Procure to Pay Suites: 10 Vendors in 2024

Every business needs a P2P process to manage their vendor relationships. P2P suites offer a comprehensive solution to manage business P2P cycles. P2P suites are integrating the advances in machine learning and generative AI to improve their capabilities. 

Given CFOs’ mandate of driving efficiency across the organization, it is mandatory that processes like P2P managed by the CFO organization are run as efficiently as possible. However, finance teams may not be clear about novel capabilities of P2P suites and may be confused by similar vendor claims.

This article analyzes the capabilities and market presence of the top 10 P2P suites so buyers can identify the tools and focus on their buying process.

10 Procure to Pay Suites

*This table includes P2P suites that can manage and automate all or most of the processes that are part of the procurement cycle. Ratings and reviews are based on Gartner Peer Insights, G2 and Capterra. Vendors who received more reviews are ranked first.

Selecting a shortlist of P2P suites

While P2P suites offer differentiated capabilities, these are distributed over a large solution space and the value of these different capabilities depend on the specific buyer. Therefore, AIMultiple did not use capabilities as a filter in this vendor shortlist process.

These P2P suites all offer core P2P capabilities such as:

• Budgeting
• Need Identification
• E-Purchasing
• Employee expenses
• Accounts payable
• Supply chain finances
• Payments

Here, we used a 2-step procedure to prepare a preliminary vendor analysis shortlist: 

• Monolithic character: P2P suites need to streamline and automate all or most of the processes that are part of the procure to pay cycle: Thus, we included here the suites that cover at least 5 of the 7 steps indicated above. 
• Review numbers: A large number of user feedback points to the number of users of the suites, which in turn points to the scalability and support network of the the suites. The selection criteria includes ratings and reviews from Gartner Peer Insights, G2 and Capterra. Vendors who received more reviews are ranked higher on the table.

Differentiation criteria for P2P suites

Buyers need to choose their P2P suite based on their specific needs and the capabilities that P2P suites offer beyond these core capabilities. For example, Gartner highlights these areas of differentiation between P2P suites ¹ :

• Service procurement
• Contingent labor procurement
• Embedded rate cards
• Time-review and approval
• Performance tracking
• Travel & expenses management

Monolithic P2P suites vs best of breed

Though choosing the right P2P solution is important, it is not the only decision. Buyers also decide whether they will use a single P2P suite to serve all their needs or rely on a mix of best-of-breed solutions.

Enterprises, with their dynamic tech landscapes that evolve due to history, mergers, acquisitions, are unlikely to succeed with a monolithic solution. AIMultiple recommends a best of breed approach based on signals like this:

• P2P suites like Basware recommend buyers to follow a best-of-breed approach saying they expect monolithic P2P suites to fail their users like ERP omnisuites. They claim that a “one-size-fits-all” strategy cannot always be the panacea for all P2P challenges.²
• Gartner’s report on source to settle (S2S) suites claims “in many areas, it makes sense to consider alternative specialist solutions to replace or — in some cases complement — the suite offerings.”³

If you are curious about the integration of AI in P2P process and possible tools to use, check out: P2P AI.

If you already have some P2P suites in your mind or if you want to see the alternatives, check out: Coupa Alternatives.

FAQ

What are P2P suites?

Gartner defines Procure to Pay suites as comprehensive solutions that automate workflows across an enterprise for requesting, procuring, receiving, and settling payments for products and services.⁴ They also claim that there is an increasing trend for customers to purchase P2P services as part of a larger S2P deal with a single vendor.

What are the potential use cases of P2P suites?

Procurement for daily needs (indirect procurement):

The goal is to increase spending compliance and automation for goods and services that a business needs to run, but not for producing things or selling them again.

It’s the main way P2P suites are used. Users want an easy buying process and to work well with many suppliers.

Focus on direct materials

Here, the focus is on collaboration within the supply chain, mainly for businesses that manufacture or sell products.

These types of procurement processes are based on what customers want and goes into the product’s total cost. Users in this area need to connect with other tools for planning, product life, quality, and more. This kind of procurement often needs more integration with suppliers because purchase orders change a lot.

Service procurement

This is for businesses that acquire various services.It encompasses intricate service procurement as well as temporary worker procurement.

Finance

This case is predominantly about financial tasks, like handling invoices and payments, encapsulating AP-AI and transaction management.

Enterprises aim to unify finance operations within the procurement processes usually orient towards e-invoicing, AP-AI, and payment features.

For complicated setups

A use case based on complicated procurement categories and geographical scopes that need advanced integrations and analytics to support a diverse back-end infrastructure.

This use case is for businesses with many different and specific needs, like oil and gas companies or those that have grown through many deals. Also of worry are security, legal compliance, and adaptability across a wide range of end-user access devices. The key to success is being able to connect to many operational and financial systems and see how procurement processes are going.

What are the challenges related to P2P suites?

Many organizations gravitate towards procure to pay solutions to minimize integration, as suggested by Gartner research publications. This is understandable, yet it shouldn’t overshadow the importance of selecting the right solutions. The all-encompassing solution looks tempting, but it’s highly unlikely for a vendor to provide a comprehensive procure to pay suite that works and can be customized in every module.

By opting for such a suite, companies can trap themselves into a package of varying quality that might take significantly long time to implement; resulting in slow user adoption rates and potential inefficiencies. Solutions such as Coupa offer a comprehensive approach, but customers who want help with specialized solutions may not find what they are looking for.

For further questions regarding the topic, reach out to us:

External Links:

External Links

• 1. “Critical Capabilities for Procure-to-Pay Suites”Gartner. Retrieved on September 17, 2023. 
• 2. Sami Peltonen, “The Rise Of The Ecosystem In Procurement And Sourcing“. Basware. Retrieved on September 17, 2023
• 3. “Don’t Assume You Have to Use an S2S Suite to Digitalize Procurement and Sourcing”, Gartner, Retrieved on September 23, 2023
• 4. “Procure-To-Pay Suites (Transitioning To Source-To-Pay)” Gartner. Retrieved on September 17, 2023