Settlement Services International (SSI) is a community organization and social business that supports newcomers and other Australians to achieve their full potential. They work with all people who have experienced vulnerability, including refugees, people seeking asylum and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities, to build capacity and enable them to overcome inequality. SSI draws on its expertise and experience to advocate for the people and communities it serves. Through the work they do, they empower people to change their lives. Through their advocacy and representation, they influence ideas and policy. From a staff of 1 in April 2011, SSI now employs over 800 employees (including 180 bilingual guides) and over 350 volunteers.

Due to SSI’s growth and diversification, their payables and procurement requirements had grown and the ability of existing systems to meet the organization’s needs was no longer viable. SSI’s legacy systems provided limited visibility and control over its expenditure and significant components of the P2P processes were manual, making it difficult to ensure purchasing was within their prescribed policy and procedure. Furthermore, manual processes for purchasing, approvals, invoicing, expenses, and supplier onboarding were not efficient and difficult to report on. In order to improve the procurement functions to improve automation, control and reduce risk, SSI recognized the need to implement a procure-to-pay system.

Project Objectives

• Implement a seamlessly integrated and standardized solution to manage and control end-to-end procurement processes including expenses and demonstrate compliance with SSI’s policies and procedures.
• Transition the accounts payable function from a paper-based manual system to a streamlined electronic system and empower users to quickly find the items you need on an easy-to-use procurement platform.
• Strengthen organizational financial controls and compliance, reducing organizational risk through system enforced business processes.
• Deliver a self-service supplier onboarding solution that allows SSI to control the way that suppliers are on-boarded and specifying supplier requirements, reducing risk and the cost of compliance.