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Traceable Procurement Processes at Your Fingertips
Originally published Tuesday, Apr 10, 2018
Sales is king. How true is that? There’s an obvious responsibility that falls on sales to, well… sell and find new customers but if you really think about it, bottom line profit falls on the shoulders of procurement. So here’s the thing though, you might have already identified the importance of procurement, its processes and the workflow but have you ever wondered if there’s a better, easier, more efficient way to get things done that will give you more traceability? There is!
Here’s a brief overview of how you could be making your procurement processes more traceable and why that’s so incredibly useful:
Spreadsheets, Emails and Manual Processes Be Gone!
It starts somewhere, and that somewhere usually is a customer’s order or a recurrent requirement. If you’re still using spreadsheets to be able to identify purchasing needs, you need to let them go. It’s for your own good, we swear.
There’s so many (really...so many) different tools out there that are way better than using the good old spreadsheet but nothing better than a system that you can access anywhere, any time. Once you make the switch to a system, you’ll be able to automate your processes and procurement can have all the information in a single spot. For example, in Komet, we have a single screen where everyone in the purchasing team can view all the requirements attached to pre-existing orders and create Purchase Orders directly from that screen. Within the same section, the team is able to view the Purchase Orders created and their statuses based on the vendor’s confirmation and shipment.
When you think about all the time you could be saving the team and all the headaches you could be avoiding by using a system, it becomes a no-brainer. Especially when you take into consideration that you’ll be able to view which needs each team member is working on, how the needs are being executed, and so much more.
Traceable is Measurable and Measurable is Money
The more traceable a department is, the more you can measure and, in turn, the more you can implement changes to grow. But what do we mean by that? Simple enough, you want to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks, you have full visibility and know what your team is working on.
When you work with manual processes and spreadsheets, it’s easy to forget about specific requirements or single product line could go unnoticed and, more importantly, you’ll depend on someone to remember to update the information to be able to know the stage of each requirement or purchase order.
That’s a dangerous way to run such a key department of your business. Once you move on to a more automated system, you’ll be able to centralize product requirements, order notes, purchasing trends such as pricing and above all, you’ll be able to see exactly where each other is at all times whether it’s being worked on by any of your teams or your vendor.
What we’ve mentioned here are just a few of the ways in which you might have more efficient procurement management. In reality, there are so many other ways in which you could make your processes easier, faster and more traceable.
