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....