Streamlining Success with Source to Pay Software

Source to Pay is an end-to-end process that government contractors implement that begins with finding the right suppliers and ends with the final payment for their goods or services. The necessary steps within this process include a variety of complex tasks, including sourcing suppliers or subcontractors, vetting them, negotiating prices and signing a contract and then managing the related payments and schedules until a project is complete and money has changed hands. 

Because of the complexity and extensive communication required, government contractors are turning to Source to Pay (S2P) software to help automate and streamline this process and centralize related materials. 

• Common Procurement Challenges for Government Contractors
• Benefits of Adopting Source to Pay Software
• What to Look For in Source to Pay Software
• Source to Pay Software for Government Contractors

When it comes to finding the resources needed to complete a project and then managing those resources efficiently to ensure you can deliver your contract on time and budget, government contractors have their work cut out for them.  

During the procurement process, government contractors often need to manage multiple subcontractors throughout the entire project lifecycle while also joining forces with direct and indirect materials suppliers. At the same time, they need to keep several internal stakeholders aligned– all while ensuring their processes and systems comply with government purchasing system requirements and Material Management Accounting System requirements.  

In fact, due to these many moving parts, it's not uncommon for companies to spend 40 -50 percent of their overall costs on resources supporting procurement – and it's because of this intricate juggling act that this particular process requires so much time and effort. And when this juggling act is spread across disparate systems, it brings additional challenges for government contractors.  

Without a single system to house procurement data, departments are not working from a single source of truth and don't have time to focus on bigger initiatives, which means the business is potentially missing out on some key learnings that could help you make better, more strategic decisions that could reduce cycle times and improve efficiency.  

By automating their process and centralizing related communications, S2P software can significantly reduce manual effort, increase efficiency and ensure compliance with government regulations. 

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Leveraging multiple disparate systems, paper and people to manage the procurement process can increase procurement cycle times, days payable outstanding (DPO) and the time needed to complete a CPSR audit. 

Utilizing a trusted solution to support your entire S2P process can help solve these challenges while providing key benefits, including: 

• Integrating key data into a single source of truth, allowing you to move away from having to re-enter data into various systems and reduce paper processes
• Streamlining vendor and subcontractor management by housing all purchase orders, invoices and resulting communication in one place
• Achieving significant cost savings with the ability to identify opportunities for bulk purchasing, negotiate better contract terms and reduce the risk of overpayments.
• Enabling you to quickly prepare for and pass an audit  

By modernizing their approach to procurement with an S2P solution, contractors can integrate critical data and operate much more nimbly and productively, enabling them to minimize waste and preserve additional margins. 

Once you've decided that investing in a S2P solution is right for your organization, there are some key areas to consider to ensure you're choosing the right software for your needs:

Here are some questions you can ask yourself and your teams to help choose the best solution:

1. Does it meet your end-to-end process needs, supporting you from sourcing to invoice?

   Choosing software built to support the complex process that government contractors undertake is essential to streamlining your S2P process while ensuring you're pursuing the right opportunities and developing a sound strategy backed by actionable data.

2. Does it automate existing manual processes?

   Digitalizing your S2P process will allow you to integrate the various steps with the procurement process. Choosing a solution that focuses on streamlining the sourcing of suppliers and subcontractors, helps you execute contract agreements and eases the approval and ordering of goods and services is key.

3. Can it serve as that single source of truth with data you can use for strategic decisions?

   Your solution should offer the ability to manage contract and subcontract data, including tracking all financial and non-financial aspects of a contract. Doing this in one place, with related materials housed together, is essential for providing the visibility you need into your projects, people and processes and helping you negotiate better through actionable data metrics, including supplier scorecarding and spend analytics.

4. Does it meet compliance requirements and ensure you're audit-ready?

   Technology built for government contractors can also help you implement and maintain compliance standards needed to fulfill your contracts and ensure you can pass an audit.

In the complex world of government contracting, Source to Pay software offers a powerful tool for streamlining procurement processes, ensuring compliance and saving costs. As more government agencies adopt this technology, it's likely to become an essential component of efficient and effective government contracting.

Remember, the right S2P solution should be tailored to the unique needs and challenges of government contracting. Therefore, it is crucial to choose a software provider with a deep understanding of the public sector and a proven track record of delivering successful S2P implementations.

However, with the right solution that digitizes and standardizes workflows in your S2P solution, you can automate manual and time-consuming processes, saving time, reducing costs and enhancing transparency and accountability across the entire procurement lifecycle.

Deltek Costpoint Streamlines Procurement with Source to Pay

Deltek Costpoint is a powerful Source to Pay solution that enables you to digitize and streamline the entire procurement process — from vendor selection, FAR and DFARS contract flow downs and purchase order collaboration to time and material collection, payment and compliance reporting — all on a single, secure platform that offers the traceability government contractors need.

With the ability to collaborate, process payments and produce compliance reporting, Costpoint gives you everything you need to become a world-class procurement department.

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