Right from finance to manufacturing, business units have leveraged the power of the cloud, data analytics and artificial intelligence; one function that is often overlooked is – procurement.

Procurement can deliver real savings when monitored efficiently. This guide will explain you the key steps in planning and executing procurement strategy:

Examine the Data

That’s something CFOs have to look for. A lot of savings opportunity lies in sourcing data, the organization should know how to unlock the data. Procurement can add value to the company by delivering efficiency and cutting costs.

Turning data into actionable insights is hampered in payment card records, purchase-to-pay supply chain, employee expenses, or ad hoc purchasing systems. This segregation of data leads users to bypass procurement policies, which can prove costly to the business.

Understanding the complex data landscape is important to get the most out of procurement, technology can help outdo information silos. Greater access to the data can change corporate culture to see the bottom-line impact of procurement. CIOs have to decide on the applications to evaluate and how to simplify the analysis to leverage the hidden resource.

Find the Right Technology

Siloed solutions can break procurement process. However, equipping procurement with mixed applications for each operation such as RFP creation, sourcing, contract management, supplier management and purchasing can be inefficient.

So, consider all the constraints before implementing the right procurement software in the enterprise. Ensure users and legal teams are a part of the evaluation team as they look at procurement as the cross-functional process. Giving users a common toolset can eliminate silos quickly.

Engagement

Technology is making users expect simple, intuitive, and user-friendly software for business applications. CIOs can capitalize on this trend in many ways. Simplicity is what makes procurement software better. The key difference between good and great software is that, if you don’t need anything, it should not be on the screen.

Simplifying the application to what users need can reap significant benefits. It is the efficiency and speed that matters and how the end users take advantage of the solution. Simple user experience can make a real impact on compliance.

If the process requires approver to open hundreds of email attachments, digitally sign, and attach PDF, they may put it off later. Instead, if approvals are pushed to phone and fingerprint is all that is needed, the process becomes painless. By streamlining the data-entry burden, procurement software can deliver a robust experience to users.

Advanced Analytics

Applying advanced analytics can improve efficiency across the procurement process. Advanced analytics can help eliminate errors, and allows CIOs to demonstrate a significant return on procurement software. Analytics tools can help gain efficiencies by getting visibility into the data that yields savings and the actions that result from the data.

Leveraging automation capabilities such as AI and machine learning can help simplify employee workload. Modernizing sourcing and procurement makes the data easier to integrate.

This software is a unified procurement solution that helps create greater efficiency and performance by automating all source-to-pay processes. The solution will allow you to:

  • Identify opportunities, manage savings and make purchases through a procurement solution
  • Improve compliance with an intuitive interface
  • Manage procure-to-pay processes with mobile app
  • Facilitate approval and payment workflows to speed up procurement process end-to-end
  • Improve collaboration between procurement and finance departments
  • Execute the best practices and workflows for procurement management

How Artificial Intelligence Revolutionize Inventory Management?

AI transforms every phase of inventory and supply chain management. For restaurants, artificial intelligence can help decide which food is going to sell better. Predictions will increase sales by predicting the temperatures. 

Predictions tend to increase sales by forecasting the climatic conditions and temperatures. Predictive analytics and sensors tell distributors when restocking need to be done. This way you can manage inventory efficiently, without any shortages.

Big data analytics help improve visibility and provide deep insights into the supply chain. Using big data, supply chain organizations can improve the way they respond to the supply chain demand and eliminate potential issues. Around 65% of supply chain executives consider big data analytics as a disruptive technology, resulting in long-term management. Automated procurement software complemented with advanced technological features can do wonders in the long run.

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