Many organizations invest significant time and effort into designing their procure-to-pay (P2P) processes during an ERP implementation.
Then something predictable happens: the business changes!
New vendors are introduced. Purchasing patterns evolve. Staff turnover occurs. New systems and integrations are added around the ERP.
And despite these changes, the underlying ERP configuration that governs the P2P processes continues to operate as it was designed years ago.
It’s a costly risk and one that can be avoided by periodically reviewing your P2P rules and approval workflows—and the payoff goes beyond P2P alone. When procurement hits its savings target, companies are nearly twice as likely to achieve their broader business goals, according to McKinsey.
In this post, we’ll explore what P2P process analysis involves, why it matters, and the risks of neglecting it.
What Do We Mean by “Analyze Your P2P Data”?
When we talk about analyzing P2P data, we are referring to the process of reviewing the transactional history across requisitions, purchase orders, receipts, invoices, and payments to evaluate how the system is performing.
One of the most common examples we see involves invoice match configuration.
Most organizations configure their match rules during implementation and then, just like our buddy Ron Popeil taught us, “set it and forget it.”
Over time, purchasing behaviors, vendors, and internal processes change. And as a result, the match rules that once worked well may begin to generate unnecessary friction or fail to catch issues they were intended to detect.
Some common examples include:
- System generating cost variance messages too frequently, forcing unnecessary manual reviews
- Tolerances so wide that the system rarely flags discrepancies
- Invoices frequently bypass match logic due to process changes upstream
Identifying these issues is one thing but knowing what’s causing them is another. These obstacles cannot be resolved by configuration review alone and require analyzing historical transaction data.
Look for patterns in the data during your review, such as duplicate invoices submitted without detection, POs created after the fact to match invoices already received, and approval workflows routing to employees who are no longer with the organization.
This exercise can reveal how the process is functioning today and where configuration may no longer align with how your business operates.
We recommend that organizations analyze their own P2P data approximately every three years to assess how preexisting ERP rules and configuration compare to your organization’s current business operations.
Here’s how to get started.
Knowing How to Analyze the Data
While many organizations recognize the value of reviewing their P2P performance, a common challenge is simply knowing how to analyze the data effectively.
Insights are often buried within ERP business objects, match configuration and tolerance settings, and transaction tables across requisitions, purchase orders, receipts, and invoices.
Pulling the right data is part of the process but knowing what to do with it after is where you’ll find the real value. Best practices encourage reviewing the data to:
- Quantify how frequently exceptions and variances occur
- Detect where exceptions or delays occur
- Work cross-functionally with procurement, accounts payable, and operations to understand how business processes may have evolved
This will help your organization determine whether system configuration still supports the business or whether a P2P reconfiguration is overdue.
What Do Organizations Stand to Gain?
Periodic P2P analysis provides benefits that extend far beyond configuration tuning. The exercise can improve financial performance and manage risk. Below we discuss the benefits in greater detail.
Sharper Cost Control & Savings:
Regular analysis can reveal where funds are being spent by supplier, category, and business unit.
With greater visibility into spend patterns, your organization can consolidate purchasing with preferred suppliers, identify “off-contract” spend, and negotiate more favorable contracts and pricing.
Process Efficiency & Automation ROI:
Analyzing the full P2P lifecycle can help identify bottlenecks, such as excessive manual invoice coding, approval delays, and root cause analysis into frequent PO mismatches
Tracking key metrics such as touchless invoice rates, exception rates, and first-pass match rates will also help evaluate whether automation tools—such as, AP automation, or three-way matching—are being fully utilized.
In many cases, the analysis will reveal that automation capabilities already exist but are underused or misconfigured.
Risk Reduction & Compliance:
P2P analytics also plays a key role in strengthening financial controls.Periodic review can uncover duplicate or erroneous payments, invoices processed outside of normal controls, financial leakage caused by manual workarounds or fragmented processes
These risks often increase gradually as processes drift from their original design.
Supplier Performance & Continuity:
P2P data provides valuable insight into supplier performance and reliability.Organizations can evaluate patterns such as late deliveries or receipt discrepancies, frequent invoice disputes or pricing variances, and overreliance on a small number of suppliers
With consistent data across requisitions, POs, receipts, and invoices, procurement teams can build more objective supplier scorecards and make better sourcing decisions.
What Happens When You Don’t Reassess
When P2P processes are not periodically evaluated, organizations face several risks.
The first is that inefficiencies accumulate. Remember that these P2P processes were set up to reflect the way your business completed workflows at a given time. Minor changes over time can add up and when P2P doesn’t accurately reflect them, exception messages increase, manual workarounds become common, and cycle times grow longer.
Teams may assume this friction is normal when in reality, it can be completely avoided. After all, it’s simply reflecting outdated configuration.
The second is that financial “leakage” becomes harder to detect. Without regular analysis, duplicate payments, price discrepancies, or missed contract opportunities may go unnoticed.
Third, organizations risk underutilizing their ERP’s native capabilities. Features such as automated matching, workflow routing, and analytics may remain partially implemented or misaligned with current operations because of outdated P2P processes.
And finally, a lack of periodic review makes it harder to adapt as the business grows. What worked during the initial implementation may no longer support current procurement volume, vendor relationships, or compliance requirements.
Resetting the Standard
Procure-to-Pay processes are not static. They evolve alongside the business.
Organizations that periodically analyze their P2P data gain a clearer understanding of how their processes function today and not how they were originally designed years ago.
That insight allows them to refine match rules, adjust tolerances, improve automation, and strengthen financial controls.
Not sure if your P2P configuration still reflects how your business operates? RPI has helped organizations for more than 25 years uncover hidden inefficiencies, reduce financial leakage, and get more out of their ERP investment. Contact us below to get started.
P2P Analysis FAQ
1. How often should organizations review their procure-to-pay configuration?
Organizations should review their P2P configuration approximately every three years. Over time, business changes such as new vendors, staff turnover, and evolving purchasing patterns can cause existing ERP rules and approval workflows to fall out of alignment with how the business operates. A periodic review ensures your configuration reflects current reality.
2. What are the signs that your P2P process needs a review?
Common indicators include a high volume of invoice match exceptions, approval workflows that generate unnecessary manual reviews, tolerances so wide that discrepancies go undetected, and invoices that frequently bypass match logic. If your team is spending significant time resolving exceptions that should be handled, it’s likely time for a review.
3. What data should be analyzed in a P2P review?
A thorough P2P review examines transactional history across requisitions, purchase orders, receipts, invoices, and payments. The goal is to evaluate how the system is performing against how it was configured, and identify where rules, tolerances, or workflows no longer align with current business operations.
4. What are the risks of not reviewing your ERP’s P2P configuration?
Outdated P2P configuration can lead to unnecessary manual intervention, missed discrepancies, duplicate payments, and strained vendor relationships. Beyond operational inefficiencies, the financial stakes are significant—McKinsey research found that when procurement hit its savings target, companies are nearly twice as likely to achieve their broader business goals.
5. How does P2P optimization impact overall business performance?
A well-functioning P2P process reduces costs, improves visibility into spending, and strengthens supplier relationships. Because procurement touches so much of an organization’s financial activity, improvements in P2P performance tend to have an outsized impact on overall business outcomes.
