Region & scale (2022). A medium-sized industrial manufacturer in the Gulf operated 16 factories and worked with ~2,000 active suppliers. Core systems included SAP ERP for procurement and inventory management and OpenText Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) for accounts payable (AP). Day-to-day procurement work, however, still relied heavily on email and spreadsheets, particularly for RFx exchanges, vendor communications, and document trails outside SAP/VIM.

Strategic intent. The client’s 2022 roadmap set a clear outcome: one digital “control centre” for the entire procure-to-pay (P2P) journey — from demand to sourcing, awarding, delivery, and payment — so leadership could see real-time status, reduce manual work, and enforce consistent governance across plants and categories.

What existed. Key functional steps were in place but fragmented: demand arrived via SAP PRs, an IT ticketing tool, and ad-hoc email; sourcing was handled largely by buyers via email; orders flowed through SAP; deliveries were coordinated between logistics and requesters; and invoices were processed in VIM — with limited end-to-end traceability. The client wanted to standardise these flows and give suppliers a single portal for participation, documents, and status tracking.

Non-negotiables.

• Keep SAP + VIM as systems of record; any new layer must integrate cleanly without duplicating master data.
• No disruption to factory throughput; procurement performance is tied to production schedules.
• Auditability of every RFx, decision, and vendor interaction, with clear responsibility and response-time visibility.
• Multi-site scaling: 16 factories, category differences, and varying maturity levels.

Why it mattered. Procurement leakage into email made cycle times unpredictable, masked bottlenecks, and increased compliance risk. Leadership lacked live, comparable KPIs across plants and categories (e.g., PR-to-PO time, exception rates, on-time payment). The prize was material: lower AP cycle time, fewer exceptions, better supplier competition and development, and executive-ready reporting in one place.

Fragmented demand intake. Requests entered via SAP PRs, IT tickets, and email, each with different metadata and completeness. Buyers spent time reconciling records and chasing context. A central Demand Centre did not exist; visibility started late in the process.

Email-heavy sourcing. RFIs/RFQs were often launched and negotiated by email, limiting competition transparency and traceability. Side-threads with technical requesters had no structured record, weakening audit trails and post-event analytics.

Awarding decisions lacked a single spine. Award rationales combined price sheets, historical supplier performance, and risk notes — but lived across files and inboxes, making governance and re-use of knowledge difficult.

Delivery and document flow. Logistics and service requesters relied on attachments and manual checklists; supporting documents were inconsistently captured against orders.

AP exceptions. VIM was live, but invoice metadata quality and document completeness varied, causing avoidable exceptions and rework in AP. A vendor-facing intake with guidance and validation was missing.

Operational impact (baseline, 2022). Discovery indicated (varies by plant/category):

• High email dependency across RFx and document exchange.
• Long PR-to-PO cycle-times driven by handoffs and clarifications.
• AP exceptions linked to missing/incorrect vendor documents; poor visibility for suppliers on status.

The absence of a single event/transaction spine meant leaders could not slice performance end-to-end with confidence.

Averroa was engaged on a Research & Innovation (R&I) track to design a standardised P2P operating model and produce a costed, risk-aware roadmap for digitisation — with quick proofs to de-risk critical decisions. The R&I track follows our DRIVE™ loop (Design → Run → Improve → Validate → Expand) and is staffed via the ORBIT™ role model to deploy the right expertise at the right time.

Scope of R&I (6 weeks).

• Design: interviews, process maps, KPI tree, governance options; draft reference architecture for a P2P Digital Centre layered over SAP/VIM.
• Run (lightweight proofs): event-tracking concept, vendor-portal mockups, document validation flow for AP intake.
• Improve: refine metadata standards, buyer/requester workflows, and escalation paths.
• Validate: executive workshop; align on KPIs to prove value (e.g., PR-to-PO, AP cycle time, VIM exception rate).
• Expand: phased rollout plan (pilot → core categories → multi-plant scale), cost model, and risk mitigations.

Architectural idea: a “P2P Digital Centre.” Rather than replace SAP or VIM, we designed a thin, integrated application layer that unifies the journey into five centres with one event ID linking all steps — from request to payment: Demand, Sourcing, Awarding, Delivery, Payment. This created a single source of truth for status, documents, and communications while preserving SAP/VIM as systems of record.

Demand Centre.

• Pull approved PRs from SAP and normalise with ticket and email-originated needs via a unified demand form.
• Enforce minimum metadata (e.g., category, plant, value band, required date) and route to buyers with SLA timers.
• Create the P2P Event on intake; all downstream actions inherit this key.

Sourcing Centre.

• Let buyers combine demand items into sourcing events; publish public or restricted RFx through a vendor portal.
• Keep technical requesters inside the same event (role-based), so Q&A and clarifications are recorded.
• Generate comparison reports automatically, including price, delivery terms, and supplier scorecards.

Awarding Centre.

• Capture decision rationale (multi-criteria) and link to historical supplier performance; push POs from SAP to the event for supplier acknowledgement.
• Provide management dashboards for award cycle-time and competition metrics.

Delivery Centre.

• Give logistics/requesters and suppliers a shared delivery schedule with document checklists.
• Store all delivery documents (e.g., packing lists, GR evidence) against the same event.

Payment Centre.

• Offer a vendor-facing invoice submission flow aligned with VIM’s required metadata and attachments to prevent exceptions.
• Surface AP status and aging to suppliers and buyers; show root causes for delays.

Governance & metrics. We defined a KPI pack with operational definitions and ownership (e.g., PR-to-PO, RFx turnaround, award cycle-time, first-time-right invoice %, VIM exception rate, AP cycle-time). RACI was clarified at each centre; RAID logs and cadences were specified for programme control.

Operating model & delivery cadence. The plan mapped to Averroa DRIVE™ (Design the blueprint, Run sprints, Improve via retros, Validate against KPIs, Expand to plants/categories). Roles followed ORBIT™ (Partner steering, Principal owning delivery design and exec sessions, Senior Consultants driving day-to-day workflows and demos, Consultants building integrations and reports).

Why this worked. The design connected every email-era activity to a persistent event spine, created a proper vendor workspace, and used VIM-aligned intake so AP could process first-time-right far more often — all without disturbing SAP/VIM ownership.

Measured within the first months after pilot go-live, then trended as roll-out progressed:

• PR-to-PO cycle-time: ↓ 28% (median), driven by structured intake and fewer clarifications.
• RFx turnaround (request to award): ↓ 24%, assisted by portal-based Q&A and auto-comparisons.
• Email-based transactions in sourcing & awarding: ↓ ~80%, replaced by event communications in the portal.
• VIM exception rate: ↓ from high-20s% to low-teens%, following guided invoice submission and document validation.
• AP cycle-time: ↓ 30–35%, with better completeness, fewer rejections, and visible SLAs.
• Supplier satisfaction (qualitative interviews): improved clarity on status and required documents; fewer disputes on late payments.
• Audit readiness: 100% of award decisions and negotiations retrievable by event ID; faster evidence packs for internal audit.

Leadership finally had live, comparable dashboards across plants and categories, enabling targeted coaching for buyers and faster escalation on outliers. (KPI definitions and governance mirrored the project charter and R&I output.)

• Design intake first. A clear Demand Centre with minimum metadata dramatically reduces downstream noise.
• Give suppliers a real workspace. A vendor portal for RFx, documents, and status eliminates email ambiguity and speeds decisions.
• Anchor everything to one event ID. Persistent IDs across demand→payment make analytics and audits trivial.
• Align with VIM at the front door. Vendor-facing checks that mirror VIM needs cut exceptions and AP rework.
• Governance beats goodwill. Clear RACI, SLA timers, and RAID cadences sustained improvements beyond the pilot.
• Use DRIVE™/ORBIT™ to scale. The looped delivery rhythm and role tiers protected pace and quality as more plants came online.