Eyal Rosenberg of Nipendo, a solution provider at the marcus evans Chief Procurement Officer Summit 2014 and 2015, on why automating the entire procure-to-pay process makes sense. Interview with: Eyal Rosenberg, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Nipendo

1. Automating the Entire Procure-to-Pay Process:
Putting Power Back in the CPO’s Hands
the goods. You also need to make sure
it is properly recorded and reconciled in
your ERP system.
Interview with: Eyal Rosenberg, CoFounder & Chief Executive Officer,
Nipendo
Many Chief Procurement Officers
(CPOs) believe that having invoices in
an electronic format is enough, but they
still end up investing USD 15-30 per
invoice just to reconcile and address
errors, according to Eyal Rosenberg,
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer,
N i p en d o . “ W i t h p r o c u r e - to -p ay
automation, this figure can go down to
less than two dollars per invoice,” he
says.
Nipendo is a solution provider at the
upcoming marcus evans Chief
Procurement Officer Summit 2014
and 2015.
Where do most procure-to-pay
technologies fall short?
There is a fundamental difference
between sending purchase orders and
receiving invoices in an electronic
format and being able to automate the
entire P2P process. Current solutions such as trading networks, e-invoicing,
and Electronic Data Exchange are
focused on moving trade documents
electronically between buyers and
suppliers. They do not really automate
the P2P process and fall short on adding
the real value of touch-free, error-free,
straight-through processing.
If you are just getting an invoice
electronically, you still have to go
through multiple labor-intensive and
error-prone steps before this invoice is
approved for payment. You need to
make sure the data is correct; the tax
and exchange rates were calculated
correctly; the prices and payment terms
match your agreement or purchase
order; and that you actually received
If you do not have a system that can
automate the entire process end to end,
you may be a bit better than you were
with paper documents, but it is still a
very inefficient way to operate. Industry
surveys commonly show that processing
and reconciling an invoice, even an
electronic one, can still take weeks and
cost upwards of USD 15-30.
What does Nipendo do differently?
Automating the entire procure-to-pay
process can only be achieved through a
p latf or m that e nc aps ulate s the
understanding of the P2P processes,
govern, manage and automate it.
Any attempts to do it to-date resulted in
code-heavy systems that required
extensive customization for each buyersupplier relationship. Some companies
were able to automate the process for a
handful of suppliers, but it was just too
expensive and time-consuming to
implement and maintain on a large
scale.
When we started Nipendo, we invested
many person-years on developing a
completely new technological approach
to this problem. Our Supplier Cloud
platform enables any number of
organizations to define their P2P
processes, the logic the rules and the
validations without any code changes.
Another key differentiation is our ability
to handle all spend categories with
equal efficiency. Most implementations
to-date focus on either indirect spend
(mostly thorough supplier networks,
p-cards, and portals), or on limited
scope EDI implementations for the
largest direct material suppliers.
Our customers routinely report over 95
percent straight-through processing of
purchase orders and invoices, touchfree and error-free, with all of their
suppliers. Invoices are processed and
approved for payment within minutes at
an average cost of less than USD 2 per
invoice. It brings a new level of
efficiency and transparency to the
procure-to-pay space that simply cannot
b e ac h i e v e d w i t h c o nv e n t io n a l
technologies.
Does this replace technologies that
a company has already invested in?
One of the key design requirements for
our platform was to keep it open. We
are completely agnostic to the systems
and connections that are currently in
place, therefore organizations can
continue to use any existing solution
they have already invested in, including
EDI exchange, supplier portals, etc. We
seamlessly integrate with these systems
and with the enterprise’s ERP system,
while automating and reconciling the
entire P2P processes.
It is an additional layer of automation
that allows companies to elevate their
existing solutions to the point where 95
percent or more of buyer-supplier
transactions are automatically processed and reconciled across all
systems.
This approach makes the implementation of Nipendo both quick and riskfree. You do not have to scrap what you
have today, just make it better.
A typical implementation of Nipendo
takes just a couple of months. It is not
your typical multi-year, high-cost, highrisk B2B implementation.
What does this all mean for the
CPO?
For the CPO, automating procure-to-pay
removes the friction from the process. It
allows the procurement organization to
focus on strategic issues and the
management of supplier relationships,
rather than spending valuable time and
resources on back-and-forth resolution
of delivery and payment discrepancies.
It also means that processes can be
standardized across all spend categories
and supplier types, so there are fewer
exceptions and less room for errors,
f r aud , and o the r s up ply c hain
interruptions.
Suppliers are extremely satisfied with
the solution. It saves them a lot of work
and gives them a level of transparency
and confidence they never had before.
The bottom line is that happier suppliers
are easier to work with, so that is a big
bonus for the CPO on top of all the
above mentioned benefits.

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About Nipendo
Nipendo’s buyer-supplier collaboration platform empowers organizations around the globe to reach a new level of procure-to-pay
automation that is not just paperless but also errorless and effortless, achieving over 90% straight-through processing of
supplier transactions directly to their ERP systems. Nipendo enables seamless interoperability with any supplier communication
solution—including EDI, supplier network, and e-invoicing—allowing enterprises to leverage their existing implementations and
extend fully-automated electronic procurement and invoicing to the entire supplier ecosystem.
www.nipendo.com
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To view the web version of this interview, please click here: www.cpo-summit.com/EyalRosenberg