eProcurement software ensures savings in supply chain management

Visibility is a prerequisite to enhancing supply chain agility and responsiveness. Inventory and land costs can be reduced considerably by improving visibility. End-to-end supply chain management requires much more than the basic track and trace mechanisms to handle complex networks. The solution must help identify best practices that ensure improvement in revenue and profit margins. Globalization has amplified the importance of optimization in procurement management. Organizations are increasingly engaging in multi-tiered supply-demand networks; there is a real need to consolidate the movement of goods, information, and resources across various logistic partners. Automating the entire supply chain helps reduce lead times.

The idea is to increase collaborative synchronization between various entities in the procure-to-pay process. Visibility into complex logistic channels helps organizations reduce inventory stagnation in the pipeline. E-procurement software helps organizations take strategic actions to mitigate supply chain risks. Data synchronization leads to improved internal collaboration in the procurement cycle. The software enables a seamless flow of goods in the P2P chain; procurement professionals get to expand their supplier base beyond their local environment. Visibility helps management close the loop in the procure-to-pay cycle due to real-time data inputs on sourcing, transportation, and inventory. Automation enables the extraction of data from multiple sources; this data can then be mapped to provide an aggregated view of procurement spend. The solution provides a systematic transformational change in supply chain management.

Organizations can leverage “Big Data” in supply chain management to build optimization techniques specific to their requirements. These optimization tools enable procurement professionals to source goods and services in a strategic manner. Monitoring every transaction from order to receipt is useful in reducing procurement spend and improving financial flows for a company. Strategic sourcing and closed loop collaboration in supply chain management are best achieved with automation, as is demonstrated by best-in-class companies; with their average cycle time to create, negotiate and approve contracts at 40 days as opposed to the 49 days endured by others. In addition, best-in–class companies are able to demonstrate more than twice the savings than all others (Aberdeen report, March 2015, ‘Best-in-class Strategic Sourcing’). E-procurement software helps organizations establish a formal strategic plan to ensure savings in supply chain management.