The RFQ process is an incredibly important part of the procurement process. Without it, businesses would struggle to understand what certain goods and services may cost before an RFP has been issued, which in turn gives businesses a greater understanding of the total costs they are likely to face.
Having successful RFQ software in place is an efficient and easy way to put you on a path towards procurement automation. Top procurement organizations are able to boast handling the RFQ process with smaller teams and thus significantly lower labor costs.
Despite this, there are many signs that businesses are still behind where they should be in respect of reaching that level of procurement automation we would expect in the modern age. For example, a recent Association for Financial Professionals survey found that businesses still pay about half of their bills by check. A report from HFS Research also found that most businesses are yet to scale their intelligent automation programs, with 90 percent not taking an integrated approach.
By automating your business process you can strategically streamline and simplify your ability to tell suppliers specifically what you want and what you need, as well your anticipated timeline for delivery of those goods and services. Automating these processes can also better help you identify errors and detect fraud, preventing problems caused further by human error.
Historically speaking, RFQ has been focused strictly on price and where the other elements of the equation are not as significant. As the Harvard Business Review (HBR) explains, this mindset can be naïve and at the end of the day, quite disingenuous.
While some businesses can get hung up on cutting costs at all potential avenues, the truth of the matter is that taking the time to work together with your vendors can help your business grow in the long run. A good example of this can be seen in the case of Pharmaceutical behemoth Bayer, who found several benefits through collaborating with its supply chain.
If we focus on the “what” in the RFx process instead of the “how”, your company can also help build the same type of value that Bayer was able to do. By spending extra time on your RFx process, you can end up saving time, lowering costs and ultimately improving the quality of products or services you deliver to your customers.
With successful RFQ software in place, your proposal comparison will also become efficiently automated. When requesting bids from multiple suppliers, your business will no longer have to manually enter bid details into a common document to compare and contrast prices and details. Instead, suppliers submit their quotations into the software system which will provide a summarized output to help you select a vendor you can work with.
RFQ software, such as the software offered by ProcurePort, therefore reduces the time spent preparing for bids by up to 50 percent. This was the conclusion of the 2017 Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) Journal, who found that hundreds of companies reduced time spent on each RFP by 50 percent when procurement software was used. If performed manually, managing RFQs can waste up to 80 percent of your company’s time through unnecessary meetings, phone calls, emails and on handling redundant paper work.
As HBR explains, successful procurement automation will lead to suppliers “beating down the door” in order to get their goods and services sold to your organization. Suppliers will want to work with buyers that have systems which allow their easy and timely approval, leading to better competition and therefore, better products at better prices.
Using ProcurePort’s RFQ Software As Your Stepping Stone
ProcurePort’s e-Sourcing Solution makes understanding and implementing procurement automation efficient and easy. ProcurePort’s RFQ software will help your business save time and costs by ditching the manual process of receiving bids or quotes, automating the process of collecting supplier information for your projects.If you want to cut your RFQ process by 90 percent of the time and drive efficiency and cost savings, visit our website and contact ProcurePort today to learn more about how our RFQ software is helping companies just like yours achieve their eProcurement objectives.