QKS Group defines Procure to Pay (P2P) as a platform enables organizations to manage and streamline the end-to-end procurement lifecycle, from requisitioning, purchasing, payment processing, and accounting for goods and services. A P2P system integrates with various cross-functional departments, including purchase, inventory, accounts payable, finance, and others to provide a single source of truth and allow organizations to track end-to-end processes for improving operational efficiency, as well as supplier communication, and relationship management.

In today’s operating environment marked by e-invoicing mandates, multi-ERP estates, direct-materials complexity, and rising expectations for touchless AP, P2P has become an execution backbone rather than a back-office utility. Adoption is speeding up as CFOs and CPOs look for straight-through invoice processing, policy-at-source controls, and guided buying to reduce cycle times and leaks while enhancing supplier experience and compliance.

Within this context, vendors such as JAGGAER, Coupa, Zycus, GEP, and Oracle various strategies for achieving the same goal: strong global spend control. Each provides a special blend of enterprise scalability, automation, and supplier collaboration. From JAGGAER’s direct-materials depth and Coupa’s community-driven intelligence to Zycus’ AI-powered Merlin suite, GEP’s cloud-native unification, and Oracle’s ERP-embedded workflows, the P2P landscape continues to expand, bridging spend management with compliance, visibility, and operational efficiency.

Problem Statement

Choosing a P2P platform is challenging because marketing language (“AI-driven matching,” “guided buying,” “community intelligence”) often sounds similar while deployment realities differ widely across countries, ERPs, and spend types. Leaders have to distinguish between what is consistently repeatable and what is theoretically feasible.

Even thorough analyst frameworks can leave teams wondering: how stable are tax/compliance updates, how quickly did peers achieve touchless throughput, and how does exception handling look in month three, not just at go-live? These are outcomes only real users can validate.

Conversely, user anecdotes without structured benchmarks can miss big-picture trade-offs in architecture, scalability, and roadmap. The result is a trust and evaluation gap between structured insight and lived experience precisely where our approach is designed to help.

As enterprises confront the trust gap between vendor promises and real deployment outcomes, they need a framework that unites both perspectives. That’s where SPARK Plus™ comes in bridging analyst insight with user validation to deliver credible, evidence-based decisions in Procure-to-Pay.

Introducing SPARK Plus™

SPARK Plus™, developed by QKS Group, is the world’s first Analyst + User Review Platform, designed to unify expert research with verified customer feedback in a single, transparent decision-support framework. It helps enterprises move beyond static vendor comparisons and toward insight-driven validation backed by both data and lived experience.

Each SPARK Plus™ report builds upon the foundation of the SPARK Matrix™, QKS Group’s globally recognized vendor benchmarking framework. The SPARK Matrix™ focuses on Technology Excellence and Customer Impact in assessing vendors, while SPARK Plus™, on the other hand, brings in an essential part that is customer feedback.

This combination enables businesses to get the full picture: on one side, they get user-friendly, scalable, deployable and supportable input directly from customers and on the other side they get the vendor’s technology strategy, vision, and innovation backed by an analyst.

In our Procure-to-Pay SPARK Plus™ study, we analyzed leading vendors including JAGGAER, Coupa, Zycus, GEP, and Oracle, drawing insights from verified enterprise users across industries and global regions.

Here’s what emerged:

JAGGAER excels in direct and MRO procurement with strong supplier collaboration; users value its depth in complex industries though note integration discipline is key for scale.

Coupa unifies procurement, invoicing, and expenses under a Business Spend Management fabric; community intelligence drives savings and compliance, though customization can require partners.

Zycus advances an AI-powered Merlin suite across requisition-to-pay; customers highlight automation gains and configurability, while multi-ERP integration remains a focus area.

GEP delivers a cloud-native P2P tightly linked to sourcing and AP automation; enterprises praise its guided buying and anomaly detection alongside robust global tax compliance.

Oracle integrates P2P functionality into their Cloud ERP Fusion; among the governing factors, organizations acknowledge the prebuilt integrations, multi-currency/tax capabilities and embedded analytics as the strengths for scale.

SPARK Plus™ transforms vendor evaluations from theoretical assessments into balanced, evidence-based perspectives that reflect true enterprise experience.

SPARK Matrix™ Coverage within SPARK Plus™

The SPARK Matrix™ remains the analytical core of QKS Group’s market evaluation framework, benchmarking vendors along two dimensions: Technology Excellence and Customer Impact. The SPARK Plus™ expansion integrates verified user sentiment data into this matrix, enhancing both the credibility and contextual relevance of vendor positioning.

For the P2P market, SPARK Plus™ offers in-depth coverage across major industries and regions, reflecting the diverse operational needs and deployment contexts of global enterprises:

Industries covered:

Banking, Financial Services & Insurance (BFSI): Focus on audit-ready invoicing, compliance, and spend transparency.

Retail & eCommerce: Emphasis on guided buying, catalog scalability, and efficient store rollouts.

Healthcare: Demand for secure, compliant workflows and streamlined supplier onboarding.

Manufacturing: Need for supplier collaboration, MRO integration, and operational continuity.

IT & Telecom: Drive toward global standardization, scalability, and shared-services efficiency.

Regions covered:

North America (U.S., Canada): Mature adoption with strong focus on compliance, shared services, and supplier governance.

Europe (U.K., Germany, France, Nordics): Emphasis on tax/e-invoicing mandates, data protection, and regulatory alignment.

Asia-Pacific (APAC): Rapid growth fueled by digital transformation and diverse ERP landscapes.

Middle East & Africa (MEA): Increasing adoption driven by modernization and service automation.

Latin America: Early-stage deployments with strong momentum around e-invoicing and cost efficiency.

This cross-industry, global lens ensures SPARK Plus™ supports both enterprise standards and regional decisioning, aligning platform choice to real deployment contexts.

Conclusion

The demand for precise and verified information is more intense than ever before in the Procure-to-Pay industry. They want insights that are based on a combination of the right expertise and practice instead of just the analysts’ or vendors’ points of view, no longer.

With SPARK Plus™, QKS Group closes this credibility gap. By blending rigorous analyst research with verified user feedback, SPARK Plus™ enables organizations to make smarter, faster, and more confident P2P decisions.

In an environment characterized by compliance pressure, operational complexity, and the push for touchless automation, SPARK Plus™ is more than a research framework. It helps businesses confidently and clearly transition from assessment to execution by acting as a link between insight and reality.

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