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To Receive or Not To Receive: Inventory Management and Three-Way Matching
Every company needs a way to handle procurement. Whether your company is a small business ordering printer paper and ink, a manufacturer relying on the purchase of materials and parts to do business, or a multi-national corporation handling everything from utility payments to capital purchases, a good procurement process helps you control the purchasing that happens in your company.
Procurement is one of the vital business processes. Companies can’t function without making purchases, and because procurement involves expenses the department plays a vital role in overall spend management. Though traditionally a siloed, back-office process, procurement is playing an increasingly strategic role in company finances.
Given how important purchasing is, improving your company’s procurement process should be a top priority. One of the easiest and most impactful ways to update and improve procurement is with business process automation (BPA) software. Also called e-procurement software, cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) procurement automation empowers your company to take control of the procurement process.
Streamline Routine Tasks
As with other types of BPA software, procurement automation streamlines routine tasks. This frees up employees to focus on tasks that make better use of their skills. Rather than replacing human employees, automation software makes their jobs easier. When they don’t need to worry about things like data entry and filing paperwork, they can spend time on more interesting tasks that really play to their strengths and add value to the company.
User-Friendly Purchasing
Complicated procurement policies are a common complaint. It’s often challenging for employees to know which purchases are approvable and where they should shop. NextProcess’s SaaS system takes care of that problem with user-friendly features called punch-out and item catalogs. These features make it super easy for employees to shop within the purchase order system. The shopping experience is as easy as getting on an e-commerce website, but they’ll only see items approved by the purchasing team.
Automate PO Creation
One of the big changes you’ll notice when you switch to automated procurement is that the software automatically generates purchase orders. When employees place an order within the purchasing system, the system automatically generates the appropriate PO paperwork. Generated POs are policy compliant, aligning with your company’s customized procurement rules. The system logs the policies automatically, maintaining a digital paperwork trail.
Eliminate Maverick Spend
With the user-friendly features that make shopping within the procurement system so easy, automating procurement can help reduce or even eliminate maverick spending. It’s very easy for employees to make purchases within the system, so there’s little motivation for them to try and work around it. Purchases made outside the system won’t be approved or associated with purchase orders.
Automate Policy Compliance
One of the great things about automating business processes with NextProcess is the level of customization available. Our software is flexible and configurable, allowing your company to tailor it to your needs. In procurement, you’ll have full control over which items appear for purchase, where employees can place orders, and which employees have purchasing permissions. This enables automated compliance with purchasing policies. It also makes things easier for employees, since they don’t have to look up policies they might not be clear on or worry about forgetting a new rule.
Improve Data Visibility
As purchases go through the procurement system, the software automatically logs all the information related to purchasing. This includes POs as well as related information such as price changes and frequency of purchases. The system tracks this data across your organization and compiles the data in one spot. This has several benefits. On a local level, it eliminates duplicate purchases because purchasers can see if someone else recently bought needed items. On a broader level, users can access the platform to review, report, and approve purchases from any internet-enabled device. The system updates in real-time and it’s easy to search for records. This makes audits much simpler.
Support Strategic Financial Plans
With visible, accurate, and accessible procurement data, your company is in a much better position to create useful budgets and strategic financial plans. In addition to enabling more strategic financial planning by providing reliable data, automating procurement also makes it easier to support high-level goals with strategic procurement. Because automation means procurement employees spend less time on routine tasks, they’ll have the time needed to analyze procurement data, track purchasing trends and potential supply chain disruptions, and make more strategic procurement decisions.
Continuing Improvements and Updates
Unlike traditional software, software-as-a-service updates automatically to continue providing you with the latest features, security, and technology innovations. You won’t need to pay extra to upgrade to a new system; updates are included in the service. You can even request new features. For example, one of our current clients asked for a way to match vendors’ PO acknowledgments with the POs automatically generated by NextProcess software. Automated reconciliation of POs and PO acknowledgments is now the newest feature in our purchasing software.
Are You Ready for Procurement Automation?
As you can see, there are many solid reasons to automate procurement. However, how well digitizing procurement will work in your organization depends on several factors. First, your procurement department and CFO need to work together to lay the groundwork for an effective procurement automation strategy.
In addition to having a solid plan for automating procurement, finding the right e-procurement software provider will make a big difference in how well procurement automation will work for your company. That’s where NextProcess comes in.
NextProcess has one of the highest successful software implementation rates in the BPA industry. We work closely with your team to automate procurement and integrate our software into your company’s existing processes. Our software seamlessly integrates with many ERPs including NetSuite and MS Business Central. You can also customize our software extensively, personalizing the system to match your company’s policies and support best practices.
If you’d like to see a free demo of our procurement software in action or have any questions about how our procurement-as-a-service system can support your company, contact us today.