3 Procurement Processes You Should Automate To Increase Productivity

In today’s competitive world, enterprises have been seeking to adopt advanced technologies to automate the most time-consuming processes in every department. Especially automating the procure-to-pay process is imperative for businesses to save time and money. Even though the procurement process is a minefield of potential errors, avoidable costs, and delays, only 50% of the procurement workflows are currently being automated.

Procurement automation reduces the time it takes to manage the P2P process – from creating requisitions to approval and payments to the vendors. An advanced procurement solution enables you to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, thereby allowing your employees to focus on productive tasks rather than administrative tasks. It reduces the approval bottlenecks and provides a centralized platform to store all the procurement documents that can be accessed by authorized people from anywhere.

As per research, manual cost reduction efforts can cut up to 15-30 percent of costs, whereas automation can cut up to 60-75 percent of procurement management costs.

P2P Process Automation with Procurement Solution

With the evolution of technology, many vendors are offering procurement solutions with highly advanced features. Enterprises that have implemented the solution have been automating most of the time-consuming processes involved in the P2P process. In this article, we have discussed a few workflows which you can automate with the right purchasing solution.

Creating Requisitions (Purchase Requests)

Creating purchase requests is the first step of the procurement process. Human errors made when filling out requisition forms, incomplete information, and approval delays can cause significant hiccups. However, the automation solution allows you to create templates that auto-fill standard information and helps employees to reduce errors. It also ensures a standard format is followed for purchase requisitions across the organization and relieves employees from error-prone manual data entry works. Once the requisition is created, the procurement solution notifies approvers via email so that they never miss a new request.

Creating Purchase Orders

Similarly, digitizing and standardizing the purchase orders (POs) helps speed up processes and makes it easier to manage POs in the later stages of the P2P process. Procurement teams no longer need to waste their time manually keying data into the system. The software allows you to store POs on a centralized platform that can be easily assessed by authorized people from anywhere.

Supplier Data Management

Suppliers are the cornerstone of every business because the quality of the product or service you deliver to your customers will depend on them. So, while sourcing the vendors, you must carefully analyze their capabilities, past performance records, and more. Procurement solutions allow you to organize e-auctions and help you select vendors based on various parameters such as price, delivery timelines, quality, and more. The software also allows you to make informed decisions and award contracts to suppliers based on their performance. By accessing the accurate, real-time, you can identify unnecessary delays, inefficiencies, overpayments, and more. The centralized source of data of all your past purchases also helps you plan your budget carefully and ensures you are audit-ready anytime.

How Does Procurement Automation Impacts Your Employees’ Productivity?

While purchasing solutions automate the processes and reduce the costs associated with manual procurement processes, it doesn’t mean the procurement professionals become obsolete. As most of the time-consuming processes are automated, employees are freed up to spend their valuable time on productive tasks that require human attention. They can focus on result-driven tasks, such as interpreting the data provided by the purchasing solution, identifying inefficiencies and fostering stronger relationships with suppliers, and more.