Best Practices in Procure to Pay Cycle: On-Site Relationship Managers – Part 5

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PART 10

An important point that many respondents noted was the need to establish dedicated roles around on-site relationship managers from procurement who were on-site to manage invoices, service entries, and the like. The simple fact is that many maintenance and project managers do not think in terms of procurement, but rather are focused on people, equipment, and schedules – and do not have the time or patience required to ensure that the correct entries are put into a P2P system. The relationship manager can also act as the liaison between the supplier and the maintenance organization, to ensure prompt payment, resolution of issues, and improvement of processes.

Some of the sample responses included the following:

_It is important to establish a logistics person on site in the field to help facilitate and work the system. Field people are focused on executing the work, not supporting it. Construction people are focused on execution of work – they are not good systems thinkers and are sloppy about the logistics side of the work. A logistics person is turned on by excellent logistics and not focused on work execution. If they plan their jobs better, logistics people can set up good bill of materials and planning templates – and they can pull them down and they don’t have to pick form a catalog. _

_Even the break-in work and emergency work can be converted into BOM templates. So you can classify work into some standard categories. If it is a break in emergency, pull down this job plan, attach it to the work plan, and the standard BOMS drives the order. The field people have to focus on getting people in, scheduling people, getting the work done, so choosing from a catalog is the lowest priority for them. _

Our focus is on how to position SCM resources to make their work a lot easier and make the planners’ life a lot easier – so they can add maximum value the supply chain function. Initially you don’t know 100% what the material will be used on that job. At the end of the job – the SCM person goes in and looks at returns and adjusts the requirement accordingly. You do three iterations and you will get the BOM right for that job type! Having that SCM person in the field who can talk their lingo is key to success.