This is, for some people at least, one of the most dreaded questions in a job interview. There’s no obvious right or wrong answer, and whether the answer ‘fits’ depends on the — often mysterious — inner workings of the company you’re interviewing at.

But for a company, this question is an inevitable consideration for the business plan. And, naturally, it’s not limited to five years, either.

When considering Source-to-Pay automation for your business, you obviously want to go with a vendor that is experienced and offers mature solutions that are ready to get up and running as soon as possible, yet should also provide scalability so that you can easily plan for the next two, three, five or ten years.

Gartner® Hype Cycle reports reveal emerging technologies that have the potential to disrupt industries and spot investment opportunities that can give you a competitive edge. According to Gartner, “Hype Cycles provide a graphic representation of the maturity and adoption of technologies and applications, and how they are potentially relevant to solving real business problems and exploiting new opportunities”.

Which is why we are excited that Esker is listed as a Sample Vendor in three technology categories in the 2023 Gartner® Hype Cycle for Procurement and Sourcing Solutions: AP Invoice Automation, Supplier E-invoicing and Source-to-Pay Suites. According to Gartner, solutions such as Esker Accounts Payable, Esker Supplier Management and Esker Sourcing are well on their way to reaching the Plateau of Productivity.

Esker’s automation solutions not only help your business run smoother and provide visibility now, but with our continuous dedication to innovation and listening to customer feedback, we’re convinced that you can nail down a pretty solid business plan for the next 5, 10, or even 15 years.

Companies worldwide trust Gartner Hype Cycles to guide their technology decisions.

Access your complimentary copy to learn why Esker was recognised as a Sample Vendor.

Gartner, Hype Cycle for Procurement and Sourcing Solutions, 2023, By Kaitlynn Sommers, Micky Keck, Lynne Phelan, Naveen Mahendra, Cian Curtin, Chaithanya Paradarami, 19 July 2023
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, Hype Cycle is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s Research & Advisory organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Catherine Dupuy-Holdich

Catherine has been with Esker for 20 years. As Source-to-Pay Product Manager, she is the market and business expert of all things S2P. She is responsible for overseeing the development of Esker’s S2P suite, including product strategy and vision. Catherine works closely with R&D, sales, marketing and support to ensure customer satisfaction.

Read more insights from Catherine Dupuy-Holdich

This new partnership will provide industry-leading software and implementation expertise while driving efficiency within finance teams.

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

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Aaaaahh…the end of summer…
The tan and the relaxation are slowly fading, the good memories hopefully not.

How about those memories of actually booking that vacation, though? Did the booking process overshadow the enjoyment of the trip?

First, there’s the lack of visibility: the different providers for airline, airport transportation, hotel, car rental, etc., can get confusing. You never really have a clear overview of whether prices are fair or what the real costs are (baggage fees, anyone?). Sneaky hidden costs can make for a rude awakening when the bank statement arrives after the trip…

Then there’s the question of risks: is the hotel in a safe area? Is the hotel pool unexpectedly out of service?

Are you aware of all the rules and regulations of where you’re going? Is the passport valid?

What happens when something goes wrong, like a cancelled flight? How is the rebooking best handled?

All in all, not the most relaxing way to go about taking a vacation. But we hope you had a great time anyway!

Now, to turn your attention back to work (sorry…!): If you’re a CFO or work in a CFO-adjacent function, the travel difficulties can also be applied to the source-to-pay (S2P) cycle.

Let’s look at some of the challenges frequently faced in the S2P cycle, and how comprehensive automation solutions can help with those:

• Do you have sufficient visibility and control over procurement activities?

In order to effectively manage spend, procurement needs to be transparent. S2P platforms provide thorough spend analytics so that cost-saving opportunities are quickly identified and expenditure patterns easily tracked while ensuring compliance with budgetary guidelines.

• Are risk mitigation and compliance metrics where they need to be?

Robust features of S2P solutions such as automated contract management and supplier risk assessments let you proactively identify and mitigate potential risks, enforce compliance with regulatory standards and ensure adherence to internal policies.

• Are you and the business’ vendors on the same page?

Effectively managing suppliers is a fundamental part of business success, yet it is a complex process involving multiple steps. S2P solutions can help facilitate effective supplier management by enhancing communication, collaboration and performance evaluation. Sustainable and ethical supplier practices can be promoted by incorporating strategic sourcing and vetting procedures into the procurement process. And communication tools that provide instant visibility—including performance metrics—ensure better collaboration internally and with suppliers.

• Are the numbers adding up?

Providing valuable strategic guidance to the company relies on informed decisions based on accurate and complete financial visibility. S2P platforms integrate financial data from various sources, and create a holistic view of performance, cash flow and working capital. Comprehensive visibility enables CFOs to assess the financial health of the organisation, identify areas for improvement and drive strategic initiatives effectively.

The idea behind S2P solutions is not just the automation part. It’s also about recognising that finance and procurement have shared objectives and that collaboration between the two can foster a strong partnership that enhances decision-making, optimises costs, mitigates risks, and drives sustainable growth. These factors defy the usefulness of point solutions that allows each department to remain siloed, and instead calls for a single platform solution that can manage the entire S2P process from beginning to end.

Equipped with an extensive collection of AI capabilities, Esker’s end-to-end Source-to-Pay suite enables companies to remain agile in an ever-changing world and to build resilient and sustainable businesses.

Ready to learn more about Esker?

Visit: www.esker.co.uk

Catherine Dupuy-Holdich

Catherine has been with Esker for 20 years. As Source-to-Pay Product Manager, she is the market and business expert of all things S2P. She is responsible for overseeing the development of Esker’s S2P suite, including product strategy and vision. Catherine works closely with R&D, sales, marketing and support to ensure customer satisfaction.

Read more insights from Catherine Dupuy-Holdich

As we continue in turbulent economic times, happy and engaged employees are more important than ever to their businesses, making those essential productivity gains that can give the edge over the competition.

Whilst pay-packets and employee benefits are near the top of most job wish-lists, rising costs and high inflation have caused some organisations to place increasing focus on another high priority: job satisfaction.

At Esker we take pride in our process automation solutions benefitting not only the top line of the company, but just as importantly the working environment of those teams involved in Source-to-Pay and Order-to-Cash. We believe it’s vital for organisations to understand that automation isn’t about reducing headcount, it’s about making those employees count, and here’s how:

Eliminating manual, mundane tasks
One of the main employee-focused advantages of automation is the elimination of menial, tedious and time-consuming tasks that can take so much of some team members’ days. These are things like data entry, manually keying invoices, searching for paper documents, and so on. Automating these essential but high-time-cost tasks gives way to a huge window of opportunity for better use of time for these staff.

Focus on value-adding activities
With all those hours freed-up from removing tedious tasks, employees find themselves with significantly more productive time, that they can now use to focus on high-value activities, personal development and creative solutions to problems. By giving them more time to be creative, automation can ultimately lead to more innovation.
Not only that, but automation also allows more time for inter-departmental and supplier relationships: instead of a rushed phone call to answer a question, employees can take the time to discuss properly and develop better working relationships with other teams and suppliers.

Taking pride in their work
The millennial workforce of today demands more than ‘just a job’ – they love to show off what they’re doing (hello, social media!) and have higher expectations for the work that they do. By making way for more meaningful work, increased flexibility, job mobility, and fewer obstacles to getting things done, employees value their responsibilities and take pride in the more purposeful activities that they’re undertaking.

A more productive, engaged and efficient workforce
Automated and controlled workflows in the S2P process make staff life easier. Intelligent and customisable dashboards mean that important information such as POs, invoices, supplier information and even KPIs are available at the touch of a button. Armed with accurate and automated information, human error is reduced, processes become more seamless, and employees are more efficient and engaged.

Esker’s Source-to-Pay suite is designed to help with all of the above: removing departmental siloes, streamlining procurement processes, improving enforcement of policy compliance, and enhancing supplier management with better visibility over the entire buying process.

As the world of technology continues to evolve, an ever-increasing proportion of the workforce are used to having technology play an essential and transformational role in their lives. It naturally follows that embracing this same mindset in the workplace will motivate and create a working environment that gives them the opportunity to meet their full potential.
Using tools such as AI-driven automation, businesses need to invest in digital transformation to get the best of both worlds: a technological foundation that helps attract and retain skilled workers while delivering real, perceptible business advantages.

Jennifer Ball

As Marketing Co-ordinator for Esker UK, Jennifer manages Esker UK's marketing campaigns and events for S2P solutions. She has been part of the Esker family since 2019.

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Esker, a global cloud platform and leader in AI-driven process automation solutions for Finance, Procurement and Customer Service functions, today announced that Gloucester City Homes, an independent Housing Association in the City of Gloucester has signed for Esker’s full Source-to-Pay (S2P) solutions suite to automate its accounts payable processes. Esker successfully competed against other S2P vendors to win the project.

Gloucester City Homes (GCH) has 4,522 rented homes, 323 leasehold homes, 126 shared ownership homes and 107 homeless units, generating over 12,000 invoices annually. Automating its accounts payable processes will enable GCH to be more efficient, manage its cash flow clearly and provide a great level of customer service to its tenants.

With thousands of suppliers to deal with too, the company decided to also use Esker’s supplier management and procurement solutions. These enable the team to have a 360-degree view of supplier information and track every transaction – from request, to receipt of goods and services, enabling full reporting on requisitions, items purchased, orders processed and payments made.

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

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Spanning both the source-to-pay (S2P) and order-to-cash (O2C) cycles, Esker’s AI-powered solutions are built to vastly reduce repetitive and low-value tasks. The patented technology addresses the need for accurate automated data extraction on incoming documents. For businesses with a large customer base, keying information in manually for invoices, orders and other documents is time-consuming and expensive.

Esker’s newly patented AI technology uses traditional and machine learning algorithms to identify data fields, make routing decisions and suggest next actions with the goal of reducing the number of touches during processing as much as possible. The data is read from a document and the AI creates rules that define what data to retrieve and in which format. Through user input, these rules are adapted and the accuracy of the extraction process increases over time. This interplay of AI technology and human supervision reduces mindless and error-prone manual data entry down to almost zero.

The efficacy of Esker’s technology can be witnessed in the order management process. For example, each customer likely uses a different template for their purchase orders (POs) or even changes their layout occasionally. Capturing data from customer orders no matter the channel, format or layout they arrive in, AI retrieves the relevant information on both the header and line-item levels, such as shipping address, PO number, product references, quantities and prices. The machine learning technology then learns from user corrections, increasing the recognition rates after only a few adjustments. “One of the strengths of Esker’s solution is to naturally solve all the complexity of receiving thousands of orders in different formats and with a myriad of different characteristics and particularities,” said Gervasio Prieto, Customer Service Manager at CAPSA Food, an Esker customer. This technology does not only apply to order recognition in Esker’s Customer Service solution suite, but also to vendor invoices, remittances and deduction claims.

Esker has been steadily investing in R&D for utilising AI capabilities in all its solutions for nearly 20 years now. Already at the forefront of AI technology when this patent application was submitted 12 years ago, auto learning is still used in Esker’s solutions today. This technology was expanded on with additional layers of deep learning neural networks.

“When we started on the AI journey at Esker, we focused our efforts on data extraction in order to decrease manual data entry for incoming invoices and orders,” said Jean-Jacques Bérard, Vice President of Research and Development at Esker. “This project has expanded to enriching the extracted data with predictive and prescriptive functionalities such as detecting anomalies in orders, predicting the invoice analytical axis, or proposing an answer to a customer request. This combination of human and artificial intelligence allows for making the work more engaging and efficient.”

Read full press release here.

Esker UK

Unlocking Positive-Sum Growth with AI-Driven Business Solutions for P2P & O2C Cycles

Read more insights from Esker UK