Streamline Your Purchase Requisition Workflow With an eProcurement Solution

What is a purchase requisition workflow?

A purchase requisition workflow is a step-by-step process that outlines the important stages that must be carried out for a potential purchase within a business. It usually involves being drawn up as a draft, and subsequently moving to being reviewed and checked.

After authorization by the relevant parties, it is finally agreed with a purchase order (PO) being raised for fulfillment by the vendor.

What does a purchase requisition workflow look like?

Naturally, all businesses have purchase requisition workflows that differ from each other. Each step reflects the unique circumstances of the organization. For example, some businesses might make do with a fully manual process. Others, however, might utilize software to a greater or lesser extent. That said, there are a number of key components to a purchase requisition (PR) workflow that are common across all organizations, as follows:

First, a request is made and prepared by an employee in the organization for the purchase of goods or a service. This is then sent, either manually or automatically, to a reviewer. This person checks it over to ensure it is valid, within budget, made from an approved supplier, etc. There is often more than one reviewer in the process, particularly if the cost of goods or services is high. If this is the case, this reviewing step often has to be repeated at a higher level.

Any missing, incorrect, or inadequate information in the purchase requisition is generally sent back to the original preparer to correct and resubmit. If the reviewer is dissatisfied with the contents of the purchase requisition, they are able to reject it outright.

Finally, when all parties are happy with its contents, the purchase requisition will be approved and a purchase order is raised to request fulfilment of the goods or service by the supplier.

What challenges exist in a manual purchase requisition workflow process?

Using a manual purchase requisition workflow can work reasonably adequately for many smaller, less complex organizations. However, the margin for error can be high. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that the purchase requisition passes through the hands of a number of different individuals as part of the process, from the original preparer to multiple reviewers, and then to the employee who raises the final purchase order.

Add inevitable queries, potential resubmissions, and rejections and other issues. Then, it can be easy for key information to be missed, requisitions to go astray, or miscommunications to cause delays to the whole process.

Another real challenge inherent in a manual purchase requisition process is the lack of clarity and transparency as to the progress of a particular requisition. For example, if a problem or delay with a purchase requisition is affecting a department’s ability to undertake its operations, tracking down its location and verifying its status is vital to getting things moving again.

However, this can be tricky if the purchase requisition is sitting in a senior manager’s in-tray or is being queried by another reviewer who hasn’t been clear with his or her communications.

How an eProcurement solution helps in managing your purchase requisition workflow?

Utilizing technology within this area can save time, money, efficiency, and accuracy. Imagine employees having the ability to raise a purchase requisition online quickly and easily, choosing from a range of pre-populated and customized templates and submitting it to the next reviewer at the touch of a button.

The system will quickly determine which levels of review the requisition needs to pass through and can do all of the hard work for your team. This frees your team to concentrate on activities that use their skills and actually add value to your organization.

Another great feature of an e-procurement software is the ability to track purchase requisitions at any stage of the process. This gives you and your team visibility of progress and enables you to chase where required or pick up potential problems before they become real blockages that have the potential to negatively impact your business operations.

Allow Kissflow to simplify and streamline your purchase requisition workflow

Take a look at Kissflow Procurement Cloud and see for yourself how straightforward it could be to transform your laborious and inefficient manual processes into automated ones.

The Kissflow Procurement Cloud allows you to house all of your procurement activities in one place and benefit from pre-built workflows and document templates. These templates are also fully customizable to perfectly match the specifics of your own processes. Each step of the process can be fully automated, meaning less chance of human error and a seamless and more professional style to your purchase requisition workflows.