Quebra-cabeça representa os quatro pilares do e-procurement

Procurement plays a key role in businesses and faces complex challenges, mainly related to the need of decreasing costs and to buyer productivity.

To render the procurement area more strategic, buyers must be freed from manual, bureaucratic and decentralized work.

By choosing an e-Procurement solution, which consolidates and automates the whole purchase flow, on a single platform, professionals gain more time to spend in business growth strategies.

Besides ensuring a significant competitive edge in the market, the optimization of the procurement process helps to keep good collaboration with suppliers and to strengthen corporate governance.

In this post, we highlighted four pillars of an e-Procurement solution, so you can understand how to consolidate and improve processes in your company. Keep on reading!

 

The 4 pillars of e-Procurement:

1. Savings

The procurement sector is extremely important for the saving and profitability of businesses. For this reason, having an e-Procurement solution – which allows visibility of purchases in real time – is an option to control spending in the area and create short-, mid- and long-term strategies.

Reduced operating costs

The operational, decentralized and bureaucratic methods in the area prevent more strategic actions from buyers. An e-Procurement solution manages to reduce at least 50% of operational costs of the whole process, as it frees professionals for procurement planning and the company’s expense control.

Savings tracking

One of the key benefits of e-Procurement for cost reduction in the company regards a higher price negotiation power with suppliers, in order to achieve more savings. This saving indicator can be used by buyer, region, category or procurement group, for instance, and can contribute to achieve more profitable and strategic negotiations.

Analysis of expenses and savings potential

The vision of Spend Analysis in an e-Procurement solution helps organizations to avoid, recover and reduce costs with suppliers. Having access to a spending history contributes not only to supplier selection, but also to know how much can be saved in new contracts.

 

2. Agility

Without the use of a smart tool, the procurement journey in lengthy, due to high demands, e-mails, spreadsheets and documents – which can impair the company’s results significantly. With an e-Procurement solution, procurement management can be automated, faster, safer and more consolidated, without much effort from buyers.

Automation of procurement processes

Instead of exchanging thousands of e-mails, process automation consolidates the whole procurement cycle on a single platform, from request to payment. Consequently, the managers can have a broader and more integrated view of operations. And all in real time.

Reports for quick decision making

The smart business of an e-Procurement solution extracts information and converts it into full reports, which help professionals to track the area’s performance and make faster, more assertive decisions. With the accurate measurement of data and information, the procurement area will stand out even more in businesses.

Fast implementation and easy access

Being a cloud solution, it doesn’t require equipment installation and is always updated. Additionally, the solution can be accessed anytime, anywhere – on your computer, smartphone or any other device connected to Internet. This means that managers and buyers can track everything, even during the coffee break.

 

3. Governance

Corporate governance and procurement must go side by side, in the ongoing search for an ethical and responsible behavior by businesses. In this sense, an e-Procurement solution promotes more transparency in procurement processes, and allows checking whether suppliers are in compliance with rules and good integrity practices of corporations.

Less risks in the supply chain

Creating and sustaining alliances with trusted suppliers is synonymous with competitive edge. With an e-Procurement solution, you can analyze if suppliers meet all legal and technical requirements demanded by internal regulations and standards. This procedure minimizes the risks related to supply chain and its negative impacts on the business.

Access to purchase history

Having access to a repository of information, such as quotations made and amounts paid in the last purchases, can make the procurement area’s planning and future negotiations easier. Furthermore, it helps to identify faults and then suggest improvements for the company.

Transparent, recorded and auditable processes

The e-Procurement solution allows buyers, managers and auditors to analyze activities related to purchases and negotiations made through the platform. Recording all actions in a single environment, in addition to streamlining the tasks of those involved in the procurement cycle, can make the area’s processes more transparent and auditable.

 

4. Collaboration

Good relationships with suppliers strengthen relationships, generate trust and enable the best negotiations (in other words, they are beneficial to both parties). For such purpose, it’s vital to have collaboration between buyers and suppliers.

Communication with suppliers

In a collaborative environment, the e-Procurement solution creates an agile, clear and efficient communication channel between those involved in the procurement processes. In this way, communication with suppliers can be optimized and monitored, and also carried out at any time, place and time, including through smartphones.

Tracking of procurement stages

With an e-Procurement solution, requesters, buyers and suppliers can easily search the status of requests and track the full procurement cycle, from the beginning of negotiations to the delivery of materials or services. This can provide early information more easily for the progress of purchases.

Supplier management

The e-Procurement solution enables monitoring the performance of suppliers, in addition to displaying all processes associated with business partners. Collaboration can be promoted from suppliers’ performance indicators, as well as assessments, which can be shared and used to create action plans.

Now that you have seen the key pillars of e-Procurement, find out how our solution can help transform your company’s procurement processes. Visit our website and ask our experts for a free demo.