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Procurement solutions are the technological tools that help a business manage its procure-to-pay process effectively. Procurement is a compliance-driven process. When performed manually, procurement processes can be cumbersome, time-consuming, and inefficient.
Procurement tools use the power of automation to help organizations save time, cut costs, and streamline their procurement process easily. The best e procurement solutions handle all core procurement processes like invoice approval, vendor management, purchase order, purchase requisition, and contract management in a single platform.
Picking the right procurement solution is a complex process since there is a lot of planning and assessment involved. You need to have a detailed plan, understand business needs, and evaluate the procurement software solutions available in the market before coming to a conclusion. We have come up with a list of must-have procurement solutions to help you with your quest to find the right procurement solution.
Functions of various procurement solutions
Organizations can see significant improvements like better spend control, competitive product prices, reduced overhead, and better vendor relationships the procurement process digital. This is because eProcurement solutions help you link common procurement functions right through the procure-to-pay cycle.
Here are some of the most essential functions:
Purchase requisition
Purchase requisitions are usually created by operation staff who need to purchase goods or services. When handled manually, requisitions are either filled out on paper or at times, they are not created and POs are sent directly to suppliers.
Procurement solutions allow staff members to create new purchase requisitions online by selecting items from a pre-defined catalog or list of approved items. Once created, your eProcurement solution routes these purchase requisitions electronically from one stakeholder to another with little to no manual intervention, reducing the time taken to obtain approvals.
Purchase order
Approved purchase requisitions are converted to purchase orders and dispatched to vendors. Before the digital approach, purchase orders were either called-in to suppliers or sent through fax. Cloud-based digital procurement solutions, on the other hand, create purchase orders from approved requisitions automatically.
Every line item in a requisition becomes a separate PO. Once POs are created the necessary approvals are obtained and sent electronically to vendors. Best of all, it also delivers an acknowledgment to the buyer once the purchase order is approved.
Invoice approval
In old systems, invoices had to be manually matched with their respective purchase orders and goods receipts. Manual systems don’t have the capability to match numerous purchases that stem from tactical spending and indirect materials.
However, procurement solutions like Kissflow Procurement Cloud meticulously store every purchase transaction. This readily available data forms the foundation for seamless matching capabilities.
Vendor management
Manual vendor management practices have a fragmented approach with unstructured communication and lack of coordination. This ends up causing performance-related issues such as delays in delivery, subpar quality, cost and time overrun, conflict, and disputes.
Procurement solutions allow organizations to pre-qualify and shortlist preferred vendors to mitigate risks. Additionally, procurement solutions deliver real-time overview and visibility of key vendor performance metrics. They also ensure accountability and internal compliance to evaluate performance effectively and build better vendor relationships.
Features every top eProcurement solution should offer
With so many procurement solutions out there, picking the one that suits your purchasing requirements is hard. Here’s a list of best-in-class features organizations can use to find the best procurement solutions.
Three-way matching
Match invoices with related goods receipts notes and purchase orders.
Auto-initiated POs
Set purchase orders to auto-initiate as soon as the respective request is approved.
Requisitions to RFQ
Convert your purchase requisitions to a new request for proposal (RFQ) in a click.
Paperless processing
Execute and manage all purchase-related documentation effectively without a single printout.
Quick vendor screening
Retrieve and verify supplier data like business reports, financial and credit risk data.
Easy vendor enrolment
Collect key vendor information to screen them based on reputation, past performance, and more.
Corrective actions
With sub-par supplier performance, initiate corrective action plans (SCAR) or offboard them.
Rate contracts
Incorporate rate contracts and enforce contract pricing when catalog prices are raised.
Harness the power of digital procurement with the right software
Organizations have started using procurement solutions to ensure they don’t waste their expenses and manpower on mundane tasks. Procurement solutions allow them to handle their procure-to-pay process efficiently and accurately.
To meet this need, the procurement tools covered above have become more feature-rich, offering an array of options to choose from. The best procurement solutions like Kissflow Procurement Cloud cover an extensive range of procurement functions, effortlessly taking your procurement efforts digital.
With Kissflow Procurement Cloud, your organization can save time, cut costs, reduce errors, and ensure consistency with a user-friendly and cloud-based procurement tool. Are you on a quest to find the right procurement software that streamlines your purchasing process and ensures compliance? Get a free demo of Kissflow Procurement Cloud today, and see if it can optimize your organizational spend and improve spend visibility.
