Procure to Pay evolution

Days of those Intents , Angadia service and Postal Dispatch PO's



Way back in late 90's when I was working with a Tile manufacturing company in India I still remember the way Procurement for a company was done. I was working at a factory which use to manufacture floor tiles. Apart from shop floor duties I was also responsible for managing stores. Every evening 5 people use to do the physical counting of the stock and create a list. I use to create a Intent of these Items in the Intent book and get it approved from my General Manager - it was all manual work . I had to get it signed the very same evening since the next morning a person from Angadia Service ( Courier - Hand to Hand Delivery) use to pick up these intents to be delivered in the Mumbai HeadOffice. After that the routine process of creating PO's from Intents in a word document print it on the letter head and post it. And if the vendor has a fax machine then fax the PO manually to the vendor which was may be 20% of the total PO's. Following up on the delivery of the PO's was a full time job of the Purchasing Department. Everybody was on phone talking to vendors on the delivery issues and sometimes in a Kurla fish market ( Its a popular Fish Market of Mumbai). Heated arguements on phone , arm twisting vendors on payment terms was a routine exercise. First week of every month I had to be head office for resolving the vendor disputes which in today's ERP world is Matching PO's to Receipts and Invoice.
Vendors use to wait the whole day for payment . The reason being payments over a certain amount required two signatures and always the case one of the signing authority was not present. The Payment method in those days was mostly check or draft unlike today where its automated through Banks.

In today's e-world everything is automated from Auto Replenishment to Requisition to Purchase Orders to Receipts and eventually Invoicing ; There are times when now a days companies use ERS instead of Invoicing . In nut shell even the world of ERP is evolving at a very fast pace. I am not sure where it is going to be in next few years. We have already asked Vendor to enter his own invoice in the system , schedule his payments, dispute the match exceptions....

Globalization and Localization

India as we know is a land of more than 22 languages and is a firm believer of unity in diversity. But why is it that the same person who was speaking with you in Hindi or English suddenly starts speaking in his regional language to a person who happens to be from his state, district, hometown, galli or mohalla whatever in your presence. And suddenly you feel as if you are from planet Mars. Surprisingly this happens alot in the so called Global software companies where we as Indians talk of globalization and by heart we are still localised. I am not against using the regional language in offices but then we should not be calling ourselves as global company just because we can speak english in front of clients. As a matter of fact we have still not evolved at a national level as one company. We still work in silos in a country where for a person from a office from one state is considered as a different type of organism in his same company's office in other state of India. I think the only reason being the absence of national language as common language in communication apart from english.


Its sad that we as Indians take pride in speaking in english in the global market as its an international language but are shy or handicapped at using the national language of our country.

Are you from Pune ?

I met a person in Bloomington , MN who owns a restaurent and generally on weekends we get food from there. I still remember the first time I met him as usual seeing a desi in a foreign country suddenly the patriotism awakes in Indian and they start a conversation : Aap Kahan se hain ? ( Where are you from in India ?) and for me this question is the most trickiest question I would say more difficult than a calculus problem. I said we have come from Pune and not surprisingly the man started speaking in Marathi assuming that I would be knowing it. Though I have stayed almost 6 years in Maharashtra but still I am unable to speak Marathi. I was just doing huh and haan rather that completing any sentences and in the end I had to tell him that I dont know Marathi. He was like - but you are from Pune - its like the ad yeh PSPO nahin jaanta... I atleast need 30 minutes to answer the question of where I am from in India ? I was born in Delhi , brought in Gujarat , Delhi and Jaipur, did my engineering in Gujarat and jobs in Mumbai , Newyork, Gurgaon , Pune and now twin cities. Its difficult to for anybody to understand because on top of everything I am a Sindhi and we dont have any state which we can claim as our language fenced motherland. Sometimes I feel may be I am the true Indian since I am not bounded by state or religion and able to speak, read write our national language - HINDI very fluently and efficiently.