Referring back to the apparent fact that far more of companies revenue go to external suppliers than for instance internal staff, there is no surprise that the idea of controlling the relationships and transactions going back and forth between buyer and supplier become more and more important.
Having a No Po No Pay-strategy seem increasingly popular thus is not an easy task to implement. Again, as always, questions such as total cost of ownership seem in place to control and that itself is no easy task.
EBG has an ongoing survey out exploring company ideas about No Po No Pay-strategies (do answer it! >>access it here). Some of the answers indicate both what interests lies in implementing such a strategy as well as what some of the issues are.
From the survey
What is your view on a No Po No Pay-strategy?
“Efficient as terms of working capital objectives, disaterous if operations suffers and goods become undelivered to end customers”
“We should have, but it is hard to convince the people dealing with invoices, as they only see the short term extra work in returning invoices and not the long term benefits”
In what ways are you ensuring that doing right/following policy doesn’t cost more time or other alternative costs?
“The system can’t proceed the payment process if the validation through 3 way match is failed”
“Initially it take time to implement, we agree individually with main suppliers, with supplier tail we just inform by letter/mail this is mandatory from certain date”
More comments on No Po No Pay-strategies can be found >>here
What are your experiences? Is it possible to manage enough spend, thus controlling enough revenue and cash flow, without a No Po No Pay strategy? Or will such a strategy only create new ways of spending and producing invoices beyond company control?