Running a business is fraught with complications. Whether it’s a supply chain shortage, an issue with a supplier, or some other kind of spending concern there are plenty of challenges inherent in the procurement process. At the end of the day, we’d all like to find unique ways to make our businesses run better and standardize the most essential processes. Using procurement software is one of the best methods for accomplishing that goal. Here’s how:
Easier Requisition
Requisition is one of the most essential aspects of procurement. It should be streamlined and simple. Requisition should also be scalable, whether you’re running a small shop or managing a multi-million dollar operation. It all begins with deciding what you need to procure in the first place, then ultimately deciding why you need it in the first place. Once you’ve figured that out, it’s simply a matter of choosing a vendor, describing what you need, entering a quantity, determining how the cost per unit affects your budget, requesting a delivery date, and working out the terms of shipping the items to you. Streamlining this process with automating eliminates some of the more repetitive aspects of this task while helping you with providing quick access to preferred products, favorable shipping terms, and helping you find ways to negotiate a purchase to your advantage.
Real Time Management
Once you’ve set up a purchase order and started the procurement process, you need to manage it. Managing things effectively can be tough. Through the use of a real-time management dashboard, you gain quick accurate insights into everything from requisition status to impacts on your budget. Real-time monitoring is also useful for comparing your spending to your budgeted goals. Since everything is transitioning to mobile these days, you can also monitor things from a smartphone. This makes it easier to check the status of various requisitions and allows for faster approval of purchases across the organization. All it takes is loading the software onto a smart device to take your real-time procurement management to the next level.
Inventory Control
Inventory control is useful for connecting procurement with demand in the organization. A powerful procurement solution helps you manage your pre-approved spending while helping you see your inventory in real time. Using these features, you can monitor your inventory and avoid making costly mistakes. No one wants to spend unnecessary funds or stock up on the same items over and over. By paying attention to your inventory and learning to control it, you can prevent such things from happening in the first place. This ultimately creates better visibility into your entire inventory and helps you cater to the demand for your products while also streamlining the procurement, storage, and control processes across your organization.
Spend Compliance and Fraud Protection
Every company has their own established procedures and guidelines for managing spend. Remaining compliant in these measures is critical to avoiding rogue spend and mitigating third party risk. More importantly, implementing a software solution in the modern day has the added bonus of helping to prevent fraud. Through a combination of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and examining supplier performance, some modern software can actually detect fraud as it’s occurring or occasionally before it has a chance to happen. Mostly, the software can detect errors or strange transactions that might lead to discovering fraud for Maverick spend. Since the software looks at all spend across the entire company, you can get access to a broad, sweeping insight into such matters and take steps to prevent/mitigate any potential spend/fraud concerns.
Contract Management
Contracts serve multiple functions at any business. But what do they have to do with procurement? To begin with, the contract ensures a service or product gets delivered on time, at the agreed upon price. There are other aspects that affect procurement as well. Often, an early payment discount or other type of discount might be negotiated as part of a contract with the supplier. Preserving these previously negotiated discounts and terms is crucial to maintaining a strong positive relationship with the supplier as well as cutting costs with each purchase.
Contract management also reduces the amount of extra work or any potential hassle involved in making a purchase. Better yet, managing contracts allows you to handle any potential conflicts or issues with a supplier quickly. If you’re using procurement software to handle contract management, then you can simply pull a contract from your database and examine its contents quickly. This provides you with more agency to ensure contract compliance while giving you options to handle any issues that affect procurement. It’s a simple solution that can go a long way to positively impacting your organization throughout the process.
