Procurement was created to streamline purchases within an organization. And as organizations grow, their need for procurement, especially intake management, becomes exponentially more important.
Process. Vendors. Renewals. Invoices. Everything relies on procurement functioning smoothly. But when information gets lost in the shuffle, it can cost millions of dollars per year and cause a very stressful work environment.
Procurement can help prevent such losses by utilizing these four best practices.
Focus on pre-procurement, visibility, and efficiency
Before anything is procured, steps need to be taken to ensure that when requests are placed, they are actively routed to the right individual or application.
Achieve full visibility into purchases with a centralized procurement location for the entire organization.
Full Visibility and transparency are an essential part of the procurement process. The bigger the company or organization, the more essential it is to have a centralized “front door” for end user engagement with procurement teams. This front door must be fully accessible by all parties and provide visibility to every stakeholder, requester and approver alike.
There is no point in reinventing the wheel when it comes to procurement processes. Particularly when similar products are needed across multiple departments or individuals. When you centralize the work, you avoid re-work. This not only saves valuable time and money, but you have the opportunity to negotiate and focus on strategic initiatives.
Prevent duplication of purchases
When you provide full visibility in a centralized procurement location, you can prevent duplication of purchases. The key is having every stakeholder, including requesters, use a single, approved process.
Duplication often occurs when an employee is unaware the company has already approved (and is paying for) a similar service. Paying twice is not only less than ideal, it costs the company negotiating power with price, offerings, and security.
Full visibility for procurement requests allows procurement to see other business customers who need a service/product and for what purpose. This lets you identify a product/service/plan that is beneficial to the company as a whole, not just customer making the request. In essence, visibility allows you to be a strategic business partner, not an administrative one.
Automate the intake process
Simple automation. That is what is needed to ensure timely completion of procurement requests and their status.
Typical approvers include Procurement, IT, Security, Operations, Legal and Finance. And they all need to know what has been requested, who has requested it, and approver status for each request.
As the process exists today, each stakeholder is using separate programs with hard to find information and limited access for requesters. This lack of automation and access only makes the process more difficult and causes delays.
What is needed is an application with company wide accessibility that walks the user through each step of a request. And when the request is complete, steps need to be taken to ensure it is actively routed to the right individual or application. During the approval process it is vital that every stakeholder and requester is able to see status without interrupting procurement with an update email. Otherwise efficiency gains will be lost.
And all of this should be automatic, not fall on the shoulders of procurement or other stakeholders. As we like to say at Opstream, put the pressure on the system, not the people.
