Transforming Procure-to-Pay with AI: Unlocking Cost Savings and Efficiency

Procure-to-pay (P2P) is the most impactful area for intelligent automation because it directly drives cost savings, operational efficiency, and accuracy across the entire finance function. By implementing automation in P2P, businesses can streamline complex processes, eliminate tedious manual tasks, and significantly reduce human error. According to SSON’s The Future Of Finance Shared Services report, 39% of finance leaders agreed that P2P is the process where they’ve seen the most impact from automation. The report highlights tools that reduce manual data entry and paper handling for organizations and result in increased accuracy and efficiency such as intelligent document processing (IDP), optical character recognition (OCR), artificial intelligence (AI), and e-invoicing solutions. 

Adding these steps to remove manual efforts is a great start, but for true process optimization it’s critical to have a holistic view of your end-to-end P2P processes, including all the human actions and decisions that impact efficiency, in order to make lasting improvements. With AI-driven task mining, your organization can fully map all P2P processes and identify intelligent automation opportunities — prioritized by efficiency gains and tangible ROI. Before we jump into the best ways for AI to make an impact, let’s break down the P2P process, the systems involved, and how task mining works. 

Understanding the P2P process

Procure-to-pay is the process through which organizations acquire goods and services and ensure efficient and compliant purchasing. The basic steps in the P2P process are:

1. Identify the need for goods or services — specify the quantity and quality standards, and make the formal request for procurement — also known as a purchase requisition (PR)
2. Review and approve the purchase request — ensure that the PR is authorized by the appropriate personnel and aligns with the company's budget and procurement policies.
3. Source potential suppliers — obtain quotes or bids, evaluate them based on price, quality, delivery time, and reliability, then generate a purchase order (PO) for the winning vendor.
4. Receive goods or services — verify that goods or services match the specified requirements outlined in the PO and address any discrepancies.
5. Process the invoice — verify that the invoice, purchase order, and receiving report match to prevent errors in billing and allow for resolution before billing. 
6. Approve payment — once the invoice is verified and approved, process payment according to the agreed upon terms. 

The many systems that power procure-to-pay

The P2P process takes place across a variety of systems as the purchase winds its way from initiation to payment. With every additional system that’s involved, more complexity is added to the process. In larger organizations, systems involved may include: 

• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems 
• Procurement management systems 
• Supplier relationship management (SRM) systems 
• E-invoicing and accounts payable automation tools 
• Payment processing systems 
• Analytics and compliance tools 

With one process spanning so many interconnected systems, inefficiencies can easily creep in as the work moves from one system to another. That’s where task mining steps in — automatically mapping end-to-end processes across systems and human actions, then pinpointing improvement areas. Mimica automatically records the subject matter expert (SME) desktop — in this case the procurement team members — observing their user clicks, keystrokes, and system interactions with no disruption or manual effort. By capturing real-time interactions, Mimica provides a precise, data-driven view of how tasks are performed, revealing inefficiencies and variations that the SME themselves may not have even been aware of or realized how much time they took away from meaningful work. 

How Mimica identifies opportunities for AI and intelligent automation

Mimica’s process intelligence connects the task-level process data into a holistic view, surfacing improvement opportunities ranked by cost savings, automatability, and impact. Unlike assumption-based process plans or models, Mimica works with visibility into all decision points, business rules, exceptions, and variants of the work being performed — and has the ability to parse unstructured data such as handwritten notes on an invoice or PDFs. These insights enable Mimica to determine the root cause of poor performing processes, identify where improvements can be made, and determine the happy path forward. Mimica also ranks automation opportunities by time savings, automatability, and ease of automation — then recommends the best intelligent automation technology to take these opportunities forward, such as GenAI, RPA, IDP/OCR, or even just updating workflow rules in an ERP.

Five areas where AI can improve the P2P process 

AI and GenAI can significantly improve efficiency, reduce costs, enhance compliance, and provide better insights across the entire procurement process — if it’s trained on your ideal process models. Here are some key use cases that you can consider implementing at your organization:

1. Requisition and purchase orders

• AI analyzes past purchases and recommends or auto-generates purchase requisitions.
• Gen AI drafts requests for proposals (RFPs) based on historical data and business requirements.
• AI reviews contracts to detect risks, anomalies, and non-compliance.
• Natural language processing (NLP) extracts key terms, pricing clauses, and service level agreements (SLAs) for quick comparison.

2. Procurement processing and order management

• AI automatically matches purchase requisitions with preferred suppliers, generates POs, and routes them for approval.
• AI price benchmarking helps procurement teams negotiate better terms with suppliers.
• Gen AI chatbots simulate negotiation scenarios and suggest counteroffers.

3. Invoice processing and accounts payable

• AI automates three-way matching (PO, invoice, receipt) to detect discrepancies.
• AI flags duplicate invoices, fake vendors, and unusual spending patterns.
• Gen AI analyzes supplier history to predict and prevent fraudulent transactions.

4. Reporting, analytics, and compliance

• AI offers insights into category spend, maverick buying, and cost-saving opportunities.
• Gen AI generates automated executive reports with visual summaries.
• AI ensures compliance with tax laws, ESG regulations, and internal policies.
• AI risk scores suppliers based on financial stability, geopolitical risks, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance.

5. Supplier relationship management

• AI tracks supplier performance metrics (quality, timeliness, compliance) and predicts potential disruptions.
• Gen AI generates personalized supplier recommendations based on historical data.
• AI-driven self-service portals assist vendors with invoice status, PO details, and dispute resolution.
• AI forecasts demand trends, enabling just-in-time procurement and reducing excess inventory.

Ready to see how AI-driven improvements can be applied at your organization? Mimica's task mining and process intelligence provide the insights you need to transform your P2P process. Visit Mimica at Shared Services & Outsourcing Week 2025 Booth 112 or book a personalized demo today.