Our second Purchase to Pay (P2P) network meeting of 2019 took place last Wednesday, the 12th June 2019. P2P Network co-Chairs Diane Bamford, Head of Accounts Payable at Lonza Biologics and Anne-Charlotte Taylor, Head of Financial Shared Services -Transactions at McBride Business Services put together an agenda which proved so popular with SSF UK members, a decision had to be made to relocate the meeting to a larger venue to accommodate all those wanting to attend. We are very grateful to SPX FLOW, who very kindly stepped in to host the meeting at their premises in Didsbury, South Manchester.
The morning focussed on the key commercial discipline of prompt payment (PP). We were lucky enough to be joined by Phil King, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Credit Management (CICM), the professional body who administer the Prompt Payment Code on behalf of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). Phil talked members through the expected standards for payment practices, legal obligations for invoice payments and recent cases of enforcement by the compliance board. Discussion on prompt payment continued with a group session on PP KPIs – including calculation, targets and benchmarking. Key points from Phil’s presentation and all other outputs from the day have been summarised by Diane Bamford and can be found in the P2P network resources section of our website.
After a networking lunch, Diane gave members a fascinating insight into her own P2P journey and how Purchase to Pay has evolved since she started in Accounts Payable back in 1989 – including a flashback to the kind of equipment that was used ‘back in the day’! Given the rapid evolution over the last 4 decades, she also looked forwards to the 2020s and speculated on how the sector may evolve further: will we be completely paperless? No cheques? No manual payments, with instant visibility of liability in ledger?
Do join us at the next P2P Network meeting, which will be held on September 11th at Lonza Biologics’ premises in Manchester, for what will undoubtedly be another fantastic exercise in collaboration and best-practice sharing.
