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Automating Procurement: Gaining Control Over Spend and Supplier Management
Lately on this blog, we’ve been focusing on business process automation (BPA) as a solution your company can implement to streamline financial processing across your company. Looking at the big picture like this illustrates how BPA implementation can provide an end-to-end solution that benefits everyone from accountants to the CEO.
Today, let’s zoom in on one part of that end-to-end solution. Automating procurement gives your company a level of control over spend and supplier management that’s impossible to achieve with a paper-based system. Modern automation and artificial intelligence technologies provide your procurement team with an undeniable advantage, enabling your company to manage finances more effectively.
Procurement is a process that’s often mired in inefficiency. It’s a challenging process to manage manually, partly because it involves so many people. You need to balance keeping spend under the management of the procurement department with letting other employees make purchases needed to keep the company running. BPA software can help streamline this process, simplifying purchasing and procurement management.
Simplified Compliance
Maverick spend is one of the problems that persistently plagues procurement departments. It’s hard for procurement departments to keep all the company’s spending under their management if people go around the approved procurement system. In some cases, people circumvent the approved procurement system because the rules are unclear or the system is challenging to use. It’s not always malicious, but it is always a problem.
BPA software simplifies purchase requisitions, approvals, and contract renewals. It’s also user-friendly, making it easy for employees to comply with purchasing policies. This is one way that procurement automation reduces maverick spending and improves employee satisfaction. The system is easier for employees to use, and it’s easier for the procurement department to track and control purchases.
Customized Purchasing
NextProcess’s purchasing module is highly customizable. Your procurement team can set up the system to automatically enforce your company’s purchasing policies. At the same time, you’ll also be able to customize software features that make it very easy for employees to use the system.
Punch-out catalogs and item catalogs make it simple for employees to log in to the purchasing system and place orders. For them, it’s just like shopping on an e-commerce website. The difference is, they’ll only see items and sellers that your purchasing team has already approved. This dramatically reduces the problem of maverick spending.
Automated Purchase Orders
When an employee shopping in the BPA system places an order, the software automatically generates a purchase order (PO). The employee who is shopping doesn’t need to do any extra work or worry about filling the PO out correctly. It all happens automatically.
Automated POs make it easy for your purchasing team to document purchases. Having those files in the software system also makes it simple to track cash flow. In addition, our system automatically processes PO acknowledgements from the supplier, checking to ensure that there are no changes or errors. If you’re also using our accounts payable software module, the two software systems communicate seamlessly to match invoices to POs. Our software also integrates with your ERP system for even more robust purchasing control.
Easy Supplier Management
Business process automation software helps your company manage every aspect of the supply chain, including vendors and suppliers. With cloud-based procurement automation software, you can easily compile a searchable database of vendors and manage all their information through one central program. This program is accessible from all your company locations and whether employees are working in-office or remotely. Integration with supplier databases and ERP systems ensures price consistency and on-time payments.
A good BPA solution for procurement should make it easy to onboard new vendors, contact vendors, locate tax information, update vendor information, and track data related to vendor performance. NextProcess’s purchasing module even includes a vendor self-service portal. This makes it easy for your vendors to update their information, submit missing paperwork, and find answers to their customer service questions.
Better Data Insights
BPA software enables improved data collection and analytics. It’s much easier to track Key Performance Indicators (KPI) with procurement software automatically collecting purchasing data. After implementation, you’ll have far more control over and insight into the procurement process.
Real-time dashboards provide the procurement team and CFO with visibility into procurement efficiency, cash flow, and supplier performance. Access to timely, accurate data provides clarity about the procurement process. You can easily pull up information about specific transactions or generate reports from the collected data.
Time for Strategic Procurement
One of the long-term benefits of BPA automation is that it enables a more strategic approach to procurement. With improved data insights, the procurement team can analyze data more effectively and provide robust data to support company goals for sustainability, budgeting, and more.
Because the BPA software takes over so many routine, repetitive tasks, your procurement team will now have time available to spend on more analytical tasks. As you plan for automation, remember to equip your team with the upskilling they need to thrive as the procurement process changes. Training in data literacy, working with BPA software, and cross-functional collaboration prepares teams for a more analytical role.
Simple, Streamlined Implementation
Ready to use BPA software to take control of your procurement process? Choosing a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) supplier is the easiest way to implement BPA software in your company. Cloud-based SaaS BPA is easy to implement without placing a burden on your IT department. It can also grow with your company, easily scaling to your needs. The software supplier handles data security for you and provides regular software updates.
When shopping for procurement software, make sure you also look at the software supplier’s other modules. If you want a true end-to-end solution, you’ll need to choose a supplier that offers BPA solutions to cover all financial processes. It should also integrate seamlessly with existing ERP systems. NextProcess does all that and more to optimize your procure-to-pay workflow automation. Contact us today to schedule a free demo.
