Why eProcurement will be a mover and shaker for SMBs

eProcurement has been talked about since early 2000 in Australia, although only a small number of switched on organisations have really embraced the benefits. Here’s a look at what eProcurement could do for your business’ bottom line.

If you could have better compliance, reduce risk, warn or prevent over-expenditure and save you organisation real money you would do it, right?

Apparently not, given the uptake of eProcurement to date.

With organisations struggling to meet revenue targets, people are looking to reduce expenditure in their organisation in order to increase the bottom line.

Of course it isn’t just about saving money or prevention of budget blow-outs, it’s about better compliance, reducing risk and providing better transparency.

So ask yourself why it has taken so long for eProcurement to gain traction and we could come up with a number of reasons; apathy, cost, we already have procurement within in our ERP solution.

My theory is that there is general misunderstanding in the market place as to what eProcurement truly provides and where it fits in organisations.

eProcurement applications are meant to streamline your purchasing process, not replace your Accounting or ERP system. All reputable eProcurement systems integrate easily with your Accounting and ERP systems.

This provides organisations with real-time budget checking and total visibility of your cost pipeline in the organisation.

So here are my five key points on the true value of a proper eProcurment Purchase-to Pay solution:

1. Defines your policies: A good Purchase-to-Pay system provides a pre-designed framework to make it easy for you to define your authorisation policies and procedures
2. Easy to use: Make it easy for staff and they will use the solution – unlike a clunky ERP procurement solution. All staff want to be able to do is to purchase things as easily as possible without having to thing about authorisation or coding.
3. Ensures Compliance: All purchase requests will be checked against established rules and route them to the appropriate authoriser(s) as required. Routine purchase can automatically approved if required.
4. Authorisation is easy: Good Purchase-to-Pay systems make it easy for managers and authorisers to approve or reject expenditure. This can be done quickly and effectively anywhere and anytime via any web portal.
5. Provides visibility: Everything is captured electronically and everything is visible to the people who need to know. So employees can check the status of a request to purchase and see where it is in the authorisation process. Managers and executives can see a complete history of all relevant activity.