Purchase orders (POs) have been essential to B2B e-commerce for centuries. We can trace back the first POs to the industrial revolution when mass production required businesses to adopt a more formal process to manage procurement. This ancient process is now about to change.

The 7 degrees of control for spend management is a comprehensive framework that articulates options companies can choose from to control their expenses. Each of the 7 approaches introduced in the framework offers a desired degree of control for a certain level of flexibility.

Portals have long been the core feature of business buying solutions known as Procure-to-Pay (P2P) systems. In the 1990s, when IBM launched its first procurement solution, REQCAT, it used Lotus Notes to build an internal solution that streamlined procurement processes. This was the first buying portal of its kind.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022 will be recorded as one of the years with the highest death rates of businesses since the turn of the century. The primary reason for such a level of fatalities is lack of funding or working capital.