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Follow on Google News | Completing The P2P Circle By Attacking Tail End (T&E) IssuesJohn Dickens, Shared Services Centre Manager, NEC Europe, joins SSON to discuss NEC’s story in how they reviewed back office function across Europe and made them more efficient and cost effective.
By: IQPC J Dickens: Very well, thank you. Good to be with you. SSON: I’m delighted you could join us ahead of the conference. Now, firstly, what are the top three most challenging issues in P2P in your 2012 programme? J Dickens: Well, I think in these austere times many people are going back to the wheel. I think P2P, there’s always perceived to be something that can be gleaned out of this process be it at the buying end or in the processing end. And this circle of events is no different to previous ones. Anybody that’s been involved in the shared service community will be aware that the hazards [?] don’t change. Everything just needs to be faster, leaner and better. So, from the point of view of the challenges for us, what we’re trying to do is deploy some kind of common operating environment for our P2P landscape that enables us to do things a lot better and, if possible, on an automated basis. SSON: And what is difficult about it? J Dickens: There two sides to this. One is obviously change upon change itself. Certainly within organisations there’s always a resistance to some form of change. So, the stakeholders and trying to get them on board in the kind of timespans that you want is always a challenge. But I think the issue of pace is the key element here. Certainly in this space, we’ve had the greatest revolution on the bill to cash, and on the record, innovation hasn’t been so dramatic, but certainly in the P2P space, certainly in the last three years, it’s been unbelievably dramatic. The pace of change in which suppliers are coming forward with bigger and better and more functional products has been quite amazing. And certainly whereas before there was a lot of discussion about what was possible, nowadays it’s more of a question of why haven’t you caught up and what’s the next wave? And that poses the next problem: the ability to react to this fast-moving landscape is difficult. For many people these are expensive operations and it’s very difficult to decide whether to go with one product or another to decide whether you are in the best shape to the react to the next generation thereafter. Certainly the delivery of a return before the next wonder product is the biggest fear for most of us in this arena. But most business cases these days generally look for some kind of return within 12 to 18 months. And certainly with some of the products that we’ve been looking at, this has been possible. To download this interview in full please click here: bit.ly/N01bGz The 8th Annual SSON Purchase-To- End
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