For many organisations, the purchasing processes that take place are far from ideal. There is often far too much inefficiency, such as, purchases made without proper authorisation, purchases made from non-preferred suppliers, no visibility of purchasing commitments and so on. To add to this, costs can be attributed to the wrong accounts or departments, critical purchases are delayed, productivity is lost as purchases take too long and employees begin making purchases outside of the system. The problems of inefficient purchasing can seem endless.
In order to overcome these purchasing issues, organisations are looking to make it easier for their staff to find and order what they need.A robust purchase order system can help in the following ways: This helps to ensure compliance, maximise the use of preferred suppliers and agreements, enable effective budget management, capture detail history for spend analysis and reduce the overall cost of Accounts Payable (AP).
So how can organisations prevent unauthorised purchases and improve efficiency in AP? Introduction of a robust purchase order system can help in the following ways:
- Easy online entry of purchase requests for all types of goods and services
- Automated authorisation workflows based on approval policies and organisation structure
- PO release to suppliers along with receipting to prepare electronic POs for invoice matching
- Budget and purchase commitment visibility for departmental and financial managers
- Capture and reporting of detail spend data for use by Procurement in spend analysis
Putting such processes in place results in significant savings, from avoidance of unnecessary purchases, negotiated supplier agreements, reduced delivery costs, reduced cost of PO handling, reduced administrative support and reduced AP costs as a whole. Furthermore, the organisation benefits on a strategic level from:
- Greater financial control & visibility
- Reduced risk of supplier non-conformance & non-compliance
- Data for spend analysis
- Increased workforce morale & productivity
Organisations can achieve an efficient and effective purchase authorisation process by implementing a spend control solution, such as PROACTIS. For further information, contact us on +44 203 866 8808, send an email, or view our PROACTIS Purchase-to-Pay webinar recording:
