5 Procurement Tools You Must Have in Your Evaluation List

Anyone in procurement knows how many factors determine the success of a purchase order process. Between managing vendors, purchase order tracking and budget approvals, conducting three-way matches, and more, there is a whole lot that can go wrong.

Getting the right tool is more than a good business decision that earns you a pat on the back or workplace brownie points. Picking a good procurement management software is often the difference between a successful procurement team, and a hassled set of people who are scrambling every day and dealing with frustrated customers, coworkers, and finance team members.

To help you pick from so many procurement management tools out there, we’ve put together this list of the top 5 procurement tools, and their pros and cons. As we put it together, we also gathered this list of the key features that stood out in a competent procurement tool.

Here are five procurement tools that stand out from the crowd

1. Kissflow

Kissflow procurement cloud is an automation-based comprehensive solution to procurement. Using dedicated processes designed for specific procurement functions like purchase order management, helps you run purchasing processes throughout the procure-to-pay cycle.

Kissflow can handle purchase requisitions, purchase orders, vendor management, contract management, invoice processing, and more. In addition, it also integrates easily with finance and accounting tools, and even ERP solutions you may be using including Xero, Quickbooks, Netsuite, Salesforce, SAP, and more.

Key Features/Modules:

• Purchase requisition
• Purchase order
• Vendor management
• Contract approval
• Invoice Approval
• Three-way matching
• Spend insights
• Integration with other tools

Pricing:

Loaded with features, the base plan starts at $1,990/mo and it increases with the transaction volume, the number of users, and additional functionalities.

2. Precoro

Precoro includes features that help you run purchase orders, keep track of budget tracking, and even onboard vendors. You can generate customized reports with insights into factors like spending, and automatically allocate cost centers. Overspends can trigger alerts, helping you avoid going over budget.

Key Features/Modules:

• Purchase orders
• Billing
• Approval workflow
• Vendor management
• Three-way Matching
• Spend analysis

Pricing:

The base price is for standard users, $6.50 per user per month. ‘Power users’, the next price bracket, are charged $52 per month. Enterprise plans, which come with custom integration and dedicated customer service, can be obtained by contacting Precoro.

3. Coupa

Coupa’s design seems aimed primarily at covering all the aspects of procurement, as proved by dedicated modules taking care of various procurement processes like approvals, budget management, and inventory management. Business users have access to approvals on email and on the mobile app, which means they can manage procurement-related approvals right from their inbox!

Coupa is also built for easy integration, letting you use it in tandem with ERP systems like SAP Business One.

Key Features/Modules:

• Purchase Orders
• Approval workflow
• Vendor management
• Budget Management
• Inventory Management
• Three-way Matching
• Integration with other tools

Pricing:

Pricing is quote-based, which means you’ll need to contact Coupa to get a price quotation.

4. Promena e-Sourcing

A sourcing and procurement tool, Promena offers simplified purchasing. Tools for RFIs (Requests for Information), and RFPs (Requests for Proposals) take care of the sourcing side of things. Promena also offers tools like the main dashboard for managing procurement and sourcing.

Key Features/Modules:

• Purchase Orders
• Approval workflow
• Sourcing management
• Bid Management
• Budget Management
• Invoice Processing

Pricing:

Like Coupa, Promena also features quote-based pricing.

5. eBuyerAssist Procurement

Taking a modular approach to the various procurement-related tasks, eBuyerAssist Procurement provides users with dedicated features that take care of RFIs, RFQs (Requests for Quotation), invoice matching, warehouse, and contract management, vendor risk management, strategic sourcing, inventory control, and more.

This tool is designed for easy integration with others, like Quickbooks and Microsoft AX.

Key Features/Modules:

• Requests for Quotation
• Vendor Management
• Strategic Sourcing
• Invoice Processing
• Contract Management
• Inventory Control

Pricing:

As for pricing, you’ll be paying $39 for the ‘Small Business’ version (per user per month), all the way up to $69 for a ‘Custom Platform’ edition.

5 crucial features your procurement management tool needs

Because of the sheer number of choices out there, procurement tools offer a number of varying feature sets. However, the best ones all offer these crucial features.

Paperless approval

Process all purchasing documents (purchase requests, purchase orders, invoices) in a series of digital approvals.

Compliance tracking

Dynamic rule-based workflows let you acquire necessary goods and services while ensuring policy, regulatory, and legal compliance

Real-time collaboration

Collaborate with your vendors across geographies instantly to confirm goods receipt notices (GRNs), goods return ship notices, and more.

Up-to-date catalogs

Keep your product catalogs always up-to-date with automated verifications to fast track updates, reduce employee workload, and improve accuracy.

3-way auto-match

Enforce compliance and prevent maverick spend via automated three-way matching (invoices to contracts, POs, GRNs, and service entry sheets).

Budgetary control

Prevent overspending by proactively defining and managing budget restrictions across all transactions in the entire procure-to-pay lifecycle.

Spend insights

Capture all spend categories (across vendors, departments, or products) with automatic alerts, handy dashboards, and configurable reports.

Why Kissflow stands out

Although most dedicated procurement solutions are touted as the ideal choice, they often need many workarounds to fully cover the procurement cycle, especially approvals. Kissflow is a comprehensive procurement solution that does not fail in this area.

With a system like Kissflow in place, you can execute procurement processes with ease and efficiency. If you’re in the market for a procurement management tool that actually takes the work off your hands, take a look at Kissflow.

You’ll see how easy purchasing gets with a system like Kissflow Procurement Cloud running things. Also, you’ll see that you get more than what you paid for–at its price point and given its abilities, Kissflow Procurement Cloud might well be the tool your procurement team needs!