Solving for Suppliers: A Critical Piece in Energy’s Source-to-Pay Puzzle

By Praveen Kalamegham, Chief Technology Officer

It’s much harder than it needs to be for energy companies, their suppliers, and the talented men and women in the field to work together to deliver the projects that power our world.

Even what may seem simple — to agree on a price at the beginning, and to get paid for services rendered at the end — has become anything but. We’ve written about this at length, drawing from our unique vantage point as both the industry’s leading supplier of contingent workforce solutions and the creator of the first end-to-end source-to-pay (S2p) solution built for the energy industry. 

We’ve written at length about the systemic challenges — risk, complexity, and lack of innovation in software and tooling, for starters — that have plagued the industry for decades, and underpin the root cause of the friction, inefficiency, and waste we see today.

When we step back and look for the throughline, one thing has become abundantly clear. The source-to-pay lifecycle is the axis around which all of these challenges turn. That’s why Workrise has decided to focus so much of our energy and resources here. There are others who play at this game. But no one is looking at the problem the way we are, because we are solving for the ecosystem as a whole — not just for one group, with one use case, on one step in the journey from sourcing to payments.

In energy, the S2P process — which begins the moment a new vendor is needed for a project and ends with completed work and paid invoices — is fractured, with headaches aplenty for operators and their suppliers. At the same time, the scale and complexity of work in the energy industry is so massive that everyone involved must be in sync to deliver safely and efficiently. This tension has been felt for generations, and it’s at the heart of what we are solving for.

Like one leg on a three-legged chair, if you remove suppliers from the equation, everything collapses. That’s why any solution to energy’s thorny source-to-pay problem must make it easier, faster, and more efficient for suppliers to do their jobs. 

Mission-Critical, but Chronically Overlooked 

Over the years, the relationship between energy companies and their suppliers has been strained under the weight of high stakes and big expectations. But make no mistake: Just like a burger joint couldn’t stay in business without patties, cheese, condiments, napkins, credit card processing, cleaning services, and so on, suppliers of the goods and services required for today’s energy projects are essential to the successful production and delivery of energy — fuels, electricity, you name it — to buyers.

Today’s energy companies often rely on eight or more separate tools to manage the source-to-pay journey with the suppliers they rely on to complete projects.

The use of multiple varying and fragmented tools puts an undue burden on suppliers to manage. To overcome these shortfalls, back-office teams have grown — to the point where it’s not uncommon for suppliers to look up and ask if they’re a water hauling company or an accounting company. 

Ask anyone in energy and they’ll tell you that without suppliers, field operations would grind to a halt. There is no solving the source-to-pay problem without taking them into account. On the contrary, every member of the ecosystem benefits when suppliers are factored into a source-to-pay solution.

The First Steps Towards a Better Future

Workrise Vendor Management, an end-to-end vendor management solution that spans the entire source-to-pay lifecyle, was publicly launched earlier this year after an extensive testing period with strategic partners. Since then we’ve launched volley after volley of feature releases, part of the constant evolution and improvement that the industry can expect from Workrise products and services. But this isn’t about us. It’s about the very real problems we are solving for suppliers.

Here are a few examples of Workrise Vendor Management in action, adding speed and efficiency for everyone in the ecosystem, and improving the lives and business health of individual suppliers looking to make ends meet in the massive world of energy:

Streamlined Compliance Management

The reality for most suppliers today is that when compliance documents are renewed, what follows is a flurry of individual emails. Back-office staff reach out to clients to get the documentation updated; clients reach out to say they need new documentation; systems alert you about some, but often not all, of the changes required to maintain compliance. And it all happens at once.

Suppliers who manage their client relationships through Workrise deal with none of this. They are notified before documents expire. After they upload the correct documentation once, it is automatically updated for all of their clients. 

No more emails, no more back and forth. It’s one and done.

Finally, all existing documentation that sits on the platform is leveraged for new relationships. When suppliers engage with a new client, all they have to do is upload net new documentation required for the specific client, should that be required. This saves suppliers time for each new client they acquire, and enables them to get to work faster, which is beneficial not just to suppliers, but to their clients as well.

Improved Invoicing Accuracy

Invoicing and payment solutions for energy companies have historically prided themselves on customization. “Don’t worry, you can customize every aspect of your invoicing and payment setup to be sure it works for you” is a popular selling point.

The problem with this is that a supplier with 30 different clients could easily be required to invoice 30 different ways. Multiply that by hundreds of suppliers for most energy companies in business, and you can see how quickly it snowballs.

That’s why nearly half of supply chain leaders report that 50-60% of their invoices are disputed, and larger companies employ entire teams to chase down invoice disputes. It’s also why accounts payable teams on the supply side spend countless hours reviewing and resubmitting invoices in order to get paid.

Suppliers who invoice through Workrise invoice one way, in one place, for all of their clients. How is this possible? We capture structured data up front, and at each step in the S2P process. At the invoicing step, a combination of AI and Workrise teams verify invoices are entered correctly, so everyone on both sides of this messy process can focus less on chasing down and correcting disputed invoices, and more on the bigger challenges that lie ahead.

Across the thousands of supplier invoices processed in August, less than 1% were disputed for suppliers invoicing through Workrise. We’d take that over 50-60% any day of the week. And we are confident the accounts payable teams working for suppliers would too.

Faster Payments

Here’s a fact that will surprise exactly no one: Energy projects are capital intensive. 

Waiting 60 days to get paid for a job that cost an operator hundreds of thousands of dollars in labor and equipment can put a real strain on cash flow for smaller suppliers. In fact, for those smaller businesses, we’ve seen the industry standard net 60 payment terms put good people out of business.

That’s why in addition to a better, more efficient invoicing solution, Workrise offers accelerated payments in as little as five business days. Suppliers choose the term — net 30, net 15, or even net 5 — and Workrise takes a small percentage to float the capital. This flexibility is empowering vendors across the US and Canada to proactively manage their cash flow, and take control of their growth.

New Opportunities, and More of Them

If you’ve made it this far, you can see why the Workrise Vendor Network is growing, and fast. 

Beyond speedier payments, suppliers who join the network can set up a free profile to be discovered by operators searching for their services where they operate. In an industry where historically it’s been about who you know, it’s easy to see how energy companies can miss quality suppliers sitting right under their noses.

Not only can vendors on the Workrise Vendor Network be discovered by operators, they can also be invited to quickly and easily respond to RFQs and bid on new projects for energy companies leveraging our new Bid Management add-on.

We’re Just Getting Started

This list isn’t exhaustive by any stretch. But it should help to illustrate our steadfast belief that in order to truly revolutionize how energy companies, their suppliers, and the talented folks in the field deliver energy projects, we must create solutions that deliver value for everyone in the ecosystem. That emphatically includes suppliers, who are a vital part of the process.

Head over to the vendor homepage to see all of the benefits for suppliers who join the network, and to get a clearer view of what it looks like to get to work with Workrise. In the source-to-pay category, no other company understands the complexity of energy field operations with as much depth and intimacy as we do, or is investing as meaningfully to move the needle for the industry as a whole.

Stay tuned as we share more feature and product announcements this fall. In the meantime, keep up the great work. The world (quite literally) depends on it.

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