Source-to-pay (S2P) is the end-to-end process of assessing current vendors and vetting new vendors through automation, taking strategic applications of digital procurement further by including sourcing.

As consumer expectations for fast turnarounds increase, businesses need faster sourcing to meet demand. In fact, it has been developing for the last twenty years following a published article by the ERP platform Oracle who saw e-procurement as an opportunity for all businesses to streamline interrelated activities around procurement that otherwise relied on slow-moving practices. Research and development, quality assurances, negotiations, language barriers-each of these factors can contribute to sourcing timeframes.įor these reasons, businesses turn to automation and big data to overcome and minimize less than ideal lead times, bringing products and services to clients faster and more efficiently. Sourcing a new vendor or product has traditionally occurred over long windows of time, sometimes years.

Source-to-pay goes beyond submitting and collecting RFPs to prospective suppliers or vendors-it supports a strategic identification process through data analytics, promoting business needs before they impact operation and improving the selection process before decisions are finalized.

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