The Top 5 Procurement Processes You Should Automate

Is it possible to optimize an organization’s spend without hiring new employees or making a huge IT investment? Is there a way to streamline complicated procurement processes like supplier onboarding and contract reviews? Can we eliminate costly invoice processing and manual data entry errors? The answer is yes, you can, and procurement automation is the key. It is based on the underlying procurement philosophy of “procuring the right item at the right time at the right price from the right vendor”.

What is Procurement Automation?

Procurement automation is about automating your procurement processes to maximize efficiency and reduce the time taken. It speeds up the procurement process by freeing employees from repetitive and time-intensive tasks. Procurement automation software lets you focus on business-critical activities like decision-making and strategizing. It transforms the procure-to-pay process while keeping the cost down. 

Why should you automate your procurement process?

Before we jump on to the five procurement processes to automate, here are some of the benefits of procurement automation.

1. Increases productivity
2. Eliminates manual errors
3. Provides visibility into your spend
4. Acts as a central repository
5. Improves collaboration between internal and external teams
6. Removes approval bottlenecks.

Top 5 Procurement Processes Every Company Must Automate

1. Purchase Requisition

Most of the time, purchase requisitions get stuck and consume a lot of time to move through the complex hierarchical structure. Procurement process automation will not only cut down the time of approval cycle but also remove redundant steps in the process and enable purchasing staff to do more in less time.

2. Purchase Order

In a recent survey, nearly 43 percent of organizations admitted having immediate inadequacies in their PO practices despite having a formal purchase order system in place. Procurement process automation allows organizations automate the entire purchase order cycle to deliver improvements in productivity and process efficiency, while saving costs.

Pro Tips: How Procurement Automation Helps Procurement Reach its Goals?

3. Invoice management

There’s a problem with manual invoice management. Too often, procurement teams have to deal with misplaced or poorly managed purchase orders, missing goods receipts, submission delays, uncontrolled (maverick) spending, tricky spreadsheets, and insufficient transparency as far as the spend culture is concerned.

Manual invoice management usually means, practically, delayed payments and compliance issues.

By going digital, invoice management becomes buttery smooth, with features ranging from touch-free auto-approval of standard low-value invoices to extended functionality through integrations with finance and accounting tools.

For example, Kissflow can speed up your invoice approvals by automating the three-way matching and streamlining your approval process. You can compare individual invoices against predefined business rules and available POs and goods receipts – in a click.

4. Vendor Management

Without a clear line of disclosure and process transparency, organizations will end up making a strain in their vendor relationships. With automation, procurement teams can streamline vendor selection and pick the best vendor available. By automating vendor management process, organizations can quickly identify and resolve grievances, forming a better relationship with the vendor. Manage your vendors better with our guide to creating successful strategic sourcing. Download it now!

5. Contract Approval

In manual contract management, all contracts are just dumped in the same filing cabinet or the local drive. As it is disorganized and unstructured, finding contracts or even keeping tabs on them can be a real challenge. Procurement automation organizes all contracts in a central repository that can be accessed in a single click. Additionally, it also ensures that all contracts stay consistent and accurate.

Why choose Kissflow Procurement Cloud?

Kissflow Procurement Cloud is a cloud-based procurement automation software that helps you automate your procurement process end-to-end. Some of its advantages are as follows:

• Run and execute procurement processes with optimal process efficiency and reduced costs
• Streamline the procure-to-pay cycle and mitigate purchasing risks.
• Track and store all purchasing transactions and contracts in a centralized location
• Study the organization’s spend habits to better budget allocation