Improving the Procurement Process

Most businesses buy goods and services from a variety of vendors, and keeping these costs under control is always critical. However, purchasing activities are pivotal in asset-intensive industries such as manufacturing, wholesaling, and retailing, where a significant amount of money is invested in inventory.  

The procurement method is frequently time-consuming. Requests from large numbers of internal clients may be received through the buyer, which must be analyzed and accepted. If a demanded item has never been purchased before, a request for a quote must be approved through several potential vendors, accompanied through back-and-forth bargaining before an authorized vendor is chosen and the purchase is made.  

Organizations constantly lack efficient procurement management tools.  In order to handle sourcing events, they may depend on manual record-keeping, phone calls, emails, and spreadsheets. This strategy is not only ineffective, but it also makes determining vendor performance extremely difficult.  

Source, buy, and pay

Successful procurement training is the result of stability of people, methods, and innovation. The software will not be able to fix all of the issues, especially if the underlying mechanisms are clashing or poorly defined, or if procurement teams do not comprehend the company's needs.  

A good starting point for perfecting the procurement process is to document the key requirements that all suppliers must meet. Without instruction procurement managers will use their own norms that may not align with business goals. Guidelines tend to be quite company-specific, from manufacturing capabilities and country of origin of goods to company size and ethical standards. Having this framework in place will help managers and other buyers evaluate suppliers and products.  

Then, automate a portion of the procurement process. Procurement software automates the majority of manual tasks, including purchase requisitions, vendor management, and invoicing.  It makes things simpler to monitor buyer-vendor communications and enforces compliance through requiring purchases to be made only through contracted vendors and setting spending and purchase type limits based on the user's role. 

Procure-to-Pay Process Improvement

Best practice procurement entails locating the right suppliers, with the right goods, delivered on time and at the right price. NetSuite Procurement enhances the precision of the procure-to-pay method through automating and connecting key procurement transactions and giving approval and matching workflows to support internal controls and ensure compliance. Employees save time through channeling purchases to accepted distributors and pre-negotiated agreements, and visibility is enhanced, having actual data on business spending and seller performance.  

Connect Jobin & Jismi to know more about the NetSuite-related procurement process.