In this instructional video, Sabjan (Sachin) Sharma, founder of Procuredesk, explains why many AP automation projects fail to achieve company‑wide adoption despite faster invoice processing. He outlines three common pitfalls: (1) launching the solution with finance‑centric requirements instead of focusing on the purchasing users, (2) rolling out purchase‑order (PO) automation and invoice processing as separate phases, and (3) assuming that compliance mandates will drive usage. For each mistake he provides practical recommendations—designing mobile‑friendly request tools for purchasers, deploying PO and invoice workflows together so users see end‑to‑end benefits, and building easy‑to‑use emergency‑purchase or approval‑skip mechanisms to make compliance less burdensome. He concludes with a bonus, counter‑intuitive tip: ask for visibility of purchases rather than mandating compliance; once users know leadership needs purchase data, they naturally gravitate toward the automated system. The video ends with a call‑to‑action to subscribe.
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Let's say you recently launched a AP Automation solution. Your finance team is happy. Invoices are getting processed faster. But there's a problem. You're still seeing surprise expenses. You're still seeing invoices that are coming without a purchase order. You still see people not following or creating a purchase order in the system. If you are dealing with adoption challenges, this video is for you. Because in this video I'm going to tell you three things you must avoid to ensure a company wise adoption of your AP Automation solution. And stick till the end where I'll show a counterintuitive way to drive adoption of AP system. If you're joining me for the first time, welcome. My name is Sabjan Sharma. I am the founder of Procuredesk where we help growing companies automate their purchasing and AP processes. So let's jump right in. Avoid mistake number one, which is starting with finance. So here's what typically happens, right? You have an AP automation system and finance is obviously leading that. So they will think about their requirements first. Okay, what do we need for compliance? Okay, they should create a purchase order check. We need multiple approvals to ensure that the invoice is approved on time. Check. Right. So you're thinking about your requirements. Like what do you need for compliance? And here's I would encourage you to think about the needs of other departments within the organization. Right? Who are the people who are initiating the purchase that for which you're processing the invoice. So let's take example of a construction company is the project managers. Now if project managers find it easier or easier to just call the vendor and get the product. So no matter what you do, they might want to adopt. Right. So you have to start thinking about their requirements first. And how can you make their life easy. Maybe it is a mobile app that helps them create the request from everywhere. So it's rather than calling the vendor, they can just press few buttons and you're done. Maybe that's easier. Or having a link to their favorite vendors from where they can easily pick out what they want to buy. So when you start thinking about purchasing or the requirements of your other users, you easily think about how to make sure that they will adopt. Right. How do we make it easier for them? So that's number one. Number two is treating purchase orders and invoices roll out as separate thing. Like you have a process for rolling out AP and you don't do PO automation. For example, you might delay that like finance start using the system first. They are processing invoices but you haven't rolled out the purchase order process. My recommendation is based on working with close to 500 companies now is you should roll this out together like a purchase order invoicing all at one time. Here's the reason for that. Now, if you're rolling out invoices, you're just telling them what they need. Here's a new system for approving the invoices. However, if you walk them through the whole process, they will be able to connect the dots and say, all right, I am creating a purchase order so that when the invoice comes in, it is going to automatically match with the receipt and I don't have to approve the invoice again if everything matches up. So they see the benefit upfront of creating a purchase order and that makes the whole process easier for everybody else to follow. Right. So start with making sure that you're doing the rollout between PO and invoices together. Number three is assuming that compliance will drive usage. Most finance teams will just basically mandate the use of the purchasing system. But people find workarounds emergency purchase or creating multiple requests for same purchase so that you come under the approval policy. These are the things we see very commonly when you roll out a new system. So how do you overcome that? A easy way to think about this is how do we make the process easier? How do we make compliance easier than trying to break the rules? So if you think that your end users would need an emergency purchase process, then design it in your implementation. Right? So, okay, rather than having three set of approvals for every purchase, maybe they can check a box and say this is emergency purchase and that will skip. A lot of those approvals go to one person who can approve it. Right. And things like that. Or maybe they can order without approval, but then later you can go back and check how many emergency purchases are happening and you can control that that way. Right? So those are the three different things you can kind of focus on now as the bonus tip is conserved. And that's the most contradictory approach I've ever seen, is ask for visibility and not compliance. So what I mean, like instead of saying you need to use the system so that we can track who's buying from where they are buying and things like that, you can ask them and say, hey, listen, I need to know all the purchases before they are made and who approved them, I don't care how you do it now, once you kind of mandate that task, they will find it easier to do it in the system versus doing it manually. So just asking for visibility will automatically improve the compliance to the AP automation or the procurement system and so on. So just to recap, if you are dealing with a company wide adoption challenge for your AP automation, here are the three things you should look for like Start with the purchasing process first, make sure the PO and invoice rollout is happening together and don't assume that compliance is going to drive usage. If you like this video, go and hit the subscribe button. Thanks for joining me today and I'll see you in the next video.
