor Management
Lessons Learned
The HCR ManorCare presenters had a series of general and specific lessons learned including:
- The move from the legacy, installed solution to the Basware cloud-based AP solution was essentially a new product deployment
- Do not attempt to recreate what you have, start fresh
- Cloud-solutions offer less customization opportunities
- Project requirements need to be defined in great detail (so do project deliverables)
- Do not be too aggressive in your plan and manage stakeholder expectations
- UAT (User Acceptance Testing) is critical to identify and resolve questions prior to “go-live”
- Consider a pilot approach instead of simply going “live” with the system in a large roll-out
All-in-all, the team considered their AP transformation to be a huge success and delivered on many of their overall project goals while also enabling a dramatic streamlining of workflows, expanded collaboration capabilities and the support of a huge volume of invoices.
Basware Analyst Session
The Basware product leadership and analyst relations team held a briefing for analysts that provided an update on the solution suite. Basware positions its solutions as being able to support 100% of suppliers (and their invoices), support 100% of end-users (from an adoption standpoint), capture 100% of invoices, and provide 100% spend visibility. In that vein, some of the recent product updates for eProcurement that were shared include an improvement in product mapping for suppliers, a Natural Language Processing Virtual Assistant or “chat bot,” and a new requisition approval confidence index. On the ePayables (AP Automation side), new or improved capabilities include both the Cloudscan and Smart PDF which align with Basware’s position that it can meet suppliers where they are to provide greater capture and coverage of submitted invoices than those solutions that rely solely on portals to drive user adoption. The team also highlighted matching capabilities that can account for cross-currency issues, tax rate discrepancies, and instances of fluctuating prices. Readers can learn more about Basware by reading our review and rating of its AP Automation capabilities in our 2019 ePayables Technology Advisor.
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